Climbers' Embodied Quests for 'Original Adventure'
“You can never cross the same river twice”: Climbers’ embodied quests for ‘original adventure’ in southern Thailand. Abstract This article presents ethnographic research into individual narratives of adventure in a small, undeveloped bay called Ton Sai in Southern Thailand’s Krabi Province. Ton Sai is extremely popular with Western rock climbers, and increasingly with other adventure-seekers and back-packers questing for ‘authentic’ Thailand, yet is subject to almost no representation in the commercial sense. It is an example of a destination that is not on the corporate ‘radar’, yet, as will be seen, is famed, desired and produced by ‘niche’ tourists seeking very specifically-valued tropical adventures. The research aims to interrogate how such a destination becomes, and remains, valued as adventurous by climbers, and therefore shed some light on individual, subjective production of adventure in specific Developing World contexts. Drawing on original interview and other ethnographic data collected during winter 2012/13, the article argues that even when third-party commercial mediators are absent, the powers of quest for authenticity and adventure are powerful enough to turn the wheels of mediation themselves. In the ‘elite circles’ in which this group manoeuvres, notions of ideal adventure space run deep and are reproduced discursively and through embodied performances in an exoticised environment that is valued for its ‘primitive timelessness’. The implications of this for locals are explored. Key Words: Adventure; subjectivity; climbing tourism; distinction; the ‘primitive’. Introduction The cultural and commercial production of idealised places and their human inhabitants in tourism promotional literature is being well-explored. Visual representations of tourist destinations such as brochures, in-flight magazines, posters, websites, television programmes and postcards can reveal how places are viewed as objects of tourism (Jenkins, 1999 and 2003; Groves and Timothy, 2001; Edwards, 1996; Dann, 1996, Jaworski and Pritchard, 2005).
[Show full text]