Cheng makes the backstage instability of fieldwork part of the methodological argument. Walking ethnography is presented not as smooth observation but as a practice shaped by distraction, uncertainty, reorientation and the affective force of urban materialities. The paper’s iconic contribution is to show that the ethnographer’s body becomes attuned to the mundane rhythms through which the city is composed: movement, surfaces, encounters, sounds and ordinary events generate knowledge precisely because they interrupt detached observation. Photography, fieldnotes and video are treated as complementary devices for apprehending moments that are difficult to stabilise in language alone. The conceptual operation is therefore one of embodied calibration: the researcher does not simply record a pre-existing urban reality but is rhythmically reorganised by moving through it. Cheng’s broader contribution bridges affect theory, urban geography and ethnographic method, demonstrating that the politics and poetics of walking lie in how bodily exposure makes heterogeneous temporalities and material relations available to thought.
URBANISM MEETS ART