Student: Robin Zeller
Graduation date: May 2015
Type: Concentration (single major)
Date approved: November 2013
Summary
Adventure travel includes trekking and mountaineering and represents the modernization of mountaineering into a marketable experience for an expanding population of travelers. This concentration will investigate how these travelers have socially constructed mountains, economically and ecologically affected montane communities, and exchanged cultural elements with local populations. It is situated in montane regions because of the general appeal of these areas for adventure travelers due to their terrain features and aesthetic beauty. This topic fits well into the context of environmental studies because it strongly reflects diverse socially constructed meanings of nature. For example, the neocolonial motives that dominated Himalayan mountaineering after WWII demonstrated a conquest-based construction of mountaineering (Isserman, 2008). Furthermore, adventure travel connects to the broader issue of gender identity since the archetypal adventurer is typically a young, European, male (Bayers, 2003). This concentration also examines how increased access to remote regions and communities has enabled cultural exchange between locals and adventure travelers, furthering the process of globalization (Obadia, 2008).
The history of montane adventure travel was primarily forged in the Alps and Himalayas, but mountaineering takes place in ranges all over the world. Despite its global scope, there may be commonalities in social constructions of the experience of mountaineering and similar impacts on local cultures and environments across locations that I would like to investigate. The diversity of available locales for adventure travel today is a product of innovation and exploration throughout the history of mountaineering. Modern alpinism began in the Alps where British bourgeois travelers visited mountainous regions of the Eastern Alps and paid local peasants to guide them through alpine terrain. As technique and ideology evolved, travelers began to take on the peaks without peasant guides. The innovation of tools like crampons and ice axes lead to an increase in alpine climbers. The increased interest in mountaineering in Europe and the United States lead to the beginning of alpine clubs. Economic change followed an influx of climbers to the Alps and changed many small agricultural communities into commercial centers for climbing (Klein, 2011). As competition, boldness, and technology helped alpinists to climb harder and higher, climbing exploration expanded into the greater ranges of Asia, the Andes, and the Rockies, where there were also large effects on the local populations. The Himalayan region has been particularly developed for adventure travellers and is regarded by many as a model for adventure tourism development due to the size of its mountains and its booming tourism market (Sacareau, 2009). The increase in tourists hoping to climb these mountains has changed this region’s economic and social climate and altered the cultural traditions of the indigenous people (Miller, 2008). The local Sherpa people now depend on the tourism provided by adventure travel for income. Conversely, adventure tourists depend on the Sherpa for the ability to access high alpine areas due to their genetic ability to perform at the high altitudes of the Himalayan range (Miller, 2008). Adventure travel has impacted religious traditions in both the Himalaya and the Alps. For example, the exploration of the alps that was made possible by mountaineering helped challenge the church’s conception of earth’s history and paved the way for the idea of geologic time (Klein, 2011). Tibetan Buddhism is socially constructed in the Western world to have a nature ethic due to the perception of the Tibetan region as a Shangri-La. Some anthropologists believe that Tibetan Buddhism has developed a nature ethic to better fit into this idyllic picture, and have thus changed as a result of the influence of adventure travelers (Obadia, 2008). Although the Alps and Himalaya are essential to describing the history of alpinism, I plan to expand my research to other montane regions of the world. This concentration will examine these regions and the travelers who visit them as a whole and attempt to find trans-regional patterns underlying this topic.
References
Bayers, Peter L. 2003. Imperial Ascent : Mountaineering, Masculinity, and Empire. Boulder, Colo.: University Press of Colorado.
Isserman, Maurice, Stewart Angas Weaver, and Dee Molenaar. 2008. Fallen Giants : a History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Klein, Kerwin Lee. 2011. “A Vertical World: The Eastern Alps and Modern Mountaineering.” Journal of Historical Sociology 24 (4) (December): 519–548.
Miller, Robert. 1965. “High Altitude Mountaineering, Cash Economy, and the Sherpa.” Human Organization 24 (3) (September 1): 244–249.
Obadia, Lionel. 2008. “The Conflicting Relationships of Sherpas to Nature: Indigenous or Western Ecology?” Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature & Culture 2 (1) (March): 116–134.
Sacareau, Isabelle. 2009. “Changes in Environmental Policy and Mountain Tourism in Nepal.” Revue De Géographie alpine/Journal of Alpine Research (97-3). Le Tourisme Montagnard Crible De La Durabilité (December 10).
Additional Resources:
Kolas, Ashild. 2007. “Tourism and Tibetan Culture in Transition: A Place Called Shangrila”. Taylor & Francis, 2007.
MacCannell, Dean, Lippard, Lucy. 1999. “The Tourist” New Ed edition. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Pratt, Mary Louise. 2008. “Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation”. London; New York: Routledge.
Shepherd, Robert. 2002. “Commodification, Culture and Tourism.” Tourist Studies 2, no. 2 183–201. doi:10.1177/146879702761936653.
Questions
- Descriptive: How do adventure tourists construct how they interact with mountains? To what extent has this construction evolved from the image of the idyllic mountain conqueror created during mountaineering’s golden age?
- Explanatory: What cultural and ecological features draw montane adventure travelers to montane regions and what cultural processes have impacted their desire to travel there?
- Evaluative: What are the downfalls, benefits, and tradeoffs of cultural exchange between montane locals and adventure travelers?
- Instrumental: How can montane adventure travel be regulated to manage general development and maintain the local, cultural, and ecological character of the region?
Concentration courses
- SOAN 305 (Social Permaculture, 4 credits), spring 2013/spring 2015. This course discusses how permaculture practices can permeate our social lives. It examines how people and cultures interact with each other and with the natural world.
- IA 238 (Political Economy of Development, 4 credits), spring 2013. This course discusses major political problems facing developing countries. This course will help me examine the power relations between governments in montane regions and how their policies effect both the local population and adventure tourists.
- ENVS 499 (History of Mountaineering and Pilgrimage in Nepal, 4 credits), fall 2015. To understand how and why adventure tourism has grown in popularity in montane regions, I will have to develop my own course designed to examine the history of climbing and pilgrimage in these regions. This course will help me examine issues of neocolonialism, gender identity, and shifting religious tradition in relation to mountaineering and pilgrimage.
- RELS 243 (Buddhism: theory, culture, and practice, 4 credits), spring 2013. This course discusses the nature of Buddhism in India and Tibet. It will be useful to develop my understanding of Buddhism and spirituality in the Himalayan region. I can use the knowledge from this class to examine how increased tourism has effected a number of these beliefs, in particular the Tibetan Buddhist nature ethic. This will be helpful in my planned research topic and will also give me a situated example of the effects of adventure travel on traditional religious practice.
Arts and humanities courses
- HIST 261 (Global Environmental History, 4 credits). Pre-approved A&H course; no justification required.
- PHIL 215 (Philosophy and the Environment, 4 credits). Pre-approved A&H course; no justification required.