Cargando…

Relationships between Recreation and Pollution When Striving for Wellbeing in Blue Spaces

Our aim for this research was to identify and examine how recreation enthusiasts cope with and mitigate the violence of pollution as they strive for wellbeing in polluted “blue spaces” (e.g., seas, oceans). Our methodology to undertake the research was ethnography (online and offline), including aut...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Evers, Clifton, Phoenix, Cassandra
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8998665/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35409855
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19074170
_version_ 1784684997766021120
author Evers, Clifton
Phoenix, Cassandra
author_facet Evers, Clifton
Phoenix, Cassandra
author_sort Evers, Clifton
collection PubMed
description Our aim for this research was to identify and examine how recreation enthusiasts cope with and mitigate the violence of pollution as they strive for wellbeing in polluted “blue spaces” (e.g., seas, oceans). Our methodology to undertake the research was ethnography (online and offline), including autoethnography and informal interviews (40). The study proceeded from a constructivist epistemology which emphasizes that knowledge is situated and perspectival. The study site was a post-industrial area of northeast England where a long-standing but also rapidly growing surfing culture has to live with pollution (legacy and ongoing). We found evidence of what have become quotidian tactics that attach to themes of familiarity, embodiment, resignation, denial, and affect/emotion used by enthusiasts to cope with and mitigate the violence of pollution. We argue that by necessity some surfers are persisting in striving for wellbeing not simply in spite of pollution but rather with pollution. We assert surfers enact a “resigned activism” that influences their persistence. We extend critical scholarship concerning relationships between recreation, blue spaces, and wellbeing by moving beyond a restrictive binary of focusing on either threats and risks or opportunities and benefits of blue space to health and wellbeing, instead showing how striving for wellbeing through recreation in the presence of pollution provides evidence of how such efforts are more negotiated, fluid, situated, uncertain, dissonant, and even political than any such binary structure allows for.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-8998665
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2022
publisher MDPI
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-89986652022-04-12 Relationships between Recreation and Pollution When Striving for Wellbeing in Blue Spaces Evers, Clifton Phoenix, Cassandra Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Our aim for this research was to identify and examine how recreation enthusiasts cope with and mitigate the violence of pollution as they strive for wellbeing in polluted “blue spaces” (e.g., seas, oceans). Our methodology to undertake the research was ethnography (online and offline), including autoethnography and informal interviews (40). The study proceeded from a constructivist epistemology which emphasizes that knowledge is situated and perspectival. The study site was a post-industrial area of northeast England where a long-standing but also rapidly growing surfing culture has to live with pollution (legacy and ongoing). We found evidence of what have become quotidian tactics that attach to themes of familiarity, embodiment, resignation, denial, and affect/emotion used by enthusiasts to cope with and mitigate the violence of pollution. We argue that by necessity some surfers are persisting in striving for wellbeing not simply in spite of pollution but rather with pollution. We assert surfers enact a “resigned activism” that influences their persistence. We extend critical scholarship concerning relationships between recreation, blue spaces, and wellbeing by moving beyond a restrictive binary of focusing on either threats and risks or opportunities and benefits of blue space to health and wellbeing, instead showing how striving for wellbeing through recreation in the presence of pollution provides evidence of how such efforts are more negotiated, fluid, situated, uncertain, dissonant, and even political than any such binary structure allows for. MDPI 2022-03-31 /pmc/articles/PMC8998665/ /pubmed/35409855 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19074170 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Evers, Clifton
Phoenix, Cassandra
Relationships between Recreation and Pollution When Striving for Wellbeing in Blue Spaces
title Relationships between Recreation and Pollution When Striving for Wellbeing in Blue Spaces
title_full Relationships between Recreation and Pollution When Striving for Wellbeing in Blue Spaces
title_fullStr Relationships between Recreation and Pollution When Striving for Wellbeing in Blue Spaces
title_full_unstemmed Relationships between Recreation and Pollution When Striving for Wellbeing in Blue Spaces
title_short Relationships between Recreation and Pollution When Striving for Wellbeing in Blue Spaces
title_sort relationships between recreation and pollution when striving for wellbeing in blue spaces
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8998665/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35409855
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19074170
work_keys_str_mv AT eversclifton relationshipsbetweenrecreationandpollutionwhenstrivingforwellbeinginbluespaces
AT phoenixcassandra relationshipsbetweenrecreationandpollutionwhenstrivingforwellbeinginbluespaces