Uncomfortable Walking: An Autoethnographic, Embodied and Mobile Investigation of the Encounter with the More-Than-Human

Abstract

This paper situates walking within the framework of slow mobility, conceptualizing it as an embodied practice that produces situated emotional states and affective dispositions. At the core of the analysis are inter-species encounters. Whereas much scholarship on animals has foregrounded the domestic sphere as the privileged site of human-animal relationality, walking practices extend the horizon of encounter to farmed, semi-wild, and wild animals, eliciting a range of affective responses – often charged with ambivalence and fear. The discussion highlights the role of animals in relation to the contested uses of rural territories: on the one hand, their centrality to economic activities, where they constitute a vital component of productive chains; on the other, their presence within the expanding domain of slow tourism, where they may also be perceived as a latent threat. The case of sheepdogs offers a particularly illuminating example. Encounters with these animals along walking routes, and the affective atmospheres they generate, invite a broader reflection on the coexistence of multiple, and at times competing, territorial uses and imaginaries. In this perspective, the notions of agricultural productivity and of local territorial heritage are reconfigured through the prism of human-non-human relationality. The argument is grounded in qualitative research conducted along the Cammino dei Briganti trail, which traverses Abruzzo and Lazio, and draws on autoethnographic, ethnographic, and embodied walking methodologies.