부산대학교 도서관

How does a blind person walk and cross the streets? This the the main question –only simple at first glance–that the present ethnographic study at the crossroads of STS and sensory anthropology wishes to unravel. In the present work, paying attention to the bodily, social, material and technical complexities of such a question, I describe the experiences of people with visual diversity to move around in the city of Barcleona. Through a singular ethnographic device, acting first as a volunteer-assistant and later on as an activist member of different collectives, my research focuses on three main elements: (a) the sensory practices (such as ecolocation or pavement reading); (b) the equipments (such as the canes, traffic lights audio remote activation gadgets or guide-dogs); and (c) the mobilisations (such as the explorations to detect newly inaccessible spaces or the articulation of the Streets for all platform). In contrast with the ways in which in the realities and practices of pedestrians and flâneurs have been analyzed in the social sciences, this study wishes to highlight the ‘techno-sensory assemblages’ habilitating these particular blind displacements. Moreover, and using the notion of ‘documentation interfaces’ I show the singular ways in which these blind displacements could help us address the politicisation of urban spaces as matters of technical democracy.