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

Abstract

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 due to 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 ThesesThis 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