An Impossible Job: How Self-Surveillance, Responsibilisation and Personalisation Shape Outdoor Leader Embodiment

Deploying Foucault’s panopticon and technologies of self, this article examines how discourses, practices, and norms that circulate within the outdoor recreation industry to produce, what we have called, an “impossible job” for outdoor leaders (OL). Drawing on a case study conducted in Australia, we examine and critique how the expectation discourses within outdoor leader employment work to produce panoptic modes of surveillance for individuals as they take up, embody and personalise outdoor industry discourses. These same discourses also work to responsibilise OL to deliver meaningful, safe, fun and positive experiences to participants in nature-based environments. We make visible and problematise the unrealistic demands, expectations, and relations of power within this impossible job, highlighting the dangers and personal costs of embodying these pressures. In this way, we open up discussions that challenge these practices and how we might re-imagine OL expectation discourses in ways that are sustainable and ethical.