Review of Becoming and being a camp counsellor: Discourse, power relations and emotions by Mandi Baker
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Review of Becoming and being a camp counsellor: Discourse, power relations and emotions by Mandi Baker Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, ISBN 978-3-030-32500-8 (HB), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32501-5 Robert P. Warner 1 Accepted: 13 September 2020/ # Outdoor Education Australia 2020
As a self-proclaimed ‘camp lifer’, Baker (2020) asserts that although recreational summer camp can be an exceptional place for fun and growth, these discourses, and the assumptions that undergird them, should not go unquestioned. Based on her extensive investigation of camp counsellors and the recreational summer camp industry in Canada, Baker shares a behind-the-scenes look at what becoming and being a camp counsellor is really all about. Going beyond the surface-level glitz and glamour of what is often viewed as less than a ‘real job’, Baker uses a post-structural approach to problematize the assumptions on which camp counsellor work is built, while sounding a call to action to camp professionals and researchers alike. Grounded in research and critical analysis, Becoming and Being a Camp Counsellor will be of interest to seasoned camp scholars, university students, and curious others eager to look beyond arts and crafts and evening campfire songs to expand their understanding of the camp counsellor experience. Becoming and Being a Camp Counsellor is an insightful, thought-provoking, and novel investigation of the recreational summer camp experience. Through an approach seldom used in camp research, Baker provides evidence of the myriad ways the camp industry and individual camps have created and maintained discourses that control the young people who spend their summers working as camp counsellors. Baker’s robust synthesis and critique of camp literature serve as both the impetus for her research as well as an unsettling of common understandings of camp. In doing so, Baker provides evidence of how researchers, and the camp industry more generally, have overlooked significant aspects of what it means to both become and be a summer camp counsellor.
* Robert P. Warner [email protected]
1
Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism, University of Utah, 270 S 1400 E, Rm 218, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA
Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education
Notably, Baker problematizes the assumptions on which the industry was built and the systems in place perpetuating a potentially harmful narrative and discourse. Baker carefully arranged her book into eight chapters, each of which will rattle readers’ perceptions of camp and the experiences of camp counselling. The chapters are as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
Introduction A Genealogy of Summer Camp Rethinking Camp Counsellor Experiences Discursive Productions of Camp Selves Becoming a Camp Counsellor: Everyday Power and Processes of Subjectification Being a Camp Counsellor: Emotions at Work Conclusions Reflections
After setting the stage in the introduction, Baker tells stories of summer camp through a review and critique of camp literature. For many readers – especially those st
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