TY - JOUR
T1 - Using Hike-Along Ethnographies to Explore Women's Leisure Experiences of Munro Bagging
AU - Brown, David M
AU - Wilson, Sharon
AU - Mordue, Tom
PY - 2020/9
Y1 - 2020/9
N2 - This methodological study analyses the merits of adopting an ambulatory ‘hike-along’ approach to explore the mobile experiences of women during serious leisure pursuits such as Munro-bagging – climbing Scotland’s 3,000 feet high mountains. By walking with participants as they ascended their chosen routes, rather than relying on sedentary, post-hoc interviews, we were able to observe the transient, shifting natures of their pastime, the embodied relationships between self and landscape, previously overlooked moments of ‘in-between-ness’, liminalities between mobility and immobility, and the ways in which women live their experiences into being, intertwining their self-concepts with emerging understandings of their environment. The ‘nowness’ of our methodology captured the inseparability of actor, (inter)action, self, movement, and temporospatial and sociocultural contexts. Moreover, the inherent mobility of our approach brought a congruence with the subject matter, participants, settings and phenomena of study, which helped to separate women’s adventure identities from the androcentricity permeating the canonical literature on walking. We therefore recommend broader adoption of ‘hike-alongs’ within similar ethnographic studies of serious leisure.
AB - This methodological study analyses the merits of adopting an ambulatory ‘hike-along’ approach to explore the mobile experiences of women during serious leisure pursuits such as Munro-bagging – climbing Scotland’s 3,000 feet high mountains. By walking with participants as they ascended their chosen routes, rather than relying on sedentary, post-hoc interviews, we were able to observe the transient, shifting natures of their pastime, the embodied relationships between self and landscape, previously overlooked moments of ‘in-between-ness’, liminalities between mobility and immobility, and the ways in which women live their experiences into being, intertwining their self-concepts with emerging understandings of their environment. The ‘nowness’ of our methodology captured the inseparability of actor, (inter)action, self, movement, and temporospatial and sociocultural contexts. Moreover, the inherent mobility of our approach brought a congruence with the subject matter, participants, settings and phenomena of study, which helped to separate women’s adventure identities from the androcentricity permeating the canonical literature on walking. We therefore recommend broader adoption of ‘hike-alongs’ within similar ethnographic studies of serious leisure.
KW - Ethnography
KW - Munro bagging
KW - mobilities
KW - space and place
KW - walking interviews
KW - women’s leisure
KW - women's leisure
KW - Geography, Planning and Development
KW - Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85090968303&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/02614367.2020.1800801
DO - 10.1080/02614367.2020.1800801
M3 - Article
SN - 0261-4367
VL - 39
SP - 736
EP - 750
JO - Leisure Studies
JF - Leisure Studies
IS - 5
ER -