Experiences of Ecology: (Dis)ordering Nature as a Visitor Attraction

Abstract

By taking the strategic development of a nature visitor centre in southern Sweden as a case study, this article examines practices of nature construction and how these practices are enacted and performed at various sites connected to the centre. The analytical focus is boundary work, i.e. how boundaries separating nature/culture, rural/urban, local/global, history/present/future, humans/non-humans and indoor/outdoor are (dis)ordered to form a visitor attraction. Boundary work is examined in five instances of nature construction: interviews with strategic and operative staff connected to the nature centre, an application for state funding of the centre, the ceremonial opening of the centre, market communication material and the centre's permanent exhibition. The analysis shows how the nature centre manifests a nature cosmology upheld by alternate purifying and hybridizing practices, where the result is a visitor attraction offering ecology as experience.