Society & Health

ABSTRACT This paper exams the largely under-researched spheres of educational and adventurous activities occurring in 'nature' in the UK and Norway. Whilst the broad areas of outdoor adventure education, friluftsliv (Norwegian open air life/life in nature) and nature-based sports are, to ...

This collection of papers provides a timely and valuable contribution to the debates and developments in the emerging field of outdoor studies. Each paper engages with the outdoors and/or adventure from diverse social, cultural or
educational perspectives, presenting these phenomena in illuminative and critical ways.
The ‘outdoors’ is perceived as a vehicle for learning as well
as leisure (see for example: Cooper, 1998; EOE, 2000; Gair, 1997; Higgins and
Humberstone 1998; 1999; Hopkins and Putnam, 1993). As such, it is formally constituted by a number of groupings looking towards recognition and the development of outdoor profession(s)( see Martin, 2000). Thus the outdoor sector provides, makes available or engages with outdoor adventure experiences for a variety of purposes, including education, youth and social work, management development, therapy, leisure and recreation. In most cases, but not all, these experiences occur in ‘natural’ environments. Consequently, diverse outdoor traditions have emerged not only in relation to specific geographical landscapes,
but also as a consequence of particular cultural, social and political contexts.
Furthermore, ‘old’ romanticised ideals of outdoor leisure are becoming reconstructed through the demands of ‘mass-market’ consumers for ‘authentic’adventure. Arguably, much outdoor adventure experience, particularly that concerned with forms of outdoor learning, is rarely subjected to critical analyses
where it may be located within broader theoretical frameworks and diverse schools of thought. This collection goes some way to addressing this problematic. Each paper engages with current issues in ‘outdoor’ /‘adventure’ research/theory and is
indicative of the ongoing debates in the outdoor studies field.

This paper presents a philosophy and method for an ongoing investigation into the cause and effect of student emotions in higher education. In particular, it presents the possibilities for exploring students’ positive emotions as ‘jouissance’ experiences linked to the transgression of power relations and social structures. The paper takes the form of ‘evolutionary musings’ that guide the reader through a confessional account of the research programme, the epistemological and methodological challenges, the limits of data already produced, and suggestions for a future approach. The musings maintain that descriptions of causal relationships of pedagogic action and the phenomenology of students’ feelings of gratification are not enough to plausibly interpret the locatedness and meaning of emotions, and that the emotional nexus is shaped by and continues to inform social relationships.