A study of the intersection of nature, gender, and organizational socialization in western wilderness programs for at-risk youth

As wilderness therapy programs have proliferated in this country over the past 20 years, there have been varying reports regarding their efficacy and relevance. Accompanying the growth of these programs has been a body of research critiquing the influence of gender on workplace structures and practices, which spill over into conceptualizations about the natural world. This study assessed the intersections of these areas as they came together in the organizational socialization practices of two wilderness therapy programs in the western United States. This analysis identified how written, verbal, and nonverbal communication as used by these two different wilderness programs framed and "constructed" nature, gender, and organizational goals as socializing agents, which were ostensibly designed to move vulnerable or at-risk youth toward new self-identities. The avenues used for gathering data were (a) written and visual documents produced by the two programs; (b) fieldnotes from my ethnographic study, which was conducted from my vantage point as a full-time employee for each program; and (c) informal and follow-up interviews with staff members and both program directors.;My findings included that both programs framed nature according to its usefulness to humanity; both used gender-exclusive language in relation to aspects of nature, i.e., referring to all animals, plants, and insects as "he"; both used a rite of passage model that parallels traditional organizational socialization models, which have been critiqued by feminist scholars as universalizing and incomplete renderings of many people's, particularly females', experiences; the differing profit/nonprofit status of each program exposed the relevance of race and class issues in considerations of wilderness therapy programs' effectiveness.;This study also revealed the significance of particular persons in the socialization process, as opposed to abstract organizational values or goals. Similarly, it identified the important implication of DiSanza and Bullis' (1999) concept of "micromoments" of communication in conversational interchanges and suggested that greater attention to words, metaphorical representations, and inclusive language use could facilitate these wilderness programs' identified aims. Lastly, this study casts doubt on our current Western conceptualizations of nature that are incorporated by these programs; these conceptualizations are based on views of nature as a commodity to be used and consumed. I offer alternative and broader views of the natural world as an invitation for the reader's consideration.