Sensing rhythm

This chapter considers different tools researchers might use to explore mundane rhythms. Whilst rhythm is pervasive in everyday life, its intangibility makes it difficult to research. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis (2004), this chapter explores rhythm as a tool of analysis. For Lefebvre, rhythmanalysis is a fundamentally embodied research practice. The chapter discusses different examples of doing rhythmanalysis in which the body is a central device for registering rhythm. It also considers research tools beyond the body such as audio-visual techniques which might be used to show what our senses cannot directly perceive. These approaches can help to identify the different co-existing rhythms of everyday life, reveal how we inhabit time and space, and promote spatially, temporally and sensually attuned practices of research.