Morality in the mountains: risk, responsibility, and neoliberalism in newspaper accounts of backcountry rescue

Abstract

In this article, we analyze Canadian newspaper coverage of recent events in which backcountry adventurers have found themselves in need of assistance from rescue organizations. We interrogate discourses of risk and responsibility, exploring the ways in which the media constructs these backcountry enthusiasts as responsible to and for specific (e.g., family) and generalized (e.g., society) others. These discourses, we argue, produce and reproduce neoliberal notions of risk management, constructing citizens as responsible for managing their ‘‘risk profiles.’’