Jarno Valkonen

The complexity of safety in wilderness guiding in Finnish Lapland

This article examines how safety is understood and practised by wilderness guides leading nature excursions with international customers in Finnish Lapland. Commercial nature tourism services in Lapland are not considered adventure-oriented since risk-taking is not an integral part of the guided services. The study shows that even though perceived as low-risk activities, risks are present in a significant part of the everyday actions in commercial nature tourism services. Thus, commercial nature tourism forms a rich context to study the sustainability of contemporary safety practices since it forms a specific, guide-dependent sector of the tourism industry. The discussion further underlines the complexity of safety issues within the industry and the importance of holistic approaches.

Is adventure tourism a coherent concept? A review of research approaches on adventure tourism

ABSTRACT The boundaries between adventurous activities and tourism are blurring as evidenced in the diffuse usage of concepts, such as, wilderness, safari, nature guiding, adventurous and adventure with regard to tourism. This blurring is also reflected in research associated with adventure tourism. In our paper, we ask, how is adventure tourism defined and categorized in tourism and associated literature? Our study involved a literature review, including development of a systematic methodology for creating a comprehensive list of articles. The first amount of references that resulted from the literature review totalled 2119. This number highlights that adventure tourism has been widely studied. However, those studies have been dispersed among different disciplines and journals. Based on our literature review, we argue that the term ‘adventure tourism’ as used in tourism research is more like a category than an analytical concept. Hence, we conclude that a reconceptualization of adventure tourism is required.

Groupism and the politics of indigeneity: A case study on the Sámi debate in Finland:

The article addresses the problems of defining an indigenous people by deconstructing the Sámi debate in Finland, which has escalated with the government’s commitment to ratify ILO Convention No. 169. We argue that the ethnopolitical conflict engendered by this commitment is a consequence of groupism, by which, following Rogers Brubaker, we mean the tendency to take discrete groups as chief protagonists of social conflicts, the tendency to treat ethnic groups, nations and races as substantial entities and the tendency to reify such groups as if they were unitary collective actors. The aim of the article is to deconstruct groupist thinking related to indigenous rights by analytically separating the concepts of group and category. This allows us to deconstruct the ethnicised conflict and analyse what kinds of political, social and cultural aspects are involved in it. We conclude that indigeneity is not an ethnocultural, objectively existing fact, but rather a frame of political requirements.

Contesting the Nature Relations of Sámi Culture

Abstract Sámi culture is said to be characterized by a very close relationship to nature, regardless of time and place. However, the human–nature relation is a complex, multidimensional issue. Before we can make any substantive claims about the Sámi relationship to nature, we need first of all to define the “nature” to which the Sámi relate themselves. We study presentations of the Sámi nature relation and compare them to empirical research. We argue that there are in fact two different nature relations, which we describe as practical and discursive. It seems that on the one hand, the “special” nature relation of the Sámi refers to local habits and areas and therefore is not generalizable. On the other hand, there are political and performative constructions of indigenous Sámi identity that are tied to notions of nature relations.

Nationspeak as a tool in nature tourism work

How are categories and stereotypes of nations used in nature tourism work by guides? In this article categories and stereotypes are studied in their context of use, and the characterizations are revealed as practical tools that are constantly monitored. The use of descriptions is flexible and part of mastery of the trade. Descriptions are enforced and deconstructed, or the explaining category is switched to other if the situation calls for it. Because categories and stereotypes are hazy, rationalization of them is a crucial part of the work. The practicality of tools is context-based: they are constructed within the special relationship of the guide and the customer in nature tourism.