In fieldwork, the collection of qualitative empirical data is almost exclusively carried out on foot. When we study a ‘field’, it also suggests a terrain or an environment that we are meant to investigate. Yet the actual process of investigating something ‘on foot’, of walking, is seldom reflected on in any detail. The aim of this essay is to consider what this notion of investigating a field ‘on foot’ might mean for socio-legal scholarship. It focuses on the ways in which author WG Sebald’s walks in the Suffolk landscape, as portrayed in his novel The Rings of Saturn (1995), provide sensory stimuli for his meditations on themes such as the passing of time and identity. Sebald’s notion of walking is traced Claude Lévi-Strauss’ idea of bricolage as a form of ‘patchwork’ knowledge formation, but the hybridity of Sebald’s resulting ‘fieldnotes’ suggest a closer affiliation with Walter Benjamin’s notion of constellation.

在实地考察中，定性经验数据的收集几乎完全是步行进行的。当我们研究一个“领域”时，它还暗示了我们要调查的地形或环境。然而，研究“步行”或步行的实际过程很少有任何细节反映。本文的目的是考虑这种“步行”调查领域的概念对社会法律研究可能意味着什么。它侧重于作者 WG Sebald 在萨福克风景中行走的方式，正如他的小说“土星环”（1995）所描绘的那样，为他对时间流逝和身份等主题的沉思提供了感官刺激。Sebald 的步行概念源于 Claude Lévi-Strauss 的拼装概念作为“拼凑”知识形成的一种形式，但 Sebald 由此产生的“实地笔记”的混合性表明与 Walter Benjamin 的星座概念有更密切的联系。