Infrastructural arrangements and environmental attitudes in the Austrian Alps

By advertising nature based recreation, companies associated with the winter sport industry are inherently reliant on reinscribing a dualistic nature/culture opposition. While nature is advertised as something ‘out there’, the practise of nature based recreation, offered by skiing resorts, is excessed in fully regulated human made spaces. By turning an infrastructural lens on the high alpine region, the practical ontologies of human and nonhuman co-creation are examined. While the practise of nature based recreation has positive effects on the environmental attitudes of practitioners, the ecological irony of winter sports tourism is stretched. By employing the techniques of audiovisual research and infrastructural inversion as analytical strategies, the hidden workings of regional infrastructures are explored. By analysing infrastructural changes within and outside the skiing resort Kitzsteinhorn (AT) a correlation between infrastructural arrangements and environmental attitudes was...Show moreBy advertising nature based recreation, companies associated with the winter sport industry are inherently reliant on reinscribing a dualistic nature/culture opposition. While nature is advertised as something ‘out there’, the practise of nature based recreation, offered by skiing resorts, is excessed in fully regulated human made spaces. By turning an infrastructural lens on the high alpine region, the practical ontologies of human and nonhuman co-creation are examined. While the practise of nature based recreation has positive effects on the environmental attitudes of practitioners, the ecological irony of winter sports tourism is stretched. By employing the techniques of audiovisual research and infrastructural inversion as analytical strategies, the hidden workings of regional infrastructures are explored. By analysing infrastructural changes within and outside the skiing resort Kitzsteinhorn (AT) a correlation between infrastructural arrangements and environmental attitudes was examined. This is a multimodal thesis submitted in the course of the Master Specialisation in Visual Ethnography at the faculty of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology of Leiden University. Its results are presented in the form of this written thesis and an ethnographic short-film Surfing Frozen Oceans (26 min.)Show less

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Infrastructural arrangements and environmental attitudes in the Austrian Alps