Other voices in the adventure expedition assemblage

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 the natural world. Typically exploratory in character and risky in nature, the expedition phenomenon has been positioned in the literature as a particularly masculinized space, with a discourse built around the physicality and toughness that is required to succeed in the field. This paper explores women’s perspectives on such a setting. It sheds light on how a small group of experienced sea kayakers prepared for and experienced the outdoor world of expedition living in terms of their expeditional readiness, ability to animate the setting, and their willingness to immerse in the natural world. It considers how insights from such deeply immersive experiences in the other-than-human world can be translated in more everyday terms for those less accustomed to outdoor leisure and recreation.

KEYWORDS:

• Expedition
• assemblage
• adventure
• sea kayaking
• embodiment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Suzanne Kennedy

Suzanne Kennedy is a lecturer at the School of Business at Letterkenny Institute of Technology in Ireland. She holds an MBA from Ulster University and a PhD from the University of Limerick. Her research interests include posthumanist approaches in outdoor leisure research, the adventurer-researcherapos;s field experiences, adventure expeditions as social spaces, and the commodification of adventure experiences.

Ann MacPhail

Ann MacPhail is Assistant Dean Education and Health Sciences in the Faculty of Education and Health Sciences, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland. Her teaching and research interests focus on teacher education, curriculum and assessment, self-study and ethnography.

Peter Varley

Peter Varley is Professor of Tourism at the department of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Strategy at Northumbria University where he leads the Tourism and Events subject group. His sociologically-informed research centres upon investigations into tourist experiences, negotiated and accomplished via interaction with places and spaces, gastronomy, travel and outdoor leisure. Urban-rural contrasts are used to explore contemporary tensions such as slow/fast life, leisure/work practices and place-based acts of post-structural consumer discourse and resistance.