
The sociality of stillness 371
Karine Lan Hing Ting, Dimitri Voilmy, Monika Büscher,
and Drew Hemment
The sociality of stillness
1. Introduction
In the hustle and bustle of urban life, stillness is peculiar. A beggar crouching
on the pavement, a commuter asleep on a train, a couple sitting on a bench in
a park: they are – involuntarily, exhaustedly, happily – taking “time out”. To
practise stillness, people often set themselves apart spatially, making others
eddy around them, especially in busy city streets. Stillness is the (often un-
welcome) flipside of movement, enforced at traffic lights, in queues, at bus-
stops. Moreover, stillness has the potential ...