Facts

Contact person:
Daniel Svensson
Financer:
  • Centrum för idrottsforskning
Responsible at MaU:
Daniel Svensson
External project members:
  • Erik Backman - Högskolan Dalarna
  • Sandra Wall-Reinius - Mittuniversitetet
Time frame:
01 January 2025 - 31 December 2026
Faculty/department:
Research environment :
Research subject:

About the project

Places and facilities for activities in the intersection between sport and outdoor recreation have recently been highlighted due to their influence on the meaning-making logic of peoples’ practices (Backman & Svensson 2023). It has been argued that relations between humans and places for sport and outdoor recreation need to be paid more attention to increasing sustainability and equal well-being (Quennerstedt et al 2024). In parallel to this, more and more physical activities are practised in mobile places and facilities, such as kayaking in human-built rapids or indoor skiing. Places for sport and outdoor recreation and tourism are increasingly interchangeable as they can be constructed, reproduced and substituted by another place (Wall-Reinius et al. 2019).

The transformation of landscapes for physical activities troubles human notions of what is natural and artificial and what is indoors and outdoors (van Bottenburg & Salome 2010). It poses a significant challenge to the ambition of environmentally sustainable sports (Wilson & Millington 2020). In this project, we study how variations in indoor and outdoor landscapes can guide peoples’ experiences of what they find meaningful when practising different physical activities, and further, what these meaning-making logics mean in terms of sustainability. Taking practitioners’ perspectives on practising kayaking, swimming and cross-country skiing in natural as well as artificial landscapes, we will combine dimensions of sportification (Guttman, 1978) of activities with that of viewing places and landscapes for sport and outdoor recreation as more or less natural (Fredman et al 2012), to analyse what practitioners experience as logics of practice (Engström et al 2018) when performing activities in certain contexts.

High-level sports practitioners’ experiences of artificial places focus on competition and performance rather than experiences of nature and well-being (Backman & Svensson 2023). This project will include a wider range of participants, practising physical activities on low, medium and high levels. These participants will reflect on their practice (kayaking, swimming and cross-country skiing) in artificial landscapes as well as in natural landscapes. The purpose of the project is to increase knowledge about how places for sport, physical activity and outdoor recreation can affect what humans regard as meaningful during practice and about possible sustainability outcomes.