ADVENTURE.... What is it, where is it? Meanings, Markets and Magic. Tristan Semple, University of...

ADVENTURE....

What is it, where is it?

Meanings, Markets and Magic.

Tristan Semple , University of the Highlands and Islands

An adventure spectrum...

Hard

and soft adventure?

Breaking the rules?

Following the rules!!!

Teaching the rules

• Adventure Tourism Industry?

• Where is the magic?

• What authorises adventure as a socially acceptable practice?

• Where are the rules of the game?

MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS

‘It is not the goal, but the way there that matters, and the harder the way the more worth while the journey’

Wilfred Thesiger (1959)

Tales of Hardship and Heroics:

Embodied Narratives and the Imagined Self.

Indian Loo

Narrative and the social sphere of adventure:

Narrative

The storied self:a life story…

Grand narratives (Lyotard, 1984; Cobley, 2001)

Postmodern self/selves as texts (Hermans, 1996)

Coherency, unity: “Life Stories” (McAdams, 2001)

Existential authenticity (Wang, 1999)

Plot & intentionality (Bruner, 1986; Ricoeur, 1984).

Autobiographical memory (Barclay, 1996; Thompson et al., 1988)

“Self defining memories” (Singer, 1995; Singer & Salovey, 1993).

Fact, fiction or the semblance of truth?“Wherever there are humans there are stories” (McAdadms 2001:114)

• Experience economy (Pine & Gilmore, 1999)

• Currency of tourism

• Performativity (Edensor, 2001)

• Imagination (Hennig, 2002)

• Archetypal roles (Woodside et al., 2008)

• Enactment, creation and recreation of stories (Moscardo, 2010).

Hypothesis

• Motivation

• Identity currency

• External / internal

• Infralanguage & motifs of narrative genre

• Self narration

• Shape perceptions and feelings

Study Method: Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)

• Analysis of adventure texts (fiction, biographical, film, literature).

• Narrative motifs, common themes.

• Ways of doing and ways of being (Foucault, 1972).

• Linguistic distinction of signifiers and signified (Saussure, 1966)

Motifs as signifiers:Ways of doing adventure

Interlinking of purpose and physicality.

Quests for Ultima Thule: wilderness, outer limits, the end’s of the earth.

Navigation: potential to become lost.

Weathering the elements and battling the power of nature.

Primal, stripping back to a focus on shelter & survival.

The homecoming, telling the tale.

Overcoming natural barriers & frontiers.

Feats of endurance.

Long, slow and arduous journeys.

Hardship, discomfort, and the eschewing of luxury.Isolation and immersion in a remote landscape of vast scale.

Interdependence within a small group.

Exploration of new horizons and distant goals.Playing with fate/chance, calculated risks.

Signified values & feelings: Ways of being adventurous

Heroism, prowess, social status and elitism.

Competence, resolve, ingenuity.

Patience, will power, determination. A metaphor of life’s journey and the potential for metamorphosis.

Stoic and ascetic values

Reflective solitude, the sublime, losing and finding oneself, spiritual experiences.

Authenticity and selfhood, ideology of the noble savage, an act of remonstration against the materialistic excess of modernity.

Hope, opportunity, the pursuit and attainment of individualistic, singular goals, internal and external discoveries.

Confidence to face the unknown, self efficacy, courage and bravery.

Dis-alienation and regaining direct control of the outputs of labour, thus a confirmation of the selfFreedom, escape, the exotic. Also, the untouched and rarely trodden ground holds symbolic value and emboddies a sacred quality.Representation of self determinism, free will, independence, ability to steer ones future.Symbolic  value  of  the  survivor,  decoration  of valour.Communitas,  belonging,  commradship,  loyalty, escape from anomic society.Self  actualisation,  victory,  fame,  honour, prestige,  resolution  of  internal  and  external conflict.Salvation, re-evaluation of life, an existential confrontation with mortality. The symbolic grail, the physical representation of self transcendence. 

Poetry & Pathos

Authenticity (Golomb, 1995)

‘Sublime and heroic patterns of

authentic life’

Extreme leisure (Laviolette, 2011)

‘wanderlustrous landscapes and the need in society for heroes to venture into the non-hallowed territories; the “wild”, untamed, unexplored areas at the edges, margins and peripheries of the known world’

Imagined Self

Model of the Narrative Lenses Concept

Experience

Life Story

Life Chapters

Nuclear Episodes

Gravitas of the future / unknown

Enacting Motifs

Self Narration

EXTERNAL DIMENSION 

(Physical/Social) 

INTERNAL DIMENSION 

(Emotions/Sensations) 

Narrative L

ens:

Narrative L

ens:

Memory

So what? Applications...

• To augment the raft of literature exploring risk, thrill and sensation as motivational factors.

• To evolve a framework for further empirical analysis of the role of narrative and motifs in the performance of tourism.

• Potential marketing applications• Development of ‘experiences’ (Pine & Gilmore,

1999) for marginal and untapped markets (Weber, 2001)

• To address the need for a more subjective understanding of adventure (Weber, 2001).

Slow adventure in the marketplace… room for growth and articulation.

Explicit usage at the grass roots level limited: Scandinavian and Canadian. Implicit: wide range of touristic experiences which focus on:

• Environmental & cultural interaction

• Travel, exploration, discovery

• Getting away from it all

• Time and space for wandering and reflection

• Slow, natural pace

Conclusions…

• We do not subscribe to the deterministic view that tourists are passive subjects of dominant discourses, but they may react and engage with them in a creative process of self narration

• That the imaginative dimension is problematic but not beyond empirical reach

• That many more signifiers than risk are extant in the narrative repositories and many more signified values than those of bravery

• That slow adventure narratives provide a framework for both marketing purposes and research