“Everything That Follows From Here On Out”: Choices in Writing the Walk in Sociology

“Everything That Follows From Here On Out”: Choices in Writing the Walk in Sociology

In my paper, I analyze the sociological use of the walk in a chapter of Small’s Villa Victoria by comparing it to other walks, including those of sociologists Robert Sampson and Elijah Anderson, Virginia Woolf’s walk in “Street Haunting: A London Adventure,” and the walk I took down Tremont Street. I start by contextualizing the walk and its mimetic difficulties with an overview of the tradition of writing about walks, which stretches from the Epic of Gilgamesh to contemporary novelists like Paul Auster. I then analyze the function of the walk in the work of Sampson and Anderson, before turning to Small to contrast his walk with that of these other sociologists. I end by highlighting the way in which Small is using the tools of literary nonfiction as outlined in Woolf’s essay to warn readers against the walk as sociological tool.