Climbing Through the State: Social Empowerment and Contentious Actions in the Jordanian Outdoors

Abstract: Tourism has been a fief industry for state power in Jordan, used as state-building tool and hard-currency earner. However, the country’s socio-economic structure and the current regional conflicts have hindered its development as the expected economic engine to achieve Jordan’s independence from foreign aid. This work looks at a collective identity created around outdoors and adventure sports in Jordan that has taken advantage of previously unused natural spaces to develop an adventure tourism industry in the country. Their actions have been capable to directly challenge social and power structures in Jordan. By representing a new option and dissidence from pre-established social norms and developing a profitable economic industry that is able to modernize the stagnant tourism sector in Jordan, they have become an apolitical resistance to the country’s socio-economic and power structures. Through a three-month ethnographic fieldwork and semi-structured interviews, this thesis records the daily activities of individuals belonging to the outdoors community in Jordan and the opinions of managers of adventure tourism companies in the country to focus on the empowerment of civil society actors and the challenges to develop an industry without the support of state authorities. The thesis identifies the modernization effects at a social and state level of grassroots initiatives and the ability of the state to adopt them as its own achievements.