The rhythms of walking and doing sociology

This walk takes places at what is known locally as ‘The Street’, a shingle spit in Whitstable, a small town on the north Kent coast where the Thames Estuary meets the North Sea. The Street emerges from the water at low tide and stretches up to half a mile into the distance. I regularly walk it, fascinated by its there and not-there properties as it surfaces and disappears with the rhythms of the tides, making it possible to walk on apparently solid (if sometimes waterlogged) ground which several hours earlier was submerged and will soon be so again. In this essay, I explore walking and a sociological imagination as rhythmic processes which reveal and conceal the social and material. I walk on and work with The Street to consider surface and depth, hidden undercurrents and stumbling blocks that permeate social relations.