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Journal of Consumer Culture
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The online version of this article can be found at:
DOI: 10.1177/1469540505049846
2005 5: 43Journal of Consumer Culture
Elizabeth Shove and Mika Pantzar
reinvention of Nordic walking
Consumers, Producers and Practices : Understanding the invention and
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43
ARTICLE
Consumers, Producers and Practices
Understanding the invention and reinvention of Nordic walking
ELIZABETH SHOVE
Lancaster University
MIKA PANTZAR
National Consumer Research Centre, Finland
Abstract. The idea that artifacts are acquired and used in the course of accomplishing
social practices has important implications for theories of consumption and
innovation. From this point of view, it is not enough to show that goods are
symbolically and materially positioned, mediated and filtered through existing cultures
and conventions. Twisting the problem around, the further challenge is to explain how
practices change and with what consequence for the forms of consumption they
entail. In this article, we suggest that new practices like Nordic walking, a form of
‘speed walking’ with two sticks, arise through the active and ongoing integration of
images, artifacts and forms of competence, a process in which both consumers and
producers are involved. While it makes sense to see Nordic walking as a situated social
practice, such a view makes it difficult to explain its growing popularity in countries
as varied as Japan, Norway and the USA. In addressing this issue, we conclude that
practices and associated cultures of consumption are always ‘homegrown’. Necessary
and sometimes novel ingredients (including images and artifacts) may circulate widely,
but they are always pieced together in a manner that is informed by previous and
related practice. What looks like the diffusion of Nordic walking is therefore better
understood as its successive, but necessarily localized, (re)invention. In developing this
argument, we explore some of the consequences of conceptualizing consumption and
consumer culture as the outcome of meaningful social practice.
Key words
consumption ● innovation ● practice ● walking
Journal of Consumer Culture
Copyright © 2005 SAGE Publications
(London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
Vol 5(1): 43–64 1469-5405 [DOI: 10.1177/1469540505049846]
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INTRODUCTION
For all the attention that has been paid to material culture and the social
life of things, there is a tendency, from ergonomics through to semiotics,
to take a partial view of what is involved in consuming and using things
in practice. In writing this article, one aim is to move beyond symbolically
oriented theories of consumption and to think again about consumers,
producers and the material artifacts with which they deal. While acquisition
and ownership are undoubtedly important in signalling all manner
of statuses and indentities, it is also clear that many products are quite
directly implicated in the conduct and reproduction of daily life. In other
words, there is a material dimension to practice that deserves and that is
now beginning to receive attention in its own right. This pragmatic reorientation
generates further questions about the dynamics of innovation
and specifically about the relation between novel products and emerging
practices.
These have been addressed from various angles. Moving between the
sociology of consumption and science and technology studies, Molotch
(2003) has, for instance, written about where ‘stuff’ comes from and about
how designers’ narratives, assumptions and expectations are unavoidably
embodied in the things they produce. Concentrating more on consumption
than on production, others have explored the details of appropriation
and domestication (Dant, 1999; Illmonen, 2004; Lehtonen, 2003), showing
how objects are accommodated within existing social and technical systems.
Such work reminds us of the significance of non-human actors for the
consumers with whom they share their lives. In this it goes some way
towards redressing what Latour (1992) refers to as the ‘missing masses’ of
social theory.
While we make use of these lines of enquiry, we suggest that the
relation between materials and practices remains under-theorized.
To explain why, we first comment on the conceptualization of
practice. Writers like Bourdieu (1984, 1992), de Certeau (1984) and
Giddens (1984) use the term in various ways but in ways that are alike in
emphasizing routines,shared habits,technique and competence.The crucial
point is that practices, as recognizable entities, are made by and through
their routine reproduction. While this is a convincing and powerful
argument, these are thoroughly social theories in the sense that material
artifacts, infrastructures and products feature barely at all.
Schatzki offers a somewhat different view. For him, practices consist of
‘embodied, materially mediated arrays, and shared meanings’ (2001: 3).
Taking this to be so, practices presume the existence of requisite elements
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including images, forms of competence and in many cases objects as well.
Reckwitz takes up this theme: ‘Carrying out a practice very often means
using particular things in a certain way. It might sound trivial to stress that
in order to play football we need a ball and goals as indispensable
“resources”’ (Reckwitz, 2002: 253) . . . but it is not. As Reckwitz goes on
to explain, things are centrally and unavoidably implicated in the production
and reproduction of practice. In what follows and in keeping with the
conclusion of these two authors, we work with the notion that practices
involve the active integration of materials, meanings and forms of
competence.
These observations suggest that analyses of the ways in which things
are acquired, appropriated and used routinely fail to capture the extent of
what is involved. To continue with Reckwitz’s example, footballers are not
simply ‘using’ or appropriating the ball: in kicking it about and in the
process of playing, they are actively involved in reproducing the game itself.
If we are to take these ideas forward we need to conceptualize consumers
not as users but as active and creative practitioners and appropriation as but
one dimension of the reproduction of practice. These arguments lead us
to conclude that there is scope for relating the results and insights of
science and technology studies (especially concepts of configuration and
appropriation) to a more extensive analysis of how practices evolve.
They also imply that it is important to materialize social theories of
practice. Alan Warde moves in this direction with the suggestion that ‘practices,
which are logically and ontologically prior to action, steer consumption’
(Warde, 2004). In what follows, we develop this idea and explore the
possibility that new practices engender and entail new forms of production
and consumption. Addressing the same issue but from a different angle, we
are equally interested in how new practices emerge through and as a result
of specific forms of consumer–producer interaction.
With these ideas as a starting point,we explore consumers’and producers’
roles in the emergence and development of a new practice. Since we
focus not on the objects in question (in this case, pairs of walking sticks),
but on the practice of which they are a part, we have no option but
to consider the dynamic, yet also interdependent, relation between
practitioners and providers. In the course of our discussion,and in particular
when thinking about how practices evolve, it becomes clear that relations
between material objects and associated images and forms of competence
are of defining importance. This is of some significance when thinking
about the apparent diffusion of practices and the circulation of constituent
meanings, competences and products.
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Nordic walking,a form of ‘speed’walking with two sticks,has a number
of qualities that make it an especially appropriate case with which to
examine the relation between commodities and practices and the manner
in which they evolve. First, the very idea of commodifying and marketing
something that people have been doing for 1.6 million years and of
positioning it as a new form of fun is itself impressive (what will they think
of next?!). Second, Nordic walking has a very short history. When
Kantaneva and Kasurinen (1999) published the first book on the subject,
they had no way of knowing that Nordic walking was about to take the
outdoor leisure industry by storm or that it would feature as one of the
‘centrepieces’ of the 2003 sports trade show ISPO (ISPO News, 2003).
Third, Nordic walking, also called fitness walking, Viking hiking or exerstriding,
has spread from Finland, where 20 percent of the population are
now regular Nordic walkers, to Germany and Austria, where there are
recognized training programmes and systems of accreditation for walking
instructors. In both these countries and in Scotland, doctors have begun to
prescribe Nordic walking courses for certain patients and in Germany the
health benefits are believed to be so great that ‘health insurance pays for
people to invest in Nordic walking instruction’ (ISPO News, 2003).
Although slow to develop in the UK, hundreds of thousands of Norwegians
have taken up Nordic walking and the practice is developing fast in
Japan, the USA and Australia.
Before getting into the details of how Nordic walking was invented,
we comment briefly on what is involved in ‘doing walking’. This allows us
to develop a provisional account of the elements or ingredients of which
practices are made. We use this model in structuring subsequent discussion
of Nordic walking, first in Finland and then in the UK. The final part of
the article then reflects on the rather different processes at stake in the
diffusion of consumer goods and the (re)invention of practices like Nordic
walking.
WALKING: COMPETENCE, IMAGE AND EQUIPMENT
For any one individual, learning to walk is a critical step in childhood and
one that demands considerable social as well as physical control. Having
mastered the necessary skills, it is easy to forget that the phenomenon of
‘doing walking’,whether alone or together,is a concerted,ongoing,situated
social achievement. In their ethnomethodological account ‘Notes on the
Art of Walking’,Ryave and Schenkein (1974) remind us of the navigational
challenges involved in traversing a pavement whilst avoiding collisions with
strangers and keeping pace with our companions. As these authors explain,
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the rules and conventions of ‘doing walking’ are produced and reproduced
by the members of the community involved and are consequently sensitive
to culture and situation. Crossing London’s Waterloo Bridge in the rush
hour is not the same kind of accomplishment as that involved in rambling
through the countryside on a Sunday afternoon. More exotically, ‘doing
walking’ in Brazil is not the same as ‘doing walking’ in Japan; as Levine’s
(1997) cross-national time use studies show, some populations routinely
walk much faster than others. Following de Certeau (1984), we could go
on to discuss the multiple forms of resistance and discipline involved in
walking in the city. Alternatively, we might elaborate on the gendered
nature of swaggering, mincing and stepping out. For present purposes and
for the time being, it is enough to show that conventions of comportment
and coordination constitute and quite literally embody the forms of
competence and know-how necessary for the doing of walking.
Although very well established as a means of transport, the idea of
walking for pleasure has a much shorter history. In Britain, this concept is
strongly associated with the institutionalization of ‘free’ time and with a
bundle of ideas about nature, freedom, physical and mental wellbeing,
recuperation and exercise. That said, there are multiple genres of recreational
walking, ranging from solitary contemplative wandering through to
planned hiking tours, each organized around different norms and values
(Edensor, 2000). The images associated with these various forms depend,
in no small measure, on the types of people they attract and on the
ideologies that sustain them. Macnaghten and Urry (1998), for example,
describe how ‘peripatetic theory’ (encompassing the notion that leisurely
walking affords unique opportunities for education and recreation through
engagement with nature) has moved through society. Initiated by the
intellectual classes, such ideas were subsequently ‘taken up and transformed
by other social classes and social groups’ (1998: 203). As these observations
suggest, ‘doing walking’ is also a process through which images and
ideologies are reproduced.
Walking with sticks occupies a special place within the overall repertoire
of contemporary styles. Ever since humans learned to walk on two
legs, they have used their free hands to carry clubs, canes and crooks or to
support themselves on crutches. Although it has not always been so,walking
sticks are currently associated with age and infirmity or with comedy. As
discussed below, this presents something of a problem for Nordic walking.
The Nordic version is special in that it requires the use of sticks,
but even ordinary forms of walking depend on an array of requisite
equipment, including boots, shoes, paths, maps and so forth. Following
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Latour, Michael (2001) elaborates on the parts that mundane technologies
play in mediating material and symbolic relations between bodies and
natural environments. He argues that boots (or, more accurately, ‘bodiesin-boots’)
are not innocent parties in this relationship; having material and
symbolic qualities of their own, they also exist as hybrid entities in their
own right. A similar case could be made with respect to clothing,
mountaineering equipment ( Johnston and Edwards, 1994; Parsons and
Rose, 2003) or even walking sticks. Rather than focusing on the stick’s
status as an entity that intervenes in and facilitates the ‘flow of communication
between humans and environment’ (Michael, 2001: 117), we are
more interested in the dynamic relationship between sticks and the image
and performance of the practices they sustain. The interaction between
walking sticks and their users is perhaps less complex than that between
windsurfers and their boards (Dant, 1999), but it is, as we shall see, central
to the practice of Nordic walking.
From this perspective, Nordic walking is an intriguing innovation, for
the only really new feature is the way in which already familiar elements
(sticks, social and physical skills and the idea of walking for fun) are linked
together. The idea of walking for pleasure is already well established, but
not with sticks. Similarly, walking sticks have a long history, but not one
that is associated with fun. In what follows, we argue that Nordic walking
emerges from and through the novel integration of competence, image and
equipment. This process is one in which new links (between sticks and
enjoyment) are made and old ones (between sticks and infirmity) challenged.
More abstractly, we work with the notion that innovations in
practice depend upon the active integration of elements, some new, some
already well established, that together constitute what we might think of as
innovations-in-waiting or proto-practices.
We use this basic idea to structure our review of the development of
Nordic walking in Finland, where it first began, and in the UK, where it
has yet to become established. Our account is based on interviews with
people from organizations that produce and distribute Nordic walking
sticks or that promote the sport and on an analysis of advertisements and
articles in the trade and popular press, and on the web. In Finland we interviewed
a marketing manager, a member of a design agency, a product
engineer and a marketing assistant. We also spoke with the head and with
the chair of the board of a relevant voluntary organization, with several
Nordic walking coaches and with the test manager of a sports laboratory.
In England, we talked with people involved in importing Nordic walking
sticks and in setting up training courses. We also spoke with companies
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selling trekking poles and related equipment and with a number of retailers.
More practically, we draw on the experience of participating in a
Nordic walking course and on the results and insights of a focus group
study (in Finland) of Nordic walking practitioners (Oksanen-Särelä and
Timonen, 2005).
These materials allow us to show how the ingredients of Nordic
walking have been pieced together. The resulting analysis leads us to
conclude that innovation in practice is not a one-off enterprise, nor is it
one over which producers have ultimate control. For a practice to endure
and exist as an identifiable if mutable entity, it must be continually reproduced
by those who do it. In tracking the recursive dynamics of Nordic
walking, we make new links of our own, bridging between theories of
consumption, innovation and practice in order to understand how walking,
something that most of us have already been doing for years, might be
constituted as a new form of fun.
NORDIC WALKING IN FINLAND
In Finland, as elsewhere, walking sticks have long been associated with the
frail and the disabled. What is innovative is the idea that fit and healthy
people might walk with sticks as a form of recreation. How has this come
about?
Institutions and explanations
Each of the three main actors, the Vierumäki Sport Institute (the main
function of which is to develop, produce and market nationally and
internationally competitive training, exercise and educational services),
Suomen Latu (the Central Association for Recreational Sport and Outdoor
Activities) and Exel (a manufacturer of sports equipment), has their own
version of events.
One explanation, favoured by staff at Vierumäki, has to do with skiing.
For many decades now, particularly keen cross-country skiers have walked
with pairs of sticks as a means of training during the summer months.
While this was ‘normal’, it was so for only the most devoted practitioners
of the sport. From the mid-1990s onwards, the Vierumäki Sport Institute
has run courses designed to introduce the concept to a wider population
of potential recruits. For those involved, the invention of Nordic walking
represents the successful popularization of an activity that was initially the
preserve of athletic coaches and an elite group of exceptionally fit skiers.
A second interpretation is that Nordic walking is at least partly the
result of a state-sponsored initiative to promote the benefits of outdoor life.
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To understand how this might be so, it is necessary to understand something
of Finnish history. Suomen Latu was founded in 1938 at a time when
the Soviet Union was seen as a continual threat and when Finland had just
gained its independence. This was a period in which politicians like Tahko
Pihkala believed in organized sport as a means of mobilizing the Finnish
people both physically and symbolically. A key figure in Suomen Latu and
himself keen on outdoor pursuits, Pihkala sought to make skiing a national
pastime. This meant building an entire ‘ecosystem’ of interconnected
elements, including trails and paths to be cared for by local communities
and transport systems that allowed city dwellers to get out to the countryside.
Time and energy were invested in designing new forms of clothing
and in developing specialized equipment such as a skiing rucksack (K.P.,
1928). In keeping with this tradition, Suomen Latu has been actively
involved in promoting Nordic walking, so much so that some claim that,
‘This national craze [Nordic walking] was orchestrated by Suomen Latu, a
government-funded fitness organization which six years ago set about
training hundreds of volunteer instructors’ (Bradberry, 2004).
Others point to the deliberate transfer of technology from one market
sector (the disabled) to another (sports and fitness). Having worked with
physiotherapeutic professionals in designing better walking sticks for those
who ‘needed’ them, Exel wondered whether ordinary people might also be
interested in buying them. Developing this idea, the company sought to
persuade people to use sticks not because they were infirm or injured, but
to prevent themselves from becoming so. Looking back, staff at Exel highlight
the importance of scientific research proving the benefits of walking
with sticks and the need to create new markets, given changing weather
patterns and a shrinking skiing season.
Despite these differences of emphasis, all three organizations are as one
in how they talk about the practice today. For instance, all are in agreement
that the main task is to overcome resistance by repositioning (repurposing)
the idea of walking with sticks. As our respondents explained, widespread
acceptance of Nordic walking requires two crucial steps. First, associations
with frailty or with fanatical athletic performance have to be broken.
Second, new links, for example with concepts of ‘mild nature’ and wellbeing,
have to be made. The notion that Nordic walking improves the
fitness of ordinary people does both these jobs at once. In the following
paragraphs, we review some of the strategies and arguments that have been
used in establishing Nordic walking as an ordinary activity for ordinary
people.
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Symbolic meanings and images
a) Health and fitness
Themes of health and wellbeing have been extremely important in the
invention of Nordic walking. According to one of our respondents,experts
from the Cooper Clinic estimate that exercising with Nordic sticks
increases calorie consumption by 20 percent (The Cooper Clinic), a figure
that can rise to 40 percent for those using the ‘right technique’ (Saturday
Evening Post, 2003). Since Nordic walking involves 100 more muscles than
the ordinary version, it is better for the spine and the upper body and
prevents damage to the knees. One coach from the Vierumäki Sport Institute
describes how this connection was made in practice:
It was about 1997 that a group of sports coaches and trainers
started thinking about whether walking trips could be made
more meaningful and more efficient from the perspective of the
walkers’ physical condition. . . . We found that sticks were
perfectly suited for this purpose and for improving the fitness of
ordinary people. Walking with sticks combined people’s interest
both in nature and in fitness. . . . In our institute, sports
enthusiasts had used sticks for hill walking and summer training
for a very long time. Our test manager was among the first to
notice the efficiency of these sticks in training. Sticks make
people walk faster and use their hands more actively. Therefore
more energy is used and muscles develop.
Exel tells a similar story, but framed in terms of science and physiology
rather than personal experience:
Why it is so rewarding? Probably because it is physically more
challenging than one might think. It is a coordination challenge.
It stimulates and rewards. It gives positive feelings. Safety and
efficiency are important attributes of stick walking too. There
are many studies which show that walking with sticks is much
more demanding than ordinary walking.
By underlining these points, advocates redefine ordinary walking. As an
advertisement for Swix (a Norwegian walking stick manufacturer) explains,
‘Nordic walking can relieve the pressure on weight-bearing joints by up to
30 percent more than regular walking and thus lowers the risk of injury’
(Swix, 2004). It is not that walking without sticks does any harm, just that
it is nowhere near as good for you as walking with them.
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b) Fun
Taking a different angle,a representative of Suomen Latu underlines Nordic
walking’s social as well as physical appeal:
I think the great thing about walking with sticks is the fact that
it is so easy to start from your own door and there you are:
outdoors. I also would like to emphasize the social aspect of
walking. When you are walking, you can talk with other people
and have a good time.
Exel is also aware of the need to focus on the contexts in which people
walk and on their experience of the practice as a whole. As the next observation
makes clear, the challenge is to develop the activity, not just the
product: ‘I am a bit worried that too much emphasis is put into the equipment
and market expansion. One must remember that it is the activity that
one must be interested in in this business if it is to flourish.’ In all of this,
the public image of Nordic walking is critical.
c) An ordinary activity for ordinary people
To begin with, there was something of an imbalance between anticipated
benefits for health and wellbeing and the social costs of participation.
Although a few people were persuaded to give Nordic walking a go, the
majority of the population was concerned about‘looking silly’. As the following
respondent from Exel explains, the relationship between the image and
the emerging practice is always dynamic. Put simply, the more people who
take up Nordic walking, the less strange it becomes:
In the beginning, the image of walking with sticks was really
problematic. It was very much a psychological problem. In our
marketing we try to normalize the activity by referring to
groups of people walking together. In time, the groups became
smaller and finally one could walk alone (and not feel silly).
An analysis of all references to Nordic walking in Helsingin Sanomat,the main
Finnish newspaper, from 1999 to 2003 shows how this image has changed.
The first cohorts of ‘ordinary’ Nordic walkers were jeered at by the press,
whose critical tone echoed that adopted a decade earlier when commenting
on the first mobile phone users (Pantzar, 2003). To outside observers,
Nordic walking looked like yet another pointless craze, an artificial need if
ever there was one. One such article was, for example, entitled ‘Santa Claus,
Please No Sticks for Me!’(Helsingin Sanomat,26 November 2000). However,
a reader’s comment a few weeks later shows just how unsettled the situation
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was: ‘Santa Claus, Thanks for the Sticks!’ (Helsingin Sanomat, 30 December
2000). During this early period (2000–01),articles promoting the technique
follow a similar format. Having explained that some people feel silly, they
go on to describe the benefits of Nordic walking,making much of its widespread
endorsement by the medical profession. The message is clear: the
proven advantages should be enough to overcome personal vanity and a
misplaced concern with appearance.
This strategy worked particularly well for people who were already
interested in serious sport and their own physical condition and who
understood the potential of walking with sticks. These people became the
leaders of what became a movement. As the population of Nordic walkers
increased, so new discussions arose. Articles published between 2001 and
2002 focus, for example, on questions of etiquette and on how joggers,
ordinary walkers, Nordic walkers and cyclists should behave towards each
other. While its identity is not quite fixed, these debates prove that Nordic
walking has arrived; it exists as an entity and as a recognizable practice in
its own right.
Competence and skill
The notion that one needs training in Nordic walking and that there are
skills to be mastered is widely shared by producers and providers. As a result,
there are specially designed courses for Nordic walking instructors and a
system of accreditation and recognition. People who take part in Nordic
walking courses are taught how to hold the sticks and use them to best
effect in a variety of conditions, for example when going up and down hill
or along the flat. These courses and associated instruction manuals provide
advice and guidance on incorporating Nordic walking into an exercise
regime designed to enhance fitness and wellbeing. In specifying a ‘proper’
method that people need to learn, such instructions define other kinds of
walking as inappropriately passive. As already mentioned, walking is a
complex achievement and one that can be ‘framed’ and defined in various
ways. Oksanen-Särelä and Timonen (2004) distinguish between different
types of walking and the specific competences associated with walking as
a means of transport,walking for fun and incidental walking. In the context
of the present discussion the key point is that Nordic walking is positioned
as a new and disctinctive form with techniques all of its own.
Materials
Nordic walking is further defined by the materials and the hardware
involved. Unlike a conventional walking stick, Nordic versions have a
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straight handle and a strap that goes around the hand. Different types of tip
are available to suit different ground conditions. To begin with, styling was
influenced by the ski sticks from which the walking version evolved: the
colours were typically yellow and blue and ergonomically inspired design
was important. More urban models in black, silver and yellow have since
become popular. Recent moves to define Nordic walking sticks as a new
design accessory are particularly important for the positioning of the
practice and in this respect it is significant that Marimekko (a company
known for fabric and other kinds of design, not for sports equipment) has
licensed the production of sticks in a range of patterns and colours.
Institutionalizing Nordic walking
The previous paragraphs describe some of the persons, images, products
and places that are important in defining walking with sticks as an appropriate
activity for ordinary people. As we have shown, inventing Nordic
walking is a matter of integrating images of fitness and wellbeing, the
walking sticks themselves, and the knowledge of how to use them so as to
create a new practice. In thinking about how and why these elements came
together in Finland in the late 1990s, it is important to take note of the
institutional context.
Environmental conditions are of increasing interest to theorists seeking
to define the social and geographical characteristics of innovation. In
writing about how new technologies first take root,Kemp et al. (1998: 184)
suggest that protected spaces or niches are important because they help
‘build a constituency behind a new technology and set in motion interactive
learning processes and institutional adaptations’. Others have
described more and less deliberate efforts to enhance creativity through
social engineering (Kidder, 1982). In such discussions questions of scale
and coherence are often important. For instance, Reay explains the
innovative record of Formula One racing with reference to the fact that
race teams are comparatively small organizations with a relatively complex
base of technical competence. ‘Working across skill disciplines, hierarchies
and cultures in communities of practice (CoPs) is common to all teams in
the sport, and an essential part of their success in identifying and implementing
effective solutions’ (Reay, 2000: 20). In our case, the existence of
a small, well-connected community (the Vierumäki Institute, Exel and
Suomen Latu) certainly helps explain how the system builders (Hughes,
1983) of Nordic walking achieved so much in such a short space of time.
Just as important, this community had ready access to wider networks of
potential practitioners and ‘carriers’ including ordinary people, sports
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enthusiasts and companies developing new equipment for health and
fitness. Since the Vierumäki Institute has more than 300,000 visitors per
year, from over 50 nationalities, it is a potentially efficient environment in
which to test and generate innovative ideas.
We might conclude that the dense networks of the Finnish sports
community provided a context in which Nordic walking could be
invented, and the ingredients (in terms of already existing images, materials
and expertise) with which to do so. But how does this explain its growing
popularity in countries as diverse as Japan, the USA and the UK? To put
the problem in more general terms, how do new combinations of
commodity-and-practice circulate and diffuse?
NORDIC WALKING IN THE UK
In the UK, Nordic walking is in its infancy. As such, it is an especially
revealing case through which to show what is involved in the (re)invention
of the practice in another context. Again, cultural history is critical; again,
image is all important; and, again, the institutional environment matters.
According to Mintel reports, walking and rambling are the most
popular participation sports in the whole of Europe. They top the list in
the UK, where an estimated 10 percent of the population walk for fun,
compared with 3 percent in Germany and 4 percent in France and Spain
(Mintel, 2002: 22). It is obviously difficult to determine what counts as
walking for fun and this might explain why survey data from the Office
for National Statistics shows even higher rates of UK participation – 44.5
percent in 1996 (Roberts, 2004: 33). The UK has a number of organizations
dedicated to walking (including the Ramblers’ Association, founded
in 1905), a national and local network of walking, hiking and rambling
clubs, an array of specialist magazines and an enormous infrastructure of
public footpaths, popular guidebooks, maps and routes. Yet there is hardly
any Nordic walking.
Those involved in trying to promote the practice, principally the
distributors of imported sticks, have a number of theories as to why this
might be so. One has to do with the lack of a skiing tradition, such as there
is in Germany and Austria, both countries in which Nordic walking has
‘broken through’. In the UK context, the ‘Nordic’ reference is something
of a liability, being more strongly associated with stereotypes of snowy
Scandinavia than with the more diffuse concept of a glowingly healthy
outdoor life.
A second relates to the problem of positioning Nordic walking among
the forms currently popular in the UK. Over the last few years, the market
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for trekking poles,as distinct from Nordic walking sticks,has been developing
steadily.These poles,which are generally shorter and tougher than those
used for Nordic walking, have tips designed to dig into surfaces rather than
push off from them. The technical differences are not so great, but the
image is important. Trekking poles are promoted and marketed as equipment
for those interested in climbing mountains with heavy rucksacks.
Their use makes it easier to go up and down hills and reduces the risk of
damage to the knees. Pairs of modern,lightweight telescopic sticks are now
to be seen in most of the major outdoor shops, on the Pennines and in the
hills of the Lake District. The symbolism and design of the traditional
wooden walking stick have already been challenged by trekking poles and
by the high-profile mountain athletes and thirty-something hikers who use
them. One consequence is that in order to promote Nordic walking,
advocates now have to distinguish between walking and trekking; that is,
between adrenalin and non-adrenalin sports. They have to persuade people
to use pairs of sticks on the flat as well as on the hills and they have to
cultivate a rather different, typically older, market.
As in the early days in Finland, there is the further problem of looking
extremely silly. Reminded of Monty Python’s famous ‘ministry of silly
walks’ sketch, the author of a recent article in the UK magazine Country
Walking admits to ‘feeling fairly ridiculous’ when trying Nordic walking for
the first time (2004: 34). One of our interviewees summed up the problem
in these terms:‘Nordic walking might be okay for Scandinavians who have
a mindset that is more open to self-expression and exercise, but, no, I don’t
think we’ll ever see Nordic walking in Hyde Park.’
One route around these difficulties is to redefine walking not (so much)
as a form of fun, but as a serious means of promoting and preserving health
and wellbeing. If properly handled, professionalized scientific discourses of
health have the power to overcome self-conscious silliness – or, at least, that
is the hope. Quite other considerations come into play when walking is
equated with a trip to the gym or conceptualized as exercise alone.
Promotional material from Leki, the main promoter of Nordic walking in
the UK, emphasizes this aspect: in the right hands, the stick can double up
as a ‘complete gym’, affording all kinds of ‘new’ possibilities for stretching,
training and physical development.
The focus on health is certainly not unique to the UK, but it appears
to be uniquely important in shaping what Nordic walking might become
in this country. The Country Walking article referred to above is entitled,
‘Get Fitter, Lose Weight . . . it’s Easy with Nordic Walking’. The text
continues: ‘If we said you could be healthier without walking any further
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or more often than you do now, would you think we were pulling your
walking-trousered leg? Read on and discover the easiest way ever to a new
you’ (2004: 33). Although Leki’s UK distributors are trying to promote the
sport in many different ways,‘medicalizing’ or at least professionalizing the
activity is one. As well as encouraging doctors to prescribe Nordic walking,
the business of setting up accredited courses run by instructors educated by
‘master trainers’ from other countries is also underway. As we have seen,
themes of health and wellbeing were also important in Finland. There are,
however, important differences in how these ideas work out in practice. In
Finland, the government (via Suomen Latu) was actively involved in
establishing Nordic walking as a means of safeguarding public health. Despite
suggestions that Britain should follow Finland’s example in the battle against
obesity, Bradberry (2004) is not convinced that ‘the great British public’
will willingly embrace an exercise trend‘foisted on them by health experts’.
It is, in any event, difficult to imagine the British government deliberately
promoting Nordic walking in the way it has been done in Finland.
While Nordic walking might yet take off in the UK, the resulting
practice will be significantly marked by a specific configuration of images,
institutions and practitioners. Since there is no equivalent of Suomen Latu
and since there are no UK-based manufacturers of Nordic walking sticks,
the cast of critical actors is quite unlike that involved in Finland. Although
the symbolic ingredients are similar – health, outdoor life, nature – they are
not identical, nor do they knit together in quite the same way. It is, therefore,
possible that the necessary links will not be made on any scale and
that the elements of Nordic walking will never quite cohere.
EXPORTING AND REINVENTING PRODUCTS, CONCEPTS AND PRACTICES
In this section we consider the‘diffusion’of Nordic walking.From an outside
perspective, the practice appears to have spread from Finland to other
countries including Norway, Austria and Germany. As used in innovation
studies, products diffuse as markets expand. In the context of the present
discussion, this understanding of diffusion fails to capture the process of
creative reinvention on the part of thousands of ordinary people involved in
making Nordic walking sticks marketable. As we have tried to show,products
alone have no value.They do so only when integrated into practice and allied
to requisite forms of competence and meaning. In thinking about the
development of Nordic walking it is important to consider the circulation
of images, materials and competences within and between different
countries,cultures and communities.However,what really matters is the way
in which these constitutive elements come together.
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The first sticks specifically designed for Nordic walking were made only
a few years ago and only then as an afterthought. The story is that Exel and
Suomen Latu were preparing a brochure describing the many different
exercises that could be performed with the help of an ordinary skiing stick.
This prompted an engineer at Exel to come up with the idea of producing
a dedicated walking stick specially for the pictures. Few within the company
believed this might be the start of a new product line, but when the sticks
were first displayed at the ISPO 2000 international trade show in Germany,
Exel was nominated for an award in the ‘Brand New – New Brand’
competition. One interviewee recalls the occasion well.‘It was,’ she says,‘so
embarrassing to stay behind our stand. Nobody was interested in us.’
In trying to figure out what has happened since, we have made use of
the following ideas. First, we have worked with the notion that ‘systems
development is not the creation of discrete,intrinsically meaningful objects,
but the cultural production of new forms of practice’(Suchman et al.,1999:
404). In other words,it is the practice that matters. If the concept and reality
of Nordic walking are not in place, there is simply no ‘need’ for new,
specially designed sticks. Second, we have argued that the emergence and
demise of practices have to do with forging and failing links between
materials, images and skills (i.e. the ingredients of any one practice).
These ideas have allowed us to describe the move from a ‘protopractice’
(that is, a practice that has yet to be realized) to an integrated
‘entity’ known as Nordic walking. In Finland, in the mid-1990s, walking
sticks were produced for particularly keen skiers or more commonly for
the infirm. They were made of traditional materials to a traditional design
and there was no special way in which they should be used. At this point,
the practice of Nordic walking barely existed, although most of the
necessary ingredients were in place. In tracking the invention of Nordic
walking, we have reviewed more or less deliberate efforts to build three
critical linkages. For Nordic walking to have the status it does today, new
associations have had to be made, first, between image and skill. In walking
with sticks, practitioners now prove themselves to be competent and skilful
members of a community within which walking (with sticks) and healthy
living go hand-in-hand. Second, and in order to get that far, potential
practitioners have to master a new technique; materials and skills have to
gel. More than that, they have to do so in a way that generates a positive
experience and one that people are keen to reproduce. Third, and perhaps
most challenging of all,the image of walking with sticks has to be rendered
‘normal’ rather than ludicrous. There are different ways in which this can
come about. For Exel, physical fitness appears to be the key. For Suomen
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Latu,public health and positive engagement with the outdoors are the more
dominant themes. Either way, it is important to recognize that the image
of Nordic walking changes depending upon the types and numbers of
people who take it up.
There is no doubt that the success of Nordic walking is in part the
outcome of intentional decisions and actions, including the production and
publication of books, articles and videos. It is no accident that media
coverage has been good or that, as the initiator of the sport, Exel’s share of
the market for Nordic walking sticks in Central Europe is ‘particularly
strong’ (Helsinki Stock Exchange, 2003). Now that Nordic walking is
established as a recognizable activity, Exel has an obvious interest in exporting
it to other countries and this is one aim of the International Nordic
Walking Association set up by Exel.
Exporting walking
Since Nordic walking sticks are only of value when the practice has taken
root, Exel must first export the practice. But is Nordic walking something
that can be picked up and adopted in other cultures and contexts? One
interviewee, currently responsible for training Nordic walking instructors
around the world, is confident that the idea can and will catch on because
the health-related benefits are the same for everyone, wherever they live.
Companies like Exel and Leki are actively involved in marketing sticks and
promoting the conceptual ingredients of Nordic walking (health, wellbeing,
fitness, fun), but, as one of our Exel interviewees acknowledged:
‘When the scale increases, we no longer retain control, for instance, of the
advertising material used abroad.’This is a familiar problem for any organization
trying to sell standardized products in different countries. It is also a
problem that appears in a significantly different light if we turn our
attention from product to practice.
If we conceptualize walking, including Nordic walking, as a socially
situated performance (Goffman, 1976), there is no way in which it can be
‘exported’. There are three reasons for this. First, and most important,
Nordic walking is, in large part, made by the actions and inactions of
potential and actual practitioners. What Nordic walking is and what it
might become in Norway, Japan, the UK and the USA depends upon who
does it, where, when and with what consequence for the positioning and
subsequent trajectory of the activity as a whole. Second, and as the UK
experience demonstrates, the relative positioning of Nordic as opposed to
other kinds of walking is important. In any one country, walking with
sticks exists not in isolation, but with reference to an array of already
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established, culturally specific concepts of fitness, infirmity, wellbeing, silliness
and ‘mild’ nature. The ways in which these elements are configured are
likely to vary from one country to another. Third, the Finnish case suggests
that the links and connections required to establish Nordic walking as a
practice were pieced together by a distinctively close community of key
players (Vierumäki, Exel and Suomen Latu), working with a handful of key
ingredients (existing skills, concepts of nature, health, wellbeing, and so on).
The dynamics of invention are not necessarily the same as those involved in
reinventing a practice that already ‘exists’ elsewhere, but for Nordic walking
to take hold in another context, new links have to be made and old ones
broken. This is again something that has to take place case by case.
Reinventing walking
In fact, Nordic walking is being taken up in a variety of different countries
and contexts. Rather than representing this as a process of diffusion, we
argue that it is better understood as a consequence of its successive reinvention.
The fact that this is possible and that it is happening at such a
rate suggests that many of the necessary elements are already in place. In
underlining the health-related benefits, companies like Exel and Leki seek
to tie Nordic walking to a set of concerns that are already widely shared.
In making these associations and in fuelling the circulation of associated
images,like those of ‘mild nature’,such companies help to create conditions
in which potential practitioners might make the links required to (re)create
versions of Nordic walking in different cultural and social settings.
The terminology of appropriation does not quite capture what is
involved in piecing the necessary elements together. (Re)inventing Nordic
walking in the UK is not simply a matter of importing and adapting the
idea to suit local conditions. For Nordic walking to take root in this
country, manufacturers, potential practitioners, retailers and promoters have
to build what amounts to a new ‘system’. This argument has a number of
general implications. First, it is misleading to conclude that Nordic walking
is spreading to other countries. Instead, new variants of Nordic walking are
emerging in new contexts.
In Japan, Nordic walking is confined to leisure resorts and is certainly
not practiced on the streets. In Germany, Nordic walking is framed as a
safe,risk-free method of engaging with‘mild’nature. By contrast, American
Nordic walking is about body shape and fitness. These national distinctions
are significant for and are to some extent made by producers, retailers and
importers. It is however, important to acknowledge that in contrast to
sports that are defined by rules and regulations, Nordic walking is a
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chameleon-like enterprise. Although we have written about Nordic
walking as a practice in its own right, it is clear that it also functions as a
conduit for a constellation of related and associated practices and concepts
including those of health, beauty, leisure and enjoyment of nature. It is also
clear that these combine in significantly different ways and that Nordic
walking is itself an integrative medium.
Practitioners in Japan, Australia and Germany are consequently
involved in the reproduction of what are, in effect, different practices.
However, these practices have a number of ingredients in common and
there is no doubt that in doing Nordic walking,practitioners also contribute
to the transnational diffusion of Nordic walking not as a practice, but as a
concept.
Products, concepts and practices
We seem to be heading towards a somewhat puzzling conclusion. Having
made the case that products and practices are closely intertwined, we are
now suggesting that commodities (walking sticks), techniques and associated
concepts (wellbeing, mild nature) circulate in ways that practices
(Nordic walking) do not. On reflection, this is not as bizarre a conclusion
as it might at first appear.
To explain why this is so we need to retrace the steps of the argument
we have built through our discussion of Nordic walking. Our first move
was to suggest that new practices consist of new configurations of existing
elements or of new elements in conjunction with those that already exist.
From this point of view, innovations in practice are not simply determined
by the generation of new products, images or skills. What really matters is
the way in which constituent elements fit together. Second, innovations in
practice are ongoing. Similar observations have been made by scholars
working in science and technology studies, particularly those who argue
that ‘invention’ frequently continues through the process of diffusion
(Bijker, 1992, 1997). We want to relate these conclusions to the more
general point that practices – new or not – require continual reproduction.
If Nordic walking is to exist, people have to do it. More than that, what
Nordic walking ‘is’ and what it becomes depend, in part, on who does it
and on when, where and how it is done. It is in this sense that practices are
inherently dynamic. Third, we make the point that in all of this, practitioners
are at least as important as producers; it is, after all, they who are
the ‘carriers’ of the practice. Companies like Exel and Leki can make
Nordic walking sticks, but however hard they try, they simply cannot make
Nordic walking happen.
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If we accept the first and second points, it is impossible to conceive of
the diffusion of practice. Practices like Nordic walking are always ‘homegrown’,
woven together, maybe with new ingredients, but always against
the backdrop of previous, related and associated ways of ‘doing’ – in this
case, ways of ‘doing walking’. It is nonetheless possible to describe and
analyse the circulation of new products and concepts. The Nordic walking
stands at the ISPO shows really are part of a process that is important for
the diffusion not of Nordic walking as such, but of the requisite skills,
concepts and equipment. With these ideas in circulation, the chances of
reinventing Nordic walking increase.
This analysis helps make sense of what it is that companies do when
promoting products, the value of which supposes the parallel existence of
meaningful social practice. In effect, they promote the diffusion of the
elements or ingredients of which practices are made. This analysis has the
further effect of reminding us that consumers and producers are both
involved in constituting and reproducing practices, the successful
accomplishment of which entails specific forms of consumption. From this
point of view, discussions about how consumer goods are appropriated and
domesticated do not go quite far enough. What is missing, but what is
required,is a more encompassing account of the co-production of practice.
To conclude,we have used the case of Nordic walking to explore new ways
of thinking about the development of practices and the diffusion of
products and technologies associated with them. In the process, we have
shown something of how conventions of participation develop and how
practices are shaped by actual, potential and previous practitioners as well
as by producers. Consistent with our interpretation of practice as a process
of integration, we suggest that configurations of image, stuff and skill
continue to co-evolve. On both counts, we argue for a more dynamic
theory of material and consumer culture and for one that takes due account
of the fact that things are used in, for and as part of practice.
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Elizabeth Shove is a reader in Sociology at Lancaster University. Her current research has to
do with the relation between ordinary consumption, technology and practice. Address:
Department of Sociology, County South, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YD, UK.
[email: e.shove@lancaster.ac.uk]
Mika Pantzar is Head of Research at the National Consumer Research Centre in Finland. He is
interested in the ways that needs are created and invented both by businesses and consumers.
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