Making meaning through movement : hiking the Cathar Trail in the south of France : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Social Anthropology at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand
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2016
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Massey University
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Abstract
This thesis explores how meaning is formed through movement. It argues that the way
in which hikers perceive, experience and make sense of their environment is contingent
on their movement. Specifically, it explores walkers’ lived experiences and perceptions
of their environments on a long-distance hiking trail. The thesis is based on participant
observation on the Cathar Trail in the south of France in 2013 and on archival research.
The Cathar Trail lends itself to such an investigation because it invites visitors who are
intent on hiking and on the history of the Cathars, a persecuted thirteenth-century
religious minority. To interrelate processes of interpretation and interaction in an
anthropological perspective, I adopt a phenomenological approach and Ingold’s (2000a)
ecological approach to human-environment interaction in combination with
interdisciplinary and interpretative approaches.
The thesis situates hikers’ journeys in socio-political and geographical contexts by
deconstructing the twentieth-century historical narratives, heritage discourses and sites
(ruined fortresses) which are the basis of the Trail. I then show that hikers came to know
the Trail through their physical engagement with their environments. To highlight that
walkers’ environment-related movement was constitutive of their sense of place, I
propose the holistic concept of terroir as an alternative to ‘landscape’. My discussion of
wayfinding demonstrates that hikers made their own way, shaped by movement,
topography, sensory perception, technologies and other hikers. I show that walking the
Cathar Trail produces a knowledge particular to people’s bodily movement along a path
and to histories.
Crucially, I develop the theory of a hiking spatiality which is generated by, and specific
to, hikers’ movement along the Trail. Locally specific but encompassing in its scope,
the thesis seeks a common ground in movement. Throughout, I use photographs to
engage the reader through intimated and intuited bodily experience. Interweaving
epistemology and methodology, the thesis is at one and the same time about meaningmaking
in movement and is in itself a form of knowledge formed from movement (in
particular through the employed ‘walking-with’ method) according to a research
agenda.
Description
Captions to the following figures have been altered since thesis submission to include permissions statements in accordance with copyright: figures 2.9 (p. 50), 5.2 (p. 129), 5.3 (p. 130)
Redacted from thesis for copyright reasons: pp. 343–344: Appendix 3: Lyrics Reproduction of lyrics taken from: Crombé Debatte, J. 2013 [1946]. ‘Automne’. In: Profos-Sulzer, E. (ed.). Chansons populaires de France, de Suisse, de Belgique et du Canada. Stuttgart: Reclam. Pp. 21–22.
Listed in 2017 Dean's List of Exceptional Theses
Redacted from thesis for copyright reasons: pp. 343–344: Appendix 3: Lyrics Reproduction of lyrics taken from: Crombé Debatte, J. 2013 [1946]. ‘Automne’. In: Profos-Sulzer, E. (ed.). Chansons populaires de France, de Suisse, de Belgique et du Canada. Stuttgart: Reclam. Pp. 21–22.
Listed in 2017 Dean's List of Exceptional Theses
Keywords
Hiking, Tourism, Social aspects, Aude (Department), France, Dean's List of Exceptional Theses