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Habits of movement

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People waiting at a Polish bus terminal

Groups of tourists in Curaçao

Habits of movement reveal different grammars and norms. In an Old Town groups above family size tend to be tourists; the groups are larger and more uniform in age than in the settings of everyday life. Local people move with more determination on courses set by pre-decided goals: going to the store, catching a tram, visiting a neighbor, attending mass, dealing with a bureaucrat. Tourists wander more, attracted this way and that by what catches their eye. Tourists look directly at what everyday people pass by distractedly. The tourists foreground the details that everyday inhabitation leaves as background. Everyday people more easily set up temporary places for conversations and interactions, and those interactions take longer because there are ongoing relations to be reaffirmed. Tourists don't acknowledge one another unless they get in each other's way, so the everyday people and the tourists have different gestural and body languages for dealing with oncoming groups on the street.