Constructing the Nature Experience: A Semiotic Examination of Signs on the Trail

Lekies, Kristi S.; Whitworth, Bernadette

doi:10.1007/s12108-011-9129-y

Cited by 16 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…This is achieved primarily through signs with aesthetic values, where pictures and illustrations are used to attract visitors. These kinds of installation govern their progress through the parks and serve as mechanisms of control (Lekies and Whitworth 2011), as they make certain parts of the parks visible and others invisible. Thus, these installations work actively to steer tourists' experiences in specific directions by telling them where to go and what to experience.…”

Section: Experiencing Nature Through Exploring Representationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This naturalises nature into an object to be observed, and tourists into visitors who want to interact with nature as a 'given' landscape on the premises of self-evident and two-dimensional interactions. In this way, tourists lose the opportunity to interact with their surroundings in a bodily, independent, and spontaneous way (Bednar 2012;Lekies and Whitworth 2011;Lund 2013;Rutherford 2011;Senda-Cook 2013).…”

Section: Experiencing Knowledge Through Enlightening Representationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Descendants of the modernist museum: tracing the musealisation of Swedish national parks

Fälton¹

2021

Visual Studies

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Descendants of the modernist museum: tracing the musealisation of Swedish national parks EMELIE FÄ LTON Swedish national parks face a shift, transforming them from spaces where tourism is a sub-interest into spaces where tourism is a primary focus. Through the establishment of new instructive installations, the intention is to make these parks Europe's most popular nature-based tourism destinations. Such installations construct the non-human world, often depicted as nature, and contribute to shaping human understandings of nature. In this article, I seek to trace, make visible, and problematize how knowledge of nature is put to work and how power operates through these installations, but also how the non-human world is produced visually, and how all of this produces specific ways of seeing it. This is enabled by a discourse analysis with visual ethnographic influences, in which I focus on representations with an emphasis on design, content, and posed rationality. The analysis is designed in a reflexiveexplorative manner, where the empirical context leads the analytical direction while the research process and its steps are presented systematically. Through this analysis, I argue that the national parks are transformed into museological organisations similar to the modernist museum, centred around educating visitors by displaying 'real nature,' and that this has implications for how the non-human world is understood. The most prominent of these is that a distance is promoted between the tourists and the non-human world.Emelie Fälton is a Doctoral Candidate at the Unit of Environmental Change, Linköping University. Her research inhabits the intersections among visual culture, environmental humanities, critical tourism studies, cultural geography, and media studies, where problematisations of how the non-human world comes into being through human ways of making sense of it constitute the core.

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Section: Experiencing Nature Through Exploring Representationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Experiencing Knowledge Through Enlightening Representationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Descendants of the modernist museum: tracing the musealisation of Swedish national parks

Fälton¹

2021

Visual Studies

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“…Although having different experiences are part of gains through outdoor activities [60], but it could also display an adverse effect on the user's perspective toward a recreation site. For a hiker, discomfort due to unwanted situations is certainly a taboo, as emotionally-disturbed hikers could end up with an unsatisfactory experience, which is not a good response for a user-centered recreation site [61].…”

Section: Promotion Of Nature Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing Safety and Suitability of Old Trails for Hiking Using Ground and Drone Surveys

Lee

Chen

et al. 2020

IJGI

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Hiking is a popular recreational activity and to cater to public demand, it is apt to increase the number of hiking trails. Various methodologies have been proposed to evaluate the suitability of forest trails to be constructed as hiking trails, but they can be costly and require relevant knowledge in analyzing digital information through a high-throughput dataset. Therefore, there is a need to come up with a simple method to obtain first-hand information on the trail condition, particularly considering the aspects of safety and suitability to hikers, using both on-ground and aerial observations. In this study, we introduce a new assessment approach to analyze and select old forest trails to be reconstructed as new hiking trails. This is useful for park managers who prioritize safety, comfort, and aesthetic features of the recreation site for their visitors. Trail condition assessment was carried out along the trail whereby a 2×2 m sampling plot was constructed at every 100 m. Aerial drone survey was conducted to produce an ortho-mosaic that revealed the percentage of exposed trail from above. Potential phytotourism products and scenic spots were identified and recorded for their locations along the trail to promote the aesthetic value of the recreation site. A strength distribution plot was prepared based on the trail condition, canopy coverage, and aesthetic features along the trail that were categorized using three altitude ranges (n ≤ 150 m, 150 < n < 250 m, n ≥ 250 m a.s.l.). This is to assess the trade-offs in safety, comfort, and aesthetic features along the trail. The development of this methodology offers a direct and cost-effective, yet informative approach to evaluate the quality of a potential hiking trail, thus could effectively aid in the promotion of nature-based tourism.

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“…Children encouraged adults to move with them in these ways, and this way helped to break through expectations of how an adult is typically expected to take part in a nature walk or hike. Through various ways (i.e., signage, trail maintenance) people's interaction and movement through nature is regulated by park managers, creating affordances, guiding people towards certain paths, and encouraging or discouraging certain behavior (Lekies & Whitworth, 2011). Hannam and Witte (2018) highlight how walking often has physical, cultural, or political restrictions, with social expectations on how walking, or hiking, should be performed.…”

Section: Stop 1: Rock and Berry Islandmentioning

confidence: 99%

Children as tour guides

Milne

Rantala

Grimwood

2019

matk

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Despite recent calls to include children in tourism research, the trend of overlooking children's perspectives and experiences remains pervasive (Gram, O'Donohoe, Schänzel, Marchant, & Kastarinen, 2019; Poria & Timothy, 2014). This is a lost opportunity, especially in today's anthropocentric context, as children can offer insightful perspectives on human-nature relationships, and possible lessons for cultivating responsible human connections to, and coexistence with, non-human nature (Merewether, 2019). This research note emphasizes the importance of 'knowing with' children. Based on preliminary findings from a study that looked at nature-based proximity tourism and family nature walk experiences using sensory ethnographic methodologies, we show the value of considering children as tour guides. More specifically, we adopt a relational approach to engaging children's experiences in the world to illuminate under-explored and under-appreciated modes of knowing with non-human nature. Furthermore, we encourage future research that considers children not as a 'state of becoming' or as 'the future', but as influential actors within the present of tourism research (Carpenter, 2015; Leonard, 2019).

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Constructing the Nature Experience: A Semiotic Examination of Signs on the Trail

Cited by 16 publications

References 34 publications

Descendants of the modernist museum: tracing the musealisation of Swedish national parks

Descendants of the modernist museum: tracing the musealisation of Swedish national parks

Assessing Safety and Suitability of Old Trails for Hiking Using Ground and Drone Surveys

Children as tour guides

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