RV camping with nature's betrayal: a consumer autoethnography in word

ABSTRACT

Following earlier ethnographic research on experiential immersion in nature that probe consumer responses to the poignant risks and tensions of the nature harmony paradox (Canniford and Shankar 2013; Scholz, Joachim, and Jay Handelman. “Living in Harmony with Nature: A Post-Human Analysis of Consumers' Relationships with Nature.” In NA – Advances in Consumer Research, edited by June Cotte and Stacy Wood, Vol. 42, 668–669. Duluth: Association for Consumer Research, 2014), my goal with this paper is to understand the emotional dynamics embedded in this paradox while camping. By introducing new methodological tools for autoethnography, I integrate 22 years of introspective participant-observation as a seasonal RV (recreational vehicle) camper while reckoning with the contradiction between nature's extraordinary experiences and its betrayal. Transformational interactions with the forest and its creatures failed to balance escalating feelings of despair when rain, mold, mildew, fungi and mice invaded my space and belied the natural world's romantic appeal. This paper adds to the literature on consumer frustration by demonstrating the benefits of an autoethnographic methodology to discover, interpret and understand deeply felt emotions pervading the nature harmony paradox while camping.

KEYWORDS:

• Autoethnographic methodology
• camping
• emotions
• failure
• nature harmony paradox
• place and space attachment

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to the editor, Dannie Kjeldgaard and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful feedback and guidance, along with the helpful comments and emotional support offered by Antonella Fabri, Shirley Lindenbaum, Maryann McCabe and Patti Sunderland of earlier versions of this paper. I also thank the organizers and reviewers of the 2018 annual CCT Conference at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU), Odense, for the opportunity to present the original version of this paper.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 This paper is an extension of a presentation, “RV ‘money-pig’ entanglements: Camping with contradictions” (Olsen 2018), delivered at the Consumer Culture Theory conference in Denmark. Another iteration was delivered in poems at the 2019 Consumer Culture Theory conference in Montreal (Olsen 2019).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Barbara Olsen

Barbara Olsen, after obtaining a PhD in cultural anthropology (1989) and a long career in advertising from 1972 to 1988, Barbara Olsen, Professor Emeritus, State University of New York at Old Westbury, taught in the School of Business from 1989 to 2018. As an engaged consumer anthropologist her research, publications and artwork continue to focus on sustainable marketing and ecological behavior in an increasingly complicated world.