Key figure of mobility: the flâneur

Abstract

The flâneur acts as a key figure for understanding the relationship between the individual, modernity and the city. A reference to dandy young gentlemen, who walked, performed and loitered within the arcades of late 19th-century Paris, the flâneur has transitioned from a literary and theoretical figure to one used in mobile urban ethnographies. The flâneur, traditionally male, is a figure of pedestrian mobility whose sensorial and mobile engagements with the urban landscape generate distinct forms of creative practice. For this reason, the flâneur has been invoked in relation to the methods and experiences of the ethnographer, who moves and takes note in similar ways. This paper conducts a review of extant literature on the flâneur in ethnographic research, which shows a strong connection between this key figure and its ties to a European tradition dealing with Anglo-European (post)modernities. It has also inspired a range of methodological innovations in urban ethnography more broadly. Finally, through the case of Tokyo, the paper asks the question of who is drawn to flânerie and who is deterred from it, demonstrating how the transgressive potentialities of flânerie are only desirable for some.

Managing passenger etiquette in Tokyo: between social control and customer service

“…Padoan and Negishi's understanding of manner posters is in line with established themes in the study of the governance of Japanese urban space and society (e.g. lateral surveillance and friendly authoritarianism; see: Coates 2015Coates , 2017Davidson 2013;Sugimoto 2014;Schimkowsky 2020) and takes into account the verbal-visual particularities of manner posters. Posters usually refrain from direct invocations of authority found in regulatory signage in other urban rail systems (e.g.…”

Ethnography in Motion, or Walking With WG Sebald

“…The kinship has less to do with any particular appreciation of literature, or with any notion that Benjamin may have had about the empirical world ‘out there’ even if Sebald’s walking phenomenologist may have something in common with Benjamin’s flaneur (see e.g. Coates, 2017; Jenks and Neves, 2000). To me, the relationship between the two is more evident in Sebald’s self-professed attachment to bricolage and Benjamin’s unique ideas about ‘method’ especially in the ‘Epistemo-Critical Prologue’ of his The Origin of German Tragic Drama (see Benjamin, 2009: 27–56).…”

Scrolling and the In‐Between Spaces of Boredom: Marginalized Youths on the Periphery of Vienna

“…Strolling or flânerie has been prominent within modernity theories, though the historical roots of the phenomenon have been located elsewhere (Coates 2017; Werner 2004). Benjamin, for instance, situates the emergence of the European flâneur in 1820s Paris, during the textile‐industry boom.…”