1. Problem Statement and Literature Review

Professional Mountain Guides belonging to the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides (ACMG) form an exclusive occupational group within the adventure tourism industry. This research project intends to provide an intimate account of the Mountain Guide community in Canmore, Alberta by examining the construction of social identities through occupation and human-nature relationships. Using qualitative methods, I plan to outline the distinctive qualities of the Mountain Guide community within the larger guiding industry based on local narratives. Besides obtaining a general and topical sense of the key characteristics that define this community, I specifically would like to explore the blurring of boundaries between work, leisure and nature according to the accounts of Mountain Guides themselves. To establish some context, I write a brief literature review below which discusses these three basic themes: the divide between work and nature; the facets of the “wilderness guide”; and the occupational motivations and social relationships of labour intensive work. In the following section I elaborate on what I hope to contribute to these discussions through my research. Before outlining the literature relevant to my research, I have provided below some background information on the ACMG and the Mountain Guides who form this association. The organizations president, Keith Reid, writes that the ACMG “is dedicated to protecting the public interest in mountain travel and climbing instruction” and “presents a strong voice for high standards of alpine risk management and the professionalism of mountain guiding in Canada” (as stated on the ACMG website, November 27, 2012). There are seven hundred ACMG members (as stated on the ACMG website, November 27, 2012). According to the website, personal ACMG membership is exclusively open to professionally trained and certified guides. Further, certified guides take an average of six to eight years to obtain their full certification. ACMG guides are trained, examined and certified by an internationally recognized body, the International Federation of Mountain Guides Associations (IFMGA), in partnership with ACMG and Thompson Rivers University. The value of such certification is summed up in the following statement from their website: ACMG guides are trained to provide experience-based decision-making in the field to balance two important facets of your trip – the feeling of adventure and your safety from objective hazards. Guiding is an elegant blend of art and science – a delicate synergy of experience and intuition. One must assess factors such as weather, snowpack quality, avalanche hazard, rock fall potential, crevasse and serac danger, route or terrain selection, daylight and distance, and continuously weigh them against your capability and objectives. ACMG certification is your assurance that any member guide you hire has been trained and assessed to the accepted standard of an internationally recognized, professional body. (November 27, 2012) Mountain Guides form an elite professional group within the tourism industry because of their formal and lengthy training and examination process. By becoming an ACMG Mountain Guide, one can conclude that the professional Guide has acquired the necessary and specialized knowledge exclusive to this group. The knowledge base or way of knowing specific to ACMG Mountain Guides is what sets them apart from other tourist guides and makes them worth studying. This literature review will start by exploring the divide between work and nature as discussed by Richard White (1996). White writes about the general inclination within environmentalism to exaggerate the boundaries between work and nature as a way to maintain the idea of nature as pristine. The opposition between work and nature, within environmentalism, illustrates how human narratives remove people from the “natural landscape”. “Productive work” like resource extraction and development are equated with the destruction of nature. White argues that although the divide between work and nature appears real and authentic, nature-human dualism is a fictional, cultural construct. The boundaries between work and nature are not always so obvious; they are often blurred. “It is ultimately our own bodies and our labour that blur the boundaries between the artificial and the natural” (1996:173). Thus, White identifies human activity not in opposition to nature but part of nature. Moreover, White explores the linkages between work and play. White remarks that play changes the natural environment far less so than work, We work to live. We cannot stop. But play, which can be as sensuous as work, does not so fully submerge us in the world. At play we can stop and start. A game unfinished ultimately means nothing. There is nothing essential lost when recreation is broken off or forgone. Work left unfinished has consequences (1996:174). Ultimately, White presents a preliminary foundation for the theoretical exploration of Mountain Guide work that is simultaneously recreation and play in nature settings. Annie Gilbert Coleman (2011) explores the rise of professional guiding from a historical perspective. She argues that industrialization in America led people outdoors “to escape, recreate, and learn things with their bodies” (2011:437). In turn, professional guiding became a form of labour. Coleman examines early twentieth century literature, “guiding reveals an underlying economy of expertise” (2011:437) that, “changes our view of industrialization and its relationship to the West” (2011:439). Coleman ʼs historical attention to professional guiding and knowledge making, as it concerns industrialization and American identity, provides a starting point for exploring current Mountain Guide narratives about the interrelatedness between work, play and nature. The second theme of this literature review explores the facets of the wilderness guide, in particular by addressing that guiding is more than a customer service practice. Research about tourism has primarily focused on the tourist rather than the guide. However, there is a small body of research within tourism studies that explores the guiding facet. Early research, in this area, explores the tourist experience and the service facet of guiding work (Valkonen 2009). This body of research concludes that “the guide needs to have multiple skills and expertise” (Valkonen 2009:167). However, Jarno Valkonen (2009) states that tourist studies “rarely investigated the significance of the physical conditions of natural environments in the work of guiding” (2009:167). Valkonen argues that wilderness guiding has many facets. His research explores human-nature relationships in particular. Valkonen looks at multiple environmental factors that wilderness guides confront on a daily basis. By applying Bruno Latour ʼs Actor-Network Theory, Valkonen concludes that nature is an actant. “There is ongoing interaction between natural things and social practices. We cannot deny the influence of environmental factors on the work of guides” (2009:178). By examining wilderness guiding as an ongoing interaction between actors and actants, Valkonen demonstrates that nature and technology play a significant role in the tourism practices and performances of guides. The third theme of this literature review is research on the occupational motivations and social relationships of physically intensive work. Two ethnographies were selected to illustrate some possible approaches to studying occupational motivation and social relationships. The first ethnography “Becoming a Firefighter” by Matthew Desmond (2011) explores the seasonal wildland firefighting profession. According to Desmond firefighters share a set of common desires and motivations developed and expressed by specific habitus. Desmondʼs application of habitus is taken from Pierre Bourdieu. Desmond notes a connection between class backgrounds, which influence an individuals general habitus, and the effect of firefighting organizations in recruiting new firefighters by developing general habitus into specific habitus (2011:26). Firefighting organizations utilize deep-seated dispositions to produce firefighters whereby the social embodied becomes the organization embodied (2011:26). The second ethnography, “The Occupational Culture of the Boxer” by S. Kirson Weinberg and Henry Arond (2011) describes the culture of the professional boxer by including the aspects of “recruitment, practices and beliefs, and the social structure of the boxing world” (2011:245). Weinberg and Arond evaluate the social relationships and physical effects of being a boxer through personal experience, primary literature and interviews. Both Desmon (2011) and Weinberg and Arond (2011) approach their research from an ʻinsidersʼ standpoint; Desmond was a firefighter and Weinberg and Arond were boxers. These authors demonstrate, through ethnographic methods, that occupational organizations operate under a unified set of practices and beliefs. Concerning mountaineering motivation is Sherry B. Ortner ʼs (1999) ethnography Life and Death on Mt. Everest . Although the main focus is on the encounter between two cultural distinct groups of people, within her ethnography Ortner provides a descriptive and historical overview of Western mountaineering. Because mountaineers often thought and talked about what they were doing, Ortner is able to present several key characteristics of mountaineering culture over a hundred year period. Ortner ʼs research is in part based on hundreds of accounts of mountaineering journals and biographies. This research highlights how mountaineers are characteristically purposeful in their actions. Mountaineering began as an exploratory pursuit where mountaineers climbed in the name of science and sport. The discourse of mountaineering positions itself critically against a “bourgeois” existence, even as the sport demands the resources made possible by such an existence (1999:35). “Mountaineering as a sport both emanated from and addresses itself back to the normal patterns of middle-class life” (1999:35). Therefore, mountaineering discourse is saturated by a critique of modernity (Ortner 1999). Although contingent, masculinity narratives, romanticism, the counter-culture movement in the 1970s and the subsequent emergence of female mountaineers have all contributed to mountaineering motivations and desires (Ortner 1999). These factors may explain why mountaineers continue to put themselves in high risk situations. In the following sections I elaborate on what I hope to contribute to these discussions through my research. I have come to the conclusion that there is limited literature on the subject of Mountain Guide communities. Although a significant amount of primary literature on Mountain Guide ʼs exists in the form of journals, adventure accounts and biographies, there is a dearth of research adopting anthropological and ethnographical approaches to this historical material or to the living professional guiding communities around today. Therefore I intend for my research to be exploratory in nature. Exploratory research “examines a new area to formulate precise questions that he or she can address in the future” (Neuman and Robson 2009:15). I am primarily interested in Mountain Guide group identity and specific habitus. My research will examine how Mountain Guides define themselves and their work, as well as how they situate themselves within the broader context of the adventure tourism industry. Due to the nature of ethnographic and exploratory research I do want to be limited by a specific theoretical research question. Rather, my research will be topical and will aim to have a wider relevance by exposing the shared characteristics and ways of knowing that Mountain Guides hold. I will emphasize developing an investigative stance to obtain an insider view of a Mountain Guide community in general. The first problem I seek to address involves the divide between work and nature. I hope to focus on how Mountain Guides make sense of the work they do, which is play based and nature oriented. I will take into consideration White ʼs (1996) and Colemanʼs (2011) work on the dynamics of work and nature, as discussed above. The second problem I want to explore stems from Valkonen ʼs (2009) research on the facets of the “wilderness guide”. Following Valkonen, I do not want to limit my research to the human subject. I want to consider the relationship between nature, technology and Mountain Guides in a way that includes all subjects as they engage and influence each other or act upon each other. The third problem I seek to address involves the occupational motivations and social relationships of labour intensive work. I am primarily interested in exploring the motivations that led to Mountain Guides choosing this often overlooked and unknown occupation. Desmond ʼs (2009) discussion on the transformation of general habitus into specific habitus may be useful here. Exploring some of the ideas discussed by Ortner (1999) on mountaineering may be useful as well, such as investigating if Mountain Guides are part of the counter-culture movement. Further, I am interested in the nature of Mountain Guide work and want to explore whether this work is interactive or individual. Following Weinberg and Arond (2011) I hope to explore the social structure of the Mountain Guide community. In sum, I intend to apply an ethnographic perspective to the Mountain Guide community in Canmore, Alberta. Beyond the Mountain Guide ʼs role to serve tourists and the external physical characteristics that act upon the Mountain Guide in the workplace, my research intends to reveal the underlying characteristics of Mountain Guides -- their motivations and lifestyle choices, their shared practices, their social structure, their way of knowing the environment, their outlook on the ACMG association to which they belong, and their concerns with the occupation and general direction of adventure tourism itself. I recognize that these are very broad areas to explore; the following is a foundational exploration of these three basic themes in greater detail. However, I reiterate that I intend for this research to be exploratory.

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