TY - JOUR
T1 - Contrived Making Do As Rhetorical Practice in Outdoor Recreation
AU - Senda-Cook, Samantha
N1 - Funding Information:
The author would like to recognize the David C. Williams Memorial Grant Fellowship that helped facilitate this work and the Floyd O’Neil Scholarship in Western American Studies.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Senda-Cook.
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - Descriptors such as "hideous,""the worst,""terrible,"and "thrashed"are not the words that most people want to associated with their "usual."For many outdoor recreators, though, these are things that they learn to live with. But why? Why do they continue to engage in practices that produce these results? I argue that such activities constitute what I call contrived making do and that they function as rhetorical practices that construct identities and parts of the outdoor recreation subculture in the following three ways: controlling the controllable, walking the edge, and reframing the experience. Contrived making do refers to creating or seeking out situations that necessitate getting by in a physical and/or cultural sense, implying both difficult circumstances and the creativity and wherewithal to figure out improvised solutions. Making do, in this context, depends on privilege, risk - the willingness to take normalized risks and framing risk in culturally expected ways - and voluntarily surrendering some control. This analysis adds nuance and richness to Michel de Certeau's concept of making do. Whereas de Certeau conceptualized making do as a coping mechanism for marginalized groups, my project illuminates the role that risk plays in making do by showing how a comparatively privileged group of people seek out such experiences. In doing so, this study builds on environmental communication scholarship about risk by demonstrating that mere carelessness may not be the only source of injuries in national parks.
AB - Descriptors such as "hideous,""the worst,""terrible,"and "thrashed"are not the words that most people want to associated with their "usual."For many outdoor recreators, though, these are things that they learn to live with. But why? Why do they continue to engage in practices that produce these results? I argue that such activities constitute what I call contrived making do and that they function as rhetorical practices that construct identities and parts of the outdoor recreation subculture in the following three ways: controlling the controllable, walking the edge, and reframing the experience. Contrived making do refers to creating or seeking out situations that necessitate getting by in a physical and/or cultural sense, implying both difficult circumstances and the creativity and wherewithal to figure out improvised solutions. Making do, in this context, depends on privilege, risk - the willingness to take normalized risks and framing risk in culturally expected ways - and voluntarily surrendering some control. This analysis adds nuance and richness to Michel de Certeau's concept of making do. Whereas de Certeau conceptualized making do as a coping mechanism for marginalized groups, my project illuminates the role that risk plays in making do by showing how a comparatively privileged group of people seek out such experiences. In doing so, this study builds on environmental communication scholarship about risk by demonstrating that mere carelessness may not be the only source of injuries in national parks.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85117910475&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85117910475&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3389/fcomm.2017.00015
DO - 10.3389/fcomm.2017.00015
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85117910475
VL - 2
JO - Frontiers in Communication
JF - Frontiers in Communication
SN - 2297-900X
M1 - 00015
ER -