Description
Book Synopsis As an international ecotourism destination, Yosemite National Park welcomes millions of climbers, sightseers, and other visitors from around the world annually, all of whom are afforded dramatic experiences of the natural world. This original and cross-disciplinary book offers an ethnographic and performative study of Yosemite visitors in order to understand human connection with and within natural landscapes. By grounding a novel “eco-semiotic” analysis in the lived reality of parkgoers, it forges surprising connections, assembling a collective account that will be of interest to disciplines ranging from performance studies to cultural geography.
Trade Review “Ness provides conceptual insights which connect a range of disciplines, drawing upon detailed research undertaken over many years – including in-depth ethnographic work. The book addresses new challenges and deepens our understanding of landscape from a number of disciplinary perspectives. The delight of this book is that it provides a serious engagement with a web of theories, yet it retains a light touch in style. Through careful attention to observation-performance, it offers an intimate approach to its subject that is both complex and beautifully poetic.” • Cultural Geographies
“This is an extremely original, theoretically surprising, very clearly written, and thought-provoking project. By focusing on encounters with Yosemite National Park, Sally Ann Ness takes her reader along unexpected paths while constructing an innovative and deeply personal anthropology of experience.” • André Lepecki, New York University
“The delight of this book is that it seriously engages with a web of theory yet retains a light touch. Through careful observation-performance, it offers an intimate approach to its subject that is both complex and beautifully poetic.” • David Crouch, University of Derby
Table of Contents List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
PART I: APPROACH
Introduction: Landscape Performance Theory, an Introduction
PART II: VISITING
Chapter 1. Bouldering: Movements of the Unforetold
Chapter 2. Climbing: Scenic-Obscenic Movement
Chapter 3. Hiking: Self-World Transformations
PART III: MOVING ON
Chapter 4. Unwinding and Changing Course
Chapter 5. The Spartanburg Coincidence
Index
