The power of nature (sports)? From anthropocentrism to ecocentrism

ABSTRACT

Nature sports include pursuits such as paragliding, white-water kayaking, free diving, mountaineering, and surfing. Participants in nature sports interact with geographical features (e.g. mountains, rivers, oceans, snow fields, ice sheets, caves, rock faces) as well as the dynamic forces that produce them (e.g. gravity, waves, thermal currents, flowing water, wind, rain, sun). In this article, I engage a representational approach to analyze how participants in nature sports interact with nature. Anthropocentric representations privilege participants’ interests, wants, desires, and ends; they typically refer to claims of conquest/achievement in nature, or praise nature for its therapeutic qualities. In contradistinction, ecocentric representations recognize humankind as one entity in an interdependent world that comprises all living organisms and the geological processes and geomorphological features that sustain them. Ecocentric representations of nature sports highlight networks of participants and landforms that help preserve a balance between people and the environment. Yet, notwithstanding the allure of ecocentric representations, especially in the wake of evidence that human-induced greenhouse gases are predisposing environmental calamities, there is a substantial gap between the ontological concepts and categories of ecocentrism and lived sporting experiences and practices in nature.

KEYWORDS:

• Nature
• nature sports
• anthropocentrism
• ecocentrism
• new materialism
• Indigenous ontologies

Acknowledgments

Sincere thanks to Jon Heshka, Jerry Isaak and Kevin Krein for directing me to important literature, and to Kevin Krein for his constructive comments on an earlier draft.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. Krein (2015) proposes that competition is not an essential component of nature sports and adds that an absence of competition does not reduce their intensity or drama. Nature sports, he comments, produce their own challenges and thrills as well as their own forms of unpredictability, tension, suspense, and excitement. Krein (2015, 278) identifies a continuum of competition in nature sports: ‘the greater role formal competition plays in a nature sport, the less of a nature sport it is’. See also Krein (2019) and Krein et al. (2023). On the other hand, Storry (2003) argues that competition is inherent in nature sports.

2. ‘[A] mountain live[s] in mortal fear of its deer. [W]hile a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as many decades. So also with cows. The cowman who cleans his range of wolves does not realize that he is taking over the wolf’s job of trimming the herd to fit the range. He has not learned to think like a mountain. Hence we have dustbowls, and rivers washing the future into the sea’ (Leopold 1949, 132).

3. An actant refers to any entity that can be identified as a source of action (Latour 2005).

4. Williams (2002) considered nature ‘perhaps the most complex word in the [English] language’. He recognized three primary meanings; here I broadly follow his third conceptualization of nature as ‘the material world itself’ excluding humans (184).

5. Hansen’s (2013) analysis of shifting interpretations of Percy Shelley’s ‘Mont Blanc, Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni’ arguably underscores the representational approach.

6. The degree of ‘fatal risk-taking’ among German climbers in the late nineteenth century, writes Anderson (2020, 177), places mountaineering in ‘the first of a raft of “extreme” sports’. Warshaw (2004, 59) notes that ‘there is no demarcation line between big-wave surfing and regular surfing’; he proposes that the former begins with waves ‘about 15 or 18 feet’.

7. Anderson (2020) identifies competing representations of risk in contemporary society. While many physical subcultures celebrate high risk, the public agenda of the Western middle-class seeks to reduce risk of injury and has been responsible for systems of risk assessment, categorization and rationalization aimed at nullifying dangerous natural environments. Eigenschenk and McClure (2019, 234) remind us of a third representation: ‘inactivity’ poses ‘a much greater risk for premature deaths and a shorter life-expectancy’ than outdoor sports.

8. For a general critique of competition and its negative impact on social relationships, see Kohn (1986).

9. Benefits under the heading mental health and well-being included improved self-esteem, self-efficacy, social effectiveness, self-confidence, and concepts of self. Investigating the psychological motivations of ‘extreme alpinists’, Duits (2020) emphasizes their overall journeys of ‘departure, trial and challenge, and return’ (44) which he proposes can leave ‘something of broader value … even if that is in fact only experiences, memories, inspiration and understanding’ (42). In their search for waves, sometimes called ‘surfaris’, surfers undertake comparable journeys. Furthermore, Duits (2020, 42–43) argues, the ‘challenges, adversity, problems and hardships’ that participants overcome on their journeys ‘affirm and validate their capacity for … self-determination and self-control, and thus provide them with a tangible sense of their transformation into a fully human agent’.

10. ‘Positive effects on environmental awareness, attitudes, and behavior’ included ‘an increased connectedness to nature, awareness, sensitivity, and empathy as well as positive effects on environmentally responsible behavior and stewardship’ (Eigenschenk et al. 2019, 10). Yet, Eigenschenk et al. (2019, 10) found little evidence of ‘a direct causality of better environmental behavior’ and, consistent with representations of environmental degradation reported above, they noted ‘some potential negative impacts of damage to the environment or disturbance of wildlife in sensitive natural areas, due to the locations for many sport activities’.

11. Newman, Thorpe and Andrews (2020, 12) refer to embodiment as ‘a field defined by “perceptual experience and the mode of presence and engagement in the world”’.

12. According to Davidson (2022, 96), British colonizers represented Māori relationships with maunga as ‘quaint or romantic myths and legends’. He cites the naturalist Ernst Dieffenbach who recorded that his Māori guides only accompanied him and his partner James Heberley on their ascent of Taranaki Maunga, the second highest mountain on Te Ika-a-Māui (North Island), in 1839, to ‘the snowline’. They refused to go further, Dieffenbach wrote, due to their ‘lively imaginations’ and ‘gross superstition’ (Davidson 2022, 99).

13. The first arrivals in Aotearoa, and their successors, before they became identifiably Māori, had to learn about their new environment of which they knew little. Their narrow hunting practices had severe consequences on the environment, including loss of species, and which were compounded by the introduction of the kuri (Polynesian dog) and kiore (Polynesian rat) (West 2017, 59–60 and 65).