Graduation Date

Summer 2020

Document Type

Thesis

Program

Master of Arts degree with a major in Sociology

Committee Chair Name

Dr. Jennifer Eichstedt

Committee Chair Affiliation

HSU Faculty or Staff

Second Committee Member Name

Dr. Elizabeth Rienzi

Second Committee Member Affiliation

HSU Faculty or Staff

Keywords

White Wilderness, Outdoor recreation, Hip-Hop, Exclusion, Whiteness, Masculinity, Anthrophony, Social norms

Subject Categories

Sociology

Abstract

The expectations of normative behavior in outdoor recreation are often taken for granted and naturalized within dominant cultural narratives about human/nature interactions. In particular, expectations of silence and an absence of evidence of humans and human sounds (anthrophony), are grounded within an understanding of nature and a wilderness/urban paradigm framed by whiteness. Hip-Hop provides an interesting point of analysis for thinking about the binary opposition of wilderness and urbanness. The intersection of Hip-Hop and wilderness is also the starting point for my research. This research aims to speak to just a few ways that white and masculine social norms in outdoor recreation settings operate as technologies of exclusion. Semi-structured in-depth interviews with 14 outdoor recreators, educators, and professionals, illuminated five technologies of exclusion within outdoor practice: 1) the social, cultural, and economic capital barriers to getting started, 2) the obscure standardization and operationalization of Euro-centric definitions of nature, wilderness, outdoor recreation, and front country and back country, 3) the role of competency and ecological ethics in navigating risk and trustworthiness, 4) the practice of policing bodies and practices that are seen as threatening to outdoor spaces, and 5) the politics of noise, silence, and anthrophony.

Citation Style

ASA

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