“This is not a normal path that a normal, sane person would take”: An interpretative phenomenological analysis of diverse experiences in nature
Date of Award
Summer 2022
Project Type
Thesis
Program or Major
Recreation Management and Policy
Degree Name
Master of Science
First Advisor
Jayson Seaman
Second Advisor
Andrew Coppens
Third Advisor
Thomas Schram
Abstract
Nature has long been conceived as a sublime backdrop for self-discovery and a venue for American nation-building and the establishment of a national identity. This romantic conception has recently been called into question due to its implicit marginalization of persons from diverse backgrounds. As outdoor education programs, conservationists and land managers, and private corporations are called upon to increase diversity in their educational, interpretative, and marketing materials, a need to understand the many ways people constitute nature in their everyday lives has arisen. To examine the ways diverse outdoor recreationists from an array of family and community backgrounds experience nature, this research draws on the theoretical frameworks of master narratives, funds of knowledge, and funds of identity to understand if and how romantic conceptions of nature, learned through processes of cultural socialization in family and community, shape how people describe their experiences from childhood to adulthood. To do so, the present study involved semi-structured interviews with six adults from various racial, familial, geographic, and professional backgrounds using the phenomenological method of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The findings suggest that ideological and cultural barriers rooted in people’s family and community contexts shape the way participants describe experiencing nature, but that the tendency to describe having experienced nature in a “romantic” way was shared regardless of participants’ membership in a marginalized population. Despite this common foundational element, participants’ accounts also vary in the degree to which race has shaped and continues to shape their experiences, revealed in the different ways individuals employed a “path less traveled” narrative to describe their lives as outdoorspeople.
Recommended Citation
Whitney, Riley, "“This is not a normal path that a normal, sane person would take”: An interpretative phenomenological analysis of diverse experiences in nature" (2022). Master's Theses and Capstones. 1616.
https://scholars.unh.edu/thesis/1616