Leisure or Labour: An Identity Crisis for Modern Hunting?

Abstract

Modern hunting appears to be undergoing an identity crisis as a result of transitioning from labour to leisure. This transition is by no means linear or absolute. Today, hunting is framed both as a hobby for the leisure participant, and as a societal duty that delivers wildlife management, pest control for agriculture, sustainably sourced meat and euthanasia of injured wildlife. Hunting is hence doubly serious as ‘serious leisure’: it involves skill and perseverance, but it is also seen as serious in constituting societal labour. In this article, we employ netnographic research to examine how and in what contexts labour‐leisure tensions are manifested among Swedish hunters. We observe hunters struggle with the balance between leisure and labour on four levels: (1) internally, when it comes to reconciling their personal motivations for hunting; (2) between hunters, resulting in the normative differentiation between ‘urban leisure hunters’ and everyday hunters in the countryside doing ‘real’ work; (3) between different hunting practices; and (4) between wanting to enjoy the freedom afforded by the leisure label, while also inviting formalisation of hunting's role as a public service, including compensation. Our findings show the contradiction between labour and leisure is also differently managed across these levels.

The seven sins of hunting tourism

“…Cumulatively, the sins help carve out hunting tourism as a space for exemption and hedonism. Such detachment from societal norms has meant that many scholars have seen leisure and tourism as spaces for enacting freedom ( von Essen & Tickle, 2019 ) and resisting dominant conventions. In our seven sins, we find evidence that the suspension of conventional norms for propriety and hunting ethics may have the opposite effect.…”

“…We respond to the call to set standards and practices within consumptive wildlife tourism. Considering the negative image that hunting tourism can have, and the importance that societal acceptance plays for the future survival of hunting ( Ljung et al, 2012 ; von Essen & Tickle, 2019 ) these sins are advised to steer clear off as each hunter can be an unwitting ambassador for hunting. We conclude with Causey's point that we need to consider the extent to which the hunting community truly must commit to defending and protecting all forms of hunting, or whether it can start to criticize some unethical commercial elements without chastising hunting as a whole ( Causey, 1989 ).…”

“…Hunters have as well been attributed with valuing “animal population control aimed at preserving ecological integrity” ( Sneddon, Lee, Ballantyne, & Packer, 2016 , p.235) as part of the stewardship ethic. Part of wildlife management is hunters handling some of the undesirable work, such as tracking and euthanizing injured wildlife from traffic accidents, a service to both society and animal welfare according to hunters ( von Essen & Tickle, 2019 ).…”

The Emotional Dimensions of Animal Disease Management: A Political Ecology Perspective for a Time of Heightened Biosecurity

“…The increasing threat of ASF has also made requisite new practices for hunters such as rigorous inventories of boar sightings and interactions, burdensome tasks that add to the challenges of traditional hunting practices (Urner et al, 2020). Research on hunting cultures in the Netherlands and Sweden notes that the additional administrivia has spurred some hunters to feel resentment at being the "garbage collectors of society" (Dahles, 1993, p. 178), unappreciated andoverworked (von Essen andTickle, 2020). Other hunters report costly, cumbersome, physically demanding, and lonesome hunts (often at night) and injuries and scars from wild boar skirmishes (Massey et al, 2011).…”

The tourism business operator as a moral gatekeeper – the relational work of recreational hunting in Sweden

“…New forms of the rural middle classes in European countries are emerging (Heley, 2010), although the traditional division between the landowner aristocracy and hunting for subsistence among the rural working class still prevails (Mischi, 2013;von Essen, Allen, & Hansen, 2017). Broadly speaking, new demographic and class-related patterns imply that new approaches to hunting and wildlife may emerge, and previous research has pointed out that utilitarian values of hunting for food and stewardship are encountering new leisure-oriented values (von Essen & Tickle, 2020).…”