Walking into the Void

The first comprehensive historical sociology and political anthropology of walking as a formative and transformative experience, this book employs the genealogical method and the concept of liminality to theorise the links between walking, pilgrimage and rites of passage as liminal experiences, and offers a historical survey of the role played by walking in settled and increasingly massified societies. A fresh perspective on the ills of modernity that retrieves connections with the civilisation of the distant past through one the most important experiences of human beings, this ground-breaking work will appeal to scholars across the social sciences.