Local Memory, City Walking, and Exploring Walking Social Work Pedagogies in Fresno, California and Gothenburg, Sweden

New open access article is available by Lena Sawyer & Kris Clarke.

In this article, we introduce city walking as a social work pedagogical methodology that has relevance for engaging with critical feminist inquiry and macro practice. Through two case studies, we examine how city walking offers an alternative social work pedagogy to the often sedentary practices of teaching macro practice or structural social work. City walking opens up local histories and silences that are key to spotlighting genealogies of oppression that are significant to community practitioners. Through engaging with Black feminist theorizations, we reflect upon their potential for advancing locally based collaborative pedagogies and present two case studies (Fresno, California and Gothenburg, Sweden) through the lens of autoethnography. The article first outlines Black feminist theorizations and key concepts, as they provide the basis for the method used in the cases discussed. The article then discusses autoethnography as a method and presents two case studies of city walking as a social work pedagogical method. We find that embodied city walking practices engaged with our shared localities and histories of inequality and resilience. City walking enables an important dialogue that is necessary for more critical feminist social work pedagogies that are aligned with social emancipation.