The Anthropology of Adventure: Moving Beyond Ambivalence?
Proposal for an Annual Reviews of Anthropology Article
February 2009
Luis A. Vivanco, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Vermont
and
Robert Fletcher, Assistant Professor of Natural Resources and Sustainable Development,
University for Peace
Overview
The proposed article, of approximately 7000 words and 150 references, explores the empirical
explosion of popular interest in adventuring, dominant social and cultural theories of adventure,
anthropology’s historically ambivalent relationship with adventure, and new directions for
anthropological research on adventure. Below is a brief outline and abstract to give a sense of the
substantive issues that would be covered in this article.
Brief Outline
A. Introduction
B. Explaining Adventure: What Is It and Why Do People Do It?
Overview of dominant theories of adventure
C. Anthropology’s Ambivalence towards Adventure
Historical exploration of anthropology and/as adventure
D. Moving Beyond Ambivalence
Discussion of new currents in anthropology, as well as future directions
Abstract
Introduction
In the past several decades, the practice of adventure has exploded worldwide, as evidenced by
dramatic growth and popularization of adventure tourism and “extreme” sports. Consumer
culture celebrates the adventurer, producing narratives about spectacularly successful—and,
often more attention-grabbing, spectacularly failed—adventures. This also promotes the
consumption of goods meant to capture, or more to the point, generate, a sensibility for
adventure, from outdoor magazines to Hummer SUVs. Concurrent with this growth in adventure
practice and sensibility has been increasing interest from a variety of academic perspectives to
explain this attraction to adventurous activities.
Although anthropology has only recently begun to contribute to this literature, due in part
to a longstanding ambivalence towards adventure within the discipline, we suggest that
anthropologists occupy a unique position in the academic division of labor and can productively
contribute to the analyses of adventure in a variety of ways. Indeed, a number of anthropologists
have already furthered discussion of adventure in important ways, and this initial work could be
reinforced through subsequent research. Adventure touches on issues central to current
anthropological interests, including themes of experience, representation, and political economy
as they relate to topics such as tourism, consumer culture, media, colonialism, and the history of
anthropology. In this review, we offer an overview of the rapidly growing literature analyzing
adventure, identify anthropologists' own contributions to this literature, and describe new ways
in which anthropologists have begun, through their particular methods (ethnography) and subject
matter (cross-cultural comparison), to engage with adventure-related research.
Explaining Adventure: What Is It and Why Do People Do it?
The primary idioms of adventure in Western culture are biological, ranging from the
biochemical—references to the “adrenaline rush” and “endorphin high” abound—to the
evolutionary (Vivanco and Gordon ibid.; e.g., Ardrey 1976; Campbell 1968; Manhart 2005).
Others have suggested that a quest for adventure is inherent to only some people, who are
hardwired to need higher levels of stimulation that the average individual in order to achieve
"optimal stimulation” (e.g., Zuckerman 1979 2007). Some have suggested that adventurers
suffer from psychological pathology such as neurosis or addiction (e.g., Farberow 1980; Ogilvie
1973). Others describe motivation in terms of the pursuit of valued goals. In this vein, it is
commonly pointed out that adventure activities tend to precipitate an altered state of
consciousness alternately called "flow" (Csikszentmihalyi 1990), "peak experience" (Maslow
1961), "edgework" (Lyng 1990) and "action" (Goffman 1967).
Even while pointing usefully to the connections between human biology and adventure,
the reduction of adventure to its evolutionary and biochemical functions and manifestations
greatly obscures the social, cultural, political, and economic contexts that shape how and why
people think of certain activities and images as adventuresome (Vivanco and Gordon 2006). In a
different vein, then, some researchers have described the unique characteristics designating
adventure as a particular activity or sensibility (Campbell 1968; Celsi et al. 1993; Simmel 1971;
Vester 1987; Zweig 1974). Others have explained adventure motivation in terms of collective
dynamics, viewing the pursuit of adventure as a "performance" in which adventurers act out
culturally-valued "models or scripts" (Celsi et al. 1993; Jonas 1999; Vester, 1987). A popular
line of sociological research describes the pursuit of adventure as a form of escape from or
resistance to unsatisfactory aspects of mainstream social life (Arnould et al. 1999; Celsi et al.
1993; Lyng 1990, 2005; Mitchell 1983; Vester 1987). In addition, a growing literature
investigates the demographics of adventure practice, seeking to explain the widely-noted fact
that the majority of adventure athletes and tourists tend to be white, upper-middle-class members
of advanced industrial societies (e.g., Braun 2003; Fletcher 2008; Gibson and Yiannakis, 2002;
Kay and Labarge 2004; Kusz 2004; Simon 2002, 2004).
Adventure has been analyzed from a variety of other angles as well. A substantial body
of research explores the risks, difficulties and potential contradictions involved in the
commercialization of adventure, that is, in offering an inherently predictable activity as a
touristic experience that can be purchased in advance (e.g., Cater 2006; Holyfield 1999; Ortner
1999; Palmer 2006). Researchers have explored legal issues surrounding the rise of adventure
activities as well (Simon 2002).
As a field dominated by psychologists and marketing researchers, the majority of
adventure research to date has involved interviews, surveys, and other forms of formally
structured methodology. In addition, research analyzes texts written by travelers, explorers,
journalists, and other adventurers. There has, however, been substantial ethnographic research of
adventure as well, undertaken by anthropologists and others, concerning such sports as skydiving
(Celsi 1993; Celsi et al. 1994; Lyng and Snow 1986; Lyng 1990), hang gliding (Brannigan and
McDougall 1983), mountaineering (Mitchell 1983; Thompson 1984), rock climbing (Abramson
and Fletcher 2007), whitewater kayaking (Kinney 1997; Fletcher 2008) and rafting (Arnould and
Price 1993; Arnould et al. 1999; Fletcher 2008; Holyfield 1999; Jonas 1999), and cliff jumping
(Abramson and Laviolette 2007).
Anthropology’s Ambivalence towards Adventure
Until recently, anthropologists have been conspicuously absent from these debates. Perhaps this
reticence is due to an "ambivalence to adventure," which as Vivanco and Gordon (2003, p.11)
observe, is related to a longstanding conviction within the field "that science kills adventure, our
claims to fieldwork and forms of writing meant to distance us from the self-referential pursuits of
adventurers." In Tristes Tropiques, for instance, Lévi-Strauss (1973 [1955], p.17) famously
remarked, "Adventure has no place in the anthropologist's profession; it is merely one of those
unavoidable drawbacks, which detract from his effective work."
On the other hand, there is little doubt that anthropology’s public identity is intertwined
with adventure, a fact relevant long before the likes of Indiana Jones came along. Franz Boas
himself is reported to have been drawn to anthropology through its association with adventure
(Pierpont 2004). Many contemporary anthropologists will admit that it was a similar desire for
adventure that attracted them to the discipline, a sensibility very much framed by mass media
images produced in magazines like National Geographic or Hollywood spectacles like Lawrence
of Arabia. This ambivalence toward adventure offers a useful vantage point from which to
consider key aspects of disciplinary history, especially its normalization as a professional field,
shaped in relation to (often in differentiation from) adventurers and adventuresome experiences.
Moving Beyond Ambivalence
As anthropologists have begun to analyze adventure as a form of social action and cultural logic,
they have contributed to the various discussions outlined above in various ways that could be
elaborated upon in future research:
1) While adventure has been described as a universal human inclination, as described above,
cross-cultural research has called into question whether something that can be commonly labeled
as adventure is actually practiced in societies around the world (Ridgeway 1979; Fisher 1990;
Ortner 1999; Rubenstein 2006) and future study could explore this issue further.
2) As a form of “deep play” (Abramson and Fletcher 2007), the pursuit of adventure seems to
challenge rational actor explanations of human behavior, but can such theories recapture this
phenomenon, for instance, by describing it as a form of “costly signaling” (Manhart 2005)?
3) While a few studies have investigated adventurers' assessment of risk (Lyng 1990; Hunt
1995), more work, drawing on anthropological research concerning assessment of risk crossculturally (e.g., Douglas 1992; Douglas and Wildavsky 1983), is definitely warranted. One
approach would be to investigate, in the tradition of Malinowski (1954) and Gmelch (1992), the
pseudo-magical rituals adventurers use to attempt to gain control over inherently unpredictable
circumstances.
4) Colonial-era and contemporary adventuring have often been organized around the production
and consumption of written and visual narratives, suggesting an exhibitionary logic underlying
the conceptualization and practice of adventure (Vivanco and Gordon 2006). The recent volume
Tarzan was an Ecotourist…And Other Tales in the Anthropology of Adventure (Vivanco and
Gordon 2006) shows how such themes intersect with long-standing anthropological interest in
representation and the political economy of meaning production, and this work could be built
upon in the future.
5) Many adventurers describe their activities as ineffable, indescribable, claiming that only
someone who has undertaken the experience can truly understand the appeal (Lyng 1990). Thus,
there appears to be important knowledge concerning the adventure experience only accessible
via the type of involvement that participant observation affords, and thus anthropologists are
uniquely situated to explore this knowledge.
6) And yet there remain sources of ongoing ambivalence for anthropologists working on
adventure as a subject of study, which have to do with the institutional constraints placed on
ethnographic research, as well as shifting notions of ethnographic authority (Stoll 2006). Future
work might explore how this ambivalence can be negotiated in the production of adventure
ethnographies.
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