Becoming a Camp Counsellor: Everyday Power and Processes of Subjectification

This chapter focuses on the processes of developing camp counsellors (usually former campers). Training processes offer insight into the power relations at work in shaping certain subjectivities. This chapter also considers the liminal status, and thus influence, of training programmes. This is followed by an exploration of the technologies of camp leadership and the discursively produced camp counsellor roles employees are expected to embody: camp leader, therapist, pastor and parent. Additionally, everyday camp practices shape the subjectification of camp counsellors to align with camp norms such as times for rest, work and play through the policies of staff manuals. Yet technologies of domination are not impervious and, therefore, this chapter closes with a look at how camp counsellors creatively negotiate and resist dominant camp norms.