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Section 1
Sociopolitical and environmental contexts
Barbara Humberstone
Introduction
According to Bagehot (2017, 28), the English writer Evelyn Waugh recounted an apparently true story in a letter to his wife in May 1942. A British military unit offered to blow up a tree stump located in a Scottish lord’s country estate, saying the stump would land on a ‘sixpence’. However, on detonating the explosion the stump flew high into the air, taking out soil and new plantings The lord, rather upset, returned to his castle to find all the windows shattered and, on going to the bathroom and pulling the plug, “the entire ceiling, loosened by the explosion, fell on his head”. Bagehot surmises that “a year on from the Brexit referendum Britain feels like Lord Glasgow’s castle. The most visible damage has been done to domestic politics … But just as serious is the blow to Britain’s global standing.”
Not only these political transformations but also Britain’s engagement with our friends and colleagues in and from continental Europe has been crucially challenged and changed. Continental Europeans living for many years in Britain now feel alienated and unsettled. The European vision, however much it may have been idealised, has largely been shattered for most of us in Britain who are committed to involvement in the European Union project, and cross-cultural research and practice. On 23 June 2016, populism and obscuration seemed to have won the day in the UK. Nevertheless, this volume, I would suggest, challenges this disintegration and disconnection by continuing to value the 20 years and more of integration between European nations, and the substantial knowledge developed and activities initiated, through cross-cultural outdoor learning during this time fostered through the European Institute for Outdoor Adventure Education and Experiential Learning (EOE). The core of this exchange of ideas and practices is cultivated through the normally annual seminars/conferences held in EOE members’ countries and places of work. The table of major events ahead illuminates the wealth of subjects and issues that have been disseminated and debated since 1996 at these conferences. Chapters 3 and 4 (Pedersen Gurholt; Collins and Humberstone) provide more details of the EOE’s aims and activities.
These conferences, usually held every year, in different nations and geographical locations, such as outdoor centres in the countryside or university departments, perhaps in cities, provide for considerable interactions and dialogue between and among academics, scholars and youth/social/outdoor practitioners, frequently begetting pan-European projects and research collaboration. Board members of the EOE meet with host partners to co-plan the conference and decide the focus or specific theme. A major overarching aim is to bring together ideas from research and theory with practice and to share and co-learn. The consequential diversity of themes and issues is shown in Table 0.1 and much that has been discussed both within the EOE and among and between the EOE and other Europeans comes together in the following.
This section is constituted by chapters that explore political, social and environmental issues from critical perspectives that emanate from Austrian, British, German and Norwegian critical pro-European standpoints.
Chapter 1 (Becker) takes the long view: an historical observation on European outdoor culture and the narratives and practices that create it. He takes us back to Rousseau’s narratives on nature and education and then onto Weber’s notion of the ‘iron cage’ of modernity, providing an understanding of humans, particularly initially the bourgeois’s wish to escape from the routinisation and control of everyday life. Becker discusses the current considerable increase in participation in outdoor activities and in awareness of organic nature and asks whether this is a new phenomenon or if it has been found in the past. The chapter considers the perceptions and experiences of risk taking currently and the relationship to older notions of time passing and immediate decision making linking this to the history of ideas and the root of European outdoor culture.
In Chapter 2 (Schirp) the scene is set through a critical analysis of the changing European political positions on and realities of youth polities in Europe. The chapter speaks to the rhetoric of Europe that was sold to young people and the reality that many young people experience with falling employment and uncertain futures.
Extremely pertinent questions are posed regarding the failure of European policy to address the real-life challenges that young people from diverse social classes and backgrounds face; the chapter examines the role that various European youth and sociopolitical standpoints and programmes have played in dealing with this. The chapter argues that the vision of creating a ‘social Europe’ has not come to fruition but rather social services in many member states have been diminished. In light of what seems a European policy that has no relevance or benefit to them, disaffected citizens and young people are turning towards right-wing populist parties. Nevertheless, Schirp argues that using European youth exchange programmes, including those focusing upon adventure and outdoor education, may mitigate against this trend towards isolation if these programmes focus upon education rather than neo-liberal aims. Crucially for this to happen Schirp argues for a substantial change in European policy.
Chapter 3 (Pedersen Gurholt) presents an in-depth study of the ways in which women have influenced and shaped outdoor adventure education practice, research and gender relations through a critical analysis of the EOE and its women’s informal networks. Here the rise of gender issues through the last 20 years of the EOE is narrated and located within the vast feminist literature, drawing attention to the social and cultural complexities and fluidity of gender identity and gender relations. A number of themes are identified and explored, such as the perennial matter of single-sex or mixed-sex programmes in fostering gender equality and media representation of female adventurers. Pedersen Gurholt discusses a number of aspects, including how ways of conceptualising gender-non-human relationships may affect pedagogic approaches and how the outdoor field might promote social justice. Based on these analyses, Pedersen Gurholt asks what gender ideas and challenges may shape futures.
Table 0.1 EOE Conferences 1996–2017 | | Date | Partners | Place | Theme |
| 1st | October 1996 | Institute of Sport Sciences of the University of Vienna | Spital, Austria | Youth and Social Work on the Move: Youth and Social Work Through Adventure and Outdoors |
| 2nd | Septembe... |
