“Walking is important in today’s world, remembering that we are an animal on carnal ground,” says Jean Viard

A race of more than 42 kilometers which ends in front of Buckingham Palace, the London marathon takes place today, two weeks after the Paris marathon. Walking, running, hiking, a passion for the French.

Less spectacular than marathons, many French people go hiking, over more or less long distances. A social question deciphered by sociologist Jean Viard.

franceinfo: Is leaving, walking, a French passion?

Jean Viard: It’s a passion, I think quite general, which is developing. And I remind you that in town, walking is also progressing enormously. More and more people are moving around town, and even in Paris, there is a debate about widening sidewalks. And we travel a lot more on foot, by bike, and of course, many more of us walk and bike than swim.

Moreover, hiking is the first sporting discipline practiced by the French…

Quite. So after that, there’s hiking and hiking. There is the short walk, on Sunday lunchtime, with the family where we walk 500 meters after the meal, for what we call a small digestive walk. There are people who walk like crazy, with sticks, and who go at full speed. It’s almost a race, so there are lots of ways. Most people walk on the GR, they visit France, they do that during their vacations or on Sundays. This is why I would be very in favor of hunting not taking place every day, because I think that we can share the territory between those who walk and those who shoot wild boars.

And it’s true that walking is fascinating, because at the same time, it’s obviously a relationship with your own body. We know that we are doing him good, that we are working lots of muscles. It’s important because there is nature around you, so we are in harmony with this nature, but it is also friendly, that is to say that most people walk in pairs, or in pairs. family. So it is also the triumph of friendship. And then, there are obviously all these people who run, but they run, so we no longer count them in our statistics, it’s something else again.

Basically, the journey through the territory, the fact of feeling, there are stones there, there are no stones, the ground is soft, the ground is hard. We basically become a little prehistoric again, if you can put it like that. So, it’s a way of being a human being, an animal on carnal ground. And I think that’s important in today’s world, to remember that we are an animal on carnal ground.

Walking also reflects an aspiration for a less hectic life, which leaves room for long time, for contemplation too?

But absolutely. So that reminds me Good use of slowness, by my friend Pierre Sansot We need slow time. We are in a society where we work quickly, digital technology puts us under stress, it sounds like something, the screen and all that. And so we need to slow down, we also need to slow down in nature. And that’s also why there are more and more people walking. In addition, there are steps that make sense, look at the people who walk the route to Santiago de Compostela.

Very frequented !

Very frequented. If you do the Camino de Santiago, even without really having a religious connection, you know that it is a symbolic place in the history of Christianity. You know that there were millions of people before you who went to Santiago de Compostela. So, it requires a certain reflection on life, on existence, on the stories we tell ourselves to live and of course, on the landscape. And I think it all fits into the same story. Perhaps it is a secular relationship with nature and the territory, but this secular relationship is charged with the memory of religion.