观鸟活动的具身体验及其影响:基于流动性视角的研究

Embodied Experience of Birdwatching and Its Impacts:A Study from Mobility Perspective

在我国观鸟活动日渐兴起的背景下,文章基于流动性的视角,运用定性研究方法,探讨观鸟活动的具身体验及其对观鸟者与身边人、鸟类和环境之间关系产生的影响。研究发现:(1)人和鸟流动性的相互交织赋予了观鸟活动独特的具身体验。观鸟者在对鸟类的探索中享受发现的乐趣;在沉浸式的流动中感受生命张力的氛围感染;在跨越时空的重逢中建立起人对鸟和地方的情感连结。(2)观鸟活动中复杂的流动性有助于建立并维系观鸟者与身边人的关系,蕴含着人与鸟实现和谐共处的现实可能性,并能够强化人们对环境的亲近感、责任感和环境保护行为。研究结论丰富了观鸟活动的理论和实证研究,拓展了动物流动性在旅游和休闲相关研究中的分析,并具有一定的实践价值。

Birdwatching tourism refers to travel where the main purpose is to observe birds in their natural habitat.In recent years,birdwatching has been widely spread in the Chinese tourism market.As a type of tourist activity,birdwatching not only produces economic value for local communities,but also helps to promote the ethics of understanding and respecting nature/environment.Drawing on a qualitative study,this article explores the embodied experience of birdwatching and its impacts on the relationships among birdwatchers,other people,birds and the physical environment.This research applies thematic analysis to code the qualitative data collected from in-depth interviews with 39birdwatchers.The main findings of this research reveal that:(1)The complex encounters of humans’and birds’mobilities enact birdwatchers’unique embodied experiences.By chasing and discovering birds’uncertain and multiplex trajectories,birdwatchers can forge a rich cognition hidden in the surrounding environment,personally enjoy the pleasure of learning,and continuously gain a sense of freshness,achievement,and satisfaction in the long-term and continuous exploration and observation.In the process of focusing on grasping the uncertain bird activities,birdwatchers can build an immersive and flowing embodied structure and thus be infected by the atmospheric assemblages created by the intensity of life.In this way,these experiences can make birdwatchers obtain a distinct perception of time and space,the experience and imagination of flying with birds.Amongst the complicated time-space experiences of birdwatching,there exists a reunion of people’s and birds’migration.Such reunion stimulates the embodied sense engaged in birdwatchers’memory and creates an emotional connection between people,birds and places.(2)The complex mobilities generated by birdwatching are able to reshape the relationships between birdwatchers and other people,birds and the environment.In birdwatching activities,people acting together can help build and maintain friendly relationships within the bird watcher group and between the bird watcher and others around.The interaction of different types of birdwatching activities guides birdwatchers to think about the relationship with birds according to the relationship between various subjects,thereby promoting the harmonious coexistence between humans and birds.Through birdwatching tours,people can not only feel closer to nature/environment and achieve physical and mental recovery,but also engender their environmental responsibilities and behaviors.In this sense,birdwatching is a dynamic and complex process of embodied experience in which humans’and birds’mobilities are interwoven.The diverse possibilities of this process endow bird watching with rich contextual connotations.Therefore,the birdwatching experiences obtained by birdwatchers would change dynamically within different situations.The birdwatching experiences’impacts on the establishment of a harmonious relationship among bird watchers,people around them,birds and nature/environment can only be achieved through multi-level and multi-faceted methods,manifestations and embodied interactions.The key findings of this research correspond to other tourism and leisure studies related to wildlife.Since previous relevant works have generally overlooked the roles played by the mobilities of animals and their interactions with human activities,this research can be read as a contribution to the analytical framework of animalrelated tourism as it provides an empirical work on the encounters of humans’and birds’mobilities.