Route biographies: walking and writing as methods for researching border regions

Routes and borders as well as walking and writing are at the heart of this research. How is this world at once enmeshed and separate? Distant and close? Universal and particular? Fluid and fixed? We want to address these questions through the missing dialogue between routes and borders, applying walking and writing as two mutually connected experimental methods for researching border regions. In comparison to walking, writing as a method is an under-researched topic as there is a persistent belief that writing comes at the end of a scholarly enquiry, following the consecutive read-research-write logic. We want to loosen the rigidity of these prescribed steps and use writing as a full-bloodied method in its own right – an “art of knowing”, vital to broader methodological and epistemological concerns that bring walking and writing more closely together. A biographic approach to routes will allow us to reflect on the complex interplay of the temporal and spatial, the material, economic, cultural, political as well as the every-day aspects of selected routes, organised around five case studies. The proposed project takes a walk with Istrian peninsula, an under-researched area in north-eastern Adriatic, characterized by heterogeneous and “moving” images of places, people and things, forming an important part of the cultural, economic and political make-up of Europe. Istria, replete with borders and routes, serves this methodological experiment well, as it has long been defined by its position as a frontier space contested by competing empires and states (the Muslim East and Christian West, the Habsburg Empire, the Venetian Republic, the Ottoman Empire), ethnic, linguistic and national divisions between people living along the coast and in the hinterlands (that became increasingly evident in the 19th century along the Eastern Adriatic coast), as a borderland between the communist East and the capitalist West (after 1945) and other contemporary regional divisions (Mediterranean–Balkans–Alps–Central Europe). These competing traditions continue to resonate in the contemporary representations of cultural spheres in Istria, today shared by three nation states – Slovenia, Croatia and Italy. While the borders of various kinds have been critical for defining the Istria region, we propose to shift the perspective to routes as an alternative place-making device. We argue that routes – always in dialogue with borders, – critically reflect on existing notions of locality. Walking and writing seem to be tailored to research on routes, while routes, either new or well-beaten, are intertwined in various ways with walking and travelogues.

Work plan

The research will undergo 5 different phases of the work program (embedded in all five work packages), with some time overlap among the phases: 1. Orientation: identifying key literature, textbooks, tourist brochures, media material, the survey of policy documents, and initial analysis of these materials linked with the selected routes (first-level analysis); 2. Collaboration: joint reading circles and other project working meetings; 3. Fieldwork: walking/driving/writing seminars, interviews, participant observation, workshops, and focus groups collecting photo and video material; 4. Analysis: the second-level analysis based on the first-level analysis; 5. Synthesis: synthesis of the partial analysis, and production of final results.

Selected references of the results:

ROGELJA CAF, Nataša. 2024. Casting a sideways glance : walking-writing experiments with the river. In: ERNSTEN, Christian (ed.), SHEPHERD, Nick (ed.). Walking as embodied research : drift, pause, indirection, 288-305. London; New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group

ROGELJA CAF, Nataša. 2024. Seaways: a journey through Western Sea imaginaries. In: Ocean around us, echoes of the abyss: toxic legacies of oceanic ecologies, international symposium : 25. Oktober 2024, Cukrarna Gallery, Poljanski nasip, Ljubljana. Keynote lecture. 

GOMBAČ, Jure, ROGELJA CAF, Nataša. 2024. Writing and walking as methods for researching border regions : the case of Balkan migrant route through Istria. V: HAMERŠAK, Marijana (ed.), PIŠKOR, Mojca (ed.). Keywording the European irregularized migration regime : reflections from/on the peripheries : Zagreb, 11-13 April, 2024 : book of abstracts. Zagreb: Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, 2024. https://erim.ief.hr/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Keywording-ERIM-boa-1.pdf.

ROGELJA CAF, Nataša, GOMBAČ, Jure. 2024. Pisanje in hoja kot metodi raziskovanja obmejnih regij : primer balkanske migrantske poti skozi Istro. In: Sledi čezmejne mobilnosti = Tragovi prekograničnih mobilnosti : 17. Vzporednice med slovensko in hrvaško etnologijo : [= 17. Hrvatsko-slovenske etnološke paralele] : Posavski muzej Brežice, 3.-4. October 2024. [Ljubljana]: Slovensko etnološko društvo.

GOMBAČ, Jure, ROGELJA CAF, Nataša, KLUN, Lucija. 2024. Counter-archive: reflections on the (non)possibility of migrant heritage. Heriskop. https://dediscina.zrc-sazu.si/en/2024/05/counter-archive-reflections-on-the-nonpossibility-of-migrant-heritage/#page-content.

ELIXHAUSER, Sophie, BONI, Zofia, GREGORIČ BON, Nataša, KANJIR, Urška, MEYER, Alexandra, MUTTENZER, Frank, PAMPUS, Mareike, SOKOLÍČKOVA, Zdenka. 2024. Interdisciplinary, but how? Anthropological perspectives from collaborative research on climate and environmental change. Environmental science & policy 151: 1–7.

ROGELJA CAF, Nataša (author), LEDINEK LOZEJ, Špela (author), GREGORIČ BON, Nataša (editor), KOKALJ, Žiga (editor) 2023. Hodopisi : zbirka etnografskih esejev z metodološkimi premisleki o hoji in pisanju [Footnotes. Ethnographic Essays with Methodological Reflections on Walking and Writing]. Ljubljana: Založba ZRC.

ROGELJA CAF, Nataša, BOFULIN, Martina, PIPAN, Primož. 2023. Fish stories between past and future : competing and complementary heritage imaginaries in the Northeast Adriatic. Maritime studies 22(3): 1–12.

ROGELJA CAF, Nataša. 2022. Walking with the Rižana River : ethnographic experiments in the Anthropocene. Anthropological notebooks 28(3): 11–38.