Other voices - matter: women in the adventure expedition space

Necessitating both temporal and spatial separateness from everydayness, the outdoor expedition setting offers adventurers a uniquely discrete social context and simplified way of living in, and with the natural world. Typically exploratory in character and sometimes risky in nature, the expedition phenomenon has been positioned in the literature as a particularly male defined space, with a discourse built around the physicality, toughness and bravery that is required to succeed in the field. This study explores the under-represented perspectives of women in such settings. Using a new materialist posthumanist lens, it brings to light four expedition perspectives; the embodied sea kayaker, the adventurer-researcher, independent adventurers, and novice participants. The findings suggest that in acknowledging the vibrant intra-active capacities of the other-than-human world in shaping the women’s expedition experiences, a more fluid sense of self is possible that eschews and challenges the adventure space as a male domain, and the rigidities of humanocentric thinking.