High (on) Technology: Producing Tourist Identities through Technologized Adventure

Abstract

This study explores how adventure mountain tourists and their local hosts relate to, benefit from, and are influenced by, technology. It examines the impact of technology on the everyday lives of climbers, hikers, and service providers, and considers the capacities of technology to facilitate social behavior, interactions, and relationships. A narrative analysis of a Web log (blog) of an expedition to Mount Everest provides an understanding of the roles of technology in the construction of adventure mountaineer identities. The study positions mountaineering as a consumption experience used by participants to create and manifest social identities. As such, it integrates and extends theory from consumer culture and tourism, in order to trace the impact of technology on tourist identities, social outcomes, and social behavior. The study reveals the system-wide technologized lens through which Western tourists view the world and the ways in which technology simultaneously facilitates and inhibits identity construction. It points to the heterogeneous and paradoxical influences of technology: whereas technology breeds new tourist identities (hikers, climbers, and mountaineers), it simultaneously strengthens pre-existing identities (Westerners, professionals). The analysis also demonstrates how technology supports the enactment of multiple identities wherein actors function in multiple roles and contexts. Implications regarding the interconnectedness among tourists and hosts as technology users are highlighted.

Keywords:

• Technology
• Adventure Tourism
• Consumer Identity
• Everest
• Weblog

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the financial support of the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University as well as the time given by expedition participants to review multiple versions of this paper, and the participants of the marketing seminar series at the Schulich School of Business, York University.

Notes

[1] See on diaries – Poria (2006), postcards – Shaffer (2004) and stories – Smith & Weed (2007) and Woodside et al. (2004).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ida E. Berger

Ida E. Berger is in the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University, 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5B 2K3. Email: [email protected]

Itay Greenspan

Itay Greenspan is in the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania, 3815 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA. Email: [email protected]