Access for whom? White environmentalism, recreational colonization, and civic recreation racialization

Abstract

This paper interrogates “civic recreation”—a type of collective action found among participants of alternative lifestyle sports, such as mountain biking, surfing, and rock climbing. Although scholarship celebrates civic recreation for fostering resource stewardship and local environmentalism, the literature largely fails to acknowledge that it also perpetuates access to romanticized notions of “wilderness” among the privileged, while marginalizing other social/cultural relationships to nature. We examine how the logic of white environmentalism serves as an orienting framework for much civic recreation, thus extending civic recreation theory to anticipate not only its constructive outcomes, but also the perpetuation of socio-cultural-political marginalization.

Keywords:

• Civic recreation
• colonialism
• rock climbing
• voluntary action
• whiteness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The same critique has been made of the literature that studies outdoor recreation and leisure, more generally (Aitchison, 2009).

2 While it is likely that the subject of our paper overlaps or share similarities with other settler colonialist settings (i.e., Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, etc.), the U.S. has particular relationships to race and indigeneity that compel us to geographically, culturally, and politically situate our analyses.

3 Following Harris (1993) and Ansley , white supremacy is a social structure that systematically privileges white people across political, economic, cultural, and legal domains of society, rather than the more common referral to explicit racism expressed by hate groups.

4 The terms “Native” and “Native Americans” refer to tribal citizens that descend from Indigenous inhabitants of occupied lands, and we recognize that the term fails to reflect the diversity of independent nations, communities, and cultures that it serves as a stand-in for (Champagne, 2018).

5 The site is officially known as Devils Tower National Monument, managed by the National Park Service under the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David P. Carter

David Carter is an associate professor of public policy and administration at the University of Utah. He researches policy and program design, community self-governance and collective action, and civic recreation organizations, among other topics.

Jeffrey N. Rose

Jeff Rose is an Assistant Professor in Parks, Recreation, and Tourism at the University of Utah. His research examines systemic inequities expressed through political economy, relationships to nature, class, and race.