Other Voices - Matter: Women in the Adventure Expedition Space
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Other Voices - Matter: Women in the Adventure Expedition Space Suzanne Kennedy BA; MBA Submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy February 2020 Declaration I declare that this thesis is entirely my own work and that it has not been previously submitted to any other University or Higher Education Institute. Where use has been made of the work of others, it has been fully acknowledged and referenced. The content of chapter 6 has been rewritten as an academic paper and is published in the Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning (2019) _______________ Suzanne Kennedy 20.02.2020 i Abstract Necessitating both temporal and spatial separateness from everydayness, the outdoor expedition setting offers adventurers a uniquely discrete social context and simplified way of living in, and with the natural world. Typically exploratory in character and sometimes risky in nature, the expedition phenomenon has been positioned in the literature as a particularly male defined space, with a discourse built around the physicality, toughness and bravery that is required to succeed in the field. This study explores the under-represented perspectives of women in such settings. Using a new materialist posthumanist lens, it brings to light four expedition perspectives; the embodied sea kayaker, the adventurer-researcher, independent adventurers, and novice participants. The findings suggest that in acknowledging the vibrant intra-active capacities of the other-than-human world in shaping the women’s expedition experiences, a more fluid sense of self is possible that eschews and challenges the adventure space as a male domain, and the rigidities of humanocentric thinking. ii Acknowledgements My heartfelt thanks to Professor Ann MacPhail for your unfaltering support, guidance, thoughtfulness and friendship throughout my PhD journey. Thank you for encouraging me to challenge accepted wisdom, and to look for the extraordinary in the ordinary. I can’t stop doing that now Ann. Sincere gratitude to Professor Peter Varley for the adventure with adventure. Your acumen and insights have always inspired me to dig deeper, and I will continue to do so. Many thanks Pete for the long stimulating conversations. I wish to sincerely thank Dr. Peter Allison and Dr. Aoife Neary for the candour and freshness with which they examined the thesis. Many thanks to my employers at the School of Business in Letterkenny Institute of Technology for your generous support in terms of funding and time. Many thanks to all of my wonderful fellow adventurers in Croatia and Menorca for sharing your stories with me. May you continue to have many more wild journeys in beautiful places. Thank you Jackie for quiet and inspiring days in Teach Purteen, Achill Island, and Rory and Paula for the silence, space and sunshine of San Cayetano. I am so grateful. Thank you Ní Seach for such happy miles of ocean time together, and for always being there for me. To Altan and Zak, my young, bright and extraordinary sea-water people, thank you for coming on this long journey with me. And finally, my very deepest thanks go to you Humphrey, my true mentor and partner in our wind-blown and sun-warmed lives together. iii Dedication To Humphrey, Altan and Zak, my most loving, quirky and adventurous family. And in memory of my beloved parents, Anna & Jim, whose quiet influences set me on this road a long time ago. iv Table of Contents Declaration ....................................................................................................................... i Abstract ........................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................ iii Dedication ....................................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents ............................................................................................................ v Table of Figures .............................................................................................................. x Tables ............................................................................................................................... x Research Activity ........................................................................................................... xi Prelude ............................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1: Setting the Context ..................................................................................... 4 1.1 Background to the investigation ............................................................... 5 1.1.1 Lifestyle sports .......................................................................................... 6 1.2 Significance, purpose and research goals of the research ....................... 8 1.2.1 Philosophical underpinnings ................................................................... 12 1.2.2 Theoretical underpinnings ...................................................................... 13 1.3 Organisation of the study ....................................................................... 15 Chapter 2: Review of Literature ................................................................................ 18 2.1 Aim of the chapter .................................................................................. 19 2.2 The theorising of adventure: Part 1 ........................................................ 20 2.2.1 The nature of adventure ......................................................................... 20 2.2.2. The framing of adventure ....................................................................... 26 2.2.3 The commodification of adventure ........................................................ 35 2.2.4 The democratisation of adventure ......................................................... 44 2.3 The theorising of adventure: Part 2 ........................................................ 59 2.3.1 The expedition phenomenon ................................................................. 59 2.4 Focusing the current study ..................................................................... 75 2.5 Chapter summary ................................................................................... 76 v Chapter 3: Theoretical Frameworks .......................................................................... 78 3.1 Introduction ............................................................................................ 79 3.2 New materialism ..................................................................................... 80 3.3 Communitas ............................................................................................ 86 3.4 Bourdieu’s theory of Practice ................................................................. 92 3.4.1 Capital ..................................................................................................... 93 3.4.2 Field ......................................................................................................... 98 3.4.3 Habitus .................................................................................................... 99 3.4.4 A critical look at Bourdieu ..................................................................... 101 3.4.5 Capital, field and habitus in an adventure expedition context ............. 102 3.5 The lifeworld and existential authenticity ............................................ 103 3.5.1 Existential authenticity ......................................................................... 105 3.6 Conclusion ............................................................................................. 109 Chapter 4: Research Design ...................................................................................... 111 4.1 Introduction .......................................................................................... 112 4.2 Philosophical framework and research design ..................................... 112 4.2.1 Positivist and postpositivist paradigms ................................................. 113 4.2.2 Postmodernism, poststructuralism and posthumanism ...................... 115 4.3 Research design .................................................................................... 124 4.4 Ethnography .......................................................................................... 126 4.5 Autoethnography .................................................................................. 133 4.5.1 Ethnography and autoethnography as methodologies in this study.... 136 4.6 Data collection and analysis .................................................................. 137 4.6.1 Research aim and research questions .................................................. 138 4.6.2 Ethics ..................................................................................................... 138 4.6.3 Fieldwork and data collection ............................................................... 139 4.6.4 Sample .................................................................................................. 140 4.7 Data analysis methods .......................................................................... 142 4.7.1 Qualitative analysis data software ........................................................ 144 4.7.2 Analytic strategy