Materializing tourist weather: ethnography on weather-wise wilderness guiding practices

Abstract

This study examines the hitherto under-explored relationships between weather, human action and the natural environment from a practice-based perspective. Using an ethnographic study on wilderness guiding in Finnish Lapland, the article first examines the integral role of weather when conceptualizing tourist activities taking place outdoors. The authors identify three types of weather-related practices: anticipating and coping with the weather, as well as discursive practices related to weather. They therefore demonstrate how weather manipulates human practices by narrowing down or extending the possibilities for outdoor activities. Second, by materializing weather, the study provides a more nuanced understanding of the diverse ways in which weather – a material entity in itself – is involved in the enactment of various socio-material practices; here the authors make the case for a specific repertoire of weather-wise skills. The study concludes that weather holds agency as it exerts a significant power in directing and redirecting human nature-based activities.