Key Concepts and Theories

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Although I am not a Mountain Guide, I self-identify with groups who participate in

outdoor recreation. My understanding of Mountain Guides has come from first-hand

experience with them. In 2010-2011, I was taught by several Mountain Guides while

enrolled in the Mountain Adventure Skills Training Program at the College of the

Rockies in Fernie, British Columbia. During this time I learned about the ACMG program

and developed a general sense of the group identity of the Mountain Guide community

in Western Canada, as a participant in it. As such, I understand my research to be in

part an ʻinsiderʼ or ʻnativeʼ ethnography, because I am an aspiring outdoor guide myself

and have participated in some of the physical practices associated with Mountain

Guides. These practices include multi-pitch rock climbing, ice climbing, backcountry

multi-day ski touring and heli-skiing. Although I am studying Mountain Guides in a

familiar setting, I am still to some extent an outsider, as an ethnographer. However, the

ethnographic process is about embracing the tension between subjectivity and

objectivity that comes with being immersed in both the familiar and the strange so to

produce new insights (O ʼReilly 2012:98).

Professional ACMG Mountain Guides are an identifiable group precisely through

their affiliation with the association and their expert knowledge. Therefore, I believe that

I am likely to find a set of shared characteristics that may begin to define the culture of

the Mountain Guide community, in Canmore, Alberta. For example, it seems that there

may be identifiable patterns in the motivations of Mountain Guides regarding their

choice of an “alternative” lifestyle and occupation, such as the desire to ʻreconnect with

nature ʻ or the romantic notion of ʻgetting back to basicsʼ or the critique of modernity

(Ortner 1999).

In addition, I believe there will be a prevalent masculine narrative present in my

research. Mountain Guides perform physically demanding tasks that they often

associate with ʻconqueringʼ the summit or overcoming the challenges of the natural

environment. In line with masculinity is the idea of competition, as far as I know, the

ACMG training and examination program is very competitive and demanding. I expect

to find within the Mountain Guide community individuals engaged in competition for

clients. Moreover, the majority of Mountain Guides are male and this, in itself, may

contribute to the more masculine qualities associated with their line of work.

Ortner writes, “Mountaineering as an activity has been situated within a number

of overlapping and intertwining games--the countermodernity game; the romantic,

testing-the-existential-limits, game; the masculinity game” (1999:150). These ʻgamesʼ

will most likely be encountered in my research with Mountain Guides. One concept that

I believe might be key to organizing my data will include the idea of ʻserious gamesʼ.

Ortner introduces the concept of “serious games” which indicates that people live life

with purpose rather than by just enacting cultural scripts or material necessity, and that

there is a constant presence of power played out in these games. “Games are social,

indeed intensely social; people play against each other, with each other, for each other.

Games thrive on difference; there is no game without difference” (1999:150).

Ortner writes that serious games are useful, “as a way of thinking about the

cultural framing of intentions within which people operate at any given time” and further,

“The idea of the game includes the purposes of the activity, the discursive categories

through which it is viewed, the organization and relative power of the

players” (1999:150). According to Ortner ʻserious gamesʼ are concerned with the

intentions of individuals, fields of discourse and language and differently positioned

players (1999:150). Ortner suggests that, “games thrive on difference; there is no game

without difference” (1999:150). As such, I will examine my data with consideration to

emergent shared discursive categories and games of difference amongst the Mountain

Guide community.

Further themes or patterns that may be key to organizing my data (since my

central concern is on the collective characteristics or shared identity of the group and

their inner dynamics) include Ortner ʼs (1999) of counterculture, counter-modernity,

masculinity, and romanticism. Further themes or patterns might include occupational

identity, economy of expertise, mountain culture, nationhood and consumerism.

I have a general idea of the sorts of theoretical approaches that will be most

appropriate for the analysis and interpretation of my data. These theoretical approaches

include practice theory, specifically of Pierre Bordieu ʼs idea of habitus and Etienne

Wagner ʼs concept of ʻcommunities of practiceʼ noted by Karen OʼReilly (2012). I believe

it is important to understand the wider structures that frame the practice of a given

community or group, and thus, I will focus on practice theory applied to the local context

of the Mountain Guide community in Canmore (O ʼReilly 2012:9-10).

It is common knowledge that anthropologists often “examine how physical

interactions with the material world create knowledge, as well as professional culture or

discourse, through practice” (Coleman 2011:439). Annie Gilbert Coleman notes that the

specific expertise or knowledge developed by Mountain Guides is passed down by

example: “It puts guides in place but also defines a profession (a guiding habitus, for

fans of Bourdieu)” (2011:439). Sherry Ortner writes that “people are always in practical

relations to the world” (2012:7). Ortner applies habitus to explore the concept of ʻserious

games ʼ to understand how individuals acquire, singly and in groups, the “dispositions,

habits, ways of doing things, ways of thinking, and ways of seeing the world” (2012:7).

Matthew Desmond (2011) applies habitus to comprehend how firefighters

develop a specific disposition to risk taking. Desmond believes there is a need to

examine the degree to which the dispositions they bring into the workplace corresponds

to the culture and practices of the organization (2011:26). Desmond (2011) develops the

idea that certain individual ʼs general habitus may correspond well to an occupational

organization ʼs specific habitus. I wish to elaborate on this idea with Mountain Guides.

The concept of habitus can be applied to understand if Mountain Guides share similar

sets of dispositions that have allowed them to be successful professional guides.

According to Desmond, the ethnographer ʼs body can become a ʻfield noteʼ which

allows for a deeper understanding of the subjects specific habitus. “By taking the

ʻ participantʼ in participant observationʼ seriously... My body became a field note, for in

order to comprehend the contours of the firefighting habitus as deeply as possible, I had

to feel in growing inside of me” (2011:27). This understanding of participant observation

stresses the participant aspect and may be relevant to my research in regards to

habitus and practice theory.

Equally applicable is Etienne Wagner ʼs concept of ʻcommunities of practiceʼ

described by Karen O ʼReilly (2012:8). “Communities of practice are the coming together

of groups of individuals; people engage in practice, in the negotiation of meaning, in

communities” (O ʼReilly 2012:8). In such communities of practice individuals must “adapt

their expectations, desires, goals and dreams to the practical context and the norms,

rules and resources of those around them” (O ʼReilly 2012:9).

I believe it is appropriate to consider ʻserious gamesʼ (Ortner 1999) and practice

theory through Pierre Bordieu ʼs ʻhabitusʼ and Etienne Wagnerʼs ʻcommunities of

practice ʼ (OʼReilly 2012) to organize and analyze my data. However I do not want to

limit my research to these sorts of theoretical approaches. These concepts simply

highlight how I might interpret what I think I may find in the field.

3. Fieldsite

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