Tracking pow(d)er : outdoor sport, environmental (re)creation, and the politics of nature

This dissertation explores environmental constructions and representations in ski media, ski resorts, and a sustainability initiative at rowing clubs. I investigate the intersections of power, nature, and capitalism in outdoor sport and recreation, attending especially to environmental communication across sport media, sporting venues, and sport organizations. Study One is a critical discourse analysis of Warren Miller ski films. Findings suggest that environmental discourses in these films reflect Promethean views of nature as something that can/should be dominated by humans for outdoor recreation. Ideologies of Western exceptionalism, inseparable from settler colonial narratives, were also prominent. Notably, there was an almost complete absence of messaging related to the climate crisis or environmental issues. Study Two examines discourses in environmental communications on Whistler Blackcomb ski resort in Whistler, British Columbia and assesses how they reinforce and/or challenge dominant environmental narratives. Findings suggest that environmental messaging on Whistler Blackcomb was consistently underpinned by assumptions about how to ‘solve’ environmental problems with ecological modernist solutions, and that this messaging reflects Promethean discourse with assumptions about the ‘right’ of humans to dominate and manipulate nature. These communications do little to disrupt power dynamics of human-ecological relations and instead reproduce anthropocentric views of nature as something that can and should be manipulated for outdoor recreation. Study Three is a community-based participatory research effort that explores responses of users and relevant stakeholders to a sport-related, ecological modernist decarbonization effort – implementation of electric outboard motors at rowing clubs in British Columbia. Interviews with 11 coaches, managers, and decision-makers at both clubs using, and clubs not using, these motors indicate that greater structural, financial, infrastructure, and educational supports are needed to facilitate adoption of this technology. Situating these studies in Political Ecology, critiques of capitalism, and New Materialist approaches, findings illustrate broadly the ways that human domination over nature has become entrenched and normalized in outdoor recreation. In understanding how anthropocentric narratives have been produced and reproduced in outdoor recreation, this dissertation represents a way to challenge dominant, unequal power relations between humans and non-humans, and highlight possibilities for a more ecologically friendly future.