Monika DERRIEN, USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, United States
Patricia STOKOWSKI, University of Vermont, United States
Interest in darkness and nighttime environments has grown in scholarly and public arenas in recent years, especially related to parks and protected areas (Edensor, 2013; Wartmann et al., 2019). Communities and resource management agencies have initiated programs to protect dark night skies, promote tourism, and facilitate night sky experiences. For the US National Park Service, the natural and cultural values of dark night skies have been recognized as important park components for over two decades (Derrien et al., 2015; Derrien & Stokowski, 2020). Yet night skies are unlike other settings and resources that park agencies manage, requiring agencies and visitors to conceptually engage with distant, abstract spaces that are literally beyond human reach. Consequently, visitors’ experiences of night skies are based on both personal imagination and also social, cultural, and spatial imaginaries—the discursively constructed meanings about reality that circulate among groups (Heikkilä, 2007). In this presentation, we explore how visitors to a US national park (Acadia National Park) construct and draw upon imaginaries to give meaning to their night sky experiences. We focus specifically on (a) how social imaginaries help to create intergenerational linkages, and (b) how spatial imaginaries connect close-to-home night sky experiences (often in urban settings) with touristic experiences (often in rural places). While visitors discursively linked personal imagination with broader imaginaries to create networks of symbolism, signification, and meaning, their uses of imaginaries facilitated ambiguities about issues such as access to dark night skies and the management of nighttime environments in urban and rural settings. These findings offer new approaches to understanding people’s experiences of nighttime environments, demonstrating the tensions of perspective and context in night skies research.
Mots clés : discourse|imaginaries|night skies|tourism|US national parks
A103243MD