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Since Thomas Kuhn's (1962) discussion of scientific revolutions, philosophers of science have defined the appropriate unit of analysis for exploring a research tradition as its macrostructure (Anderson, 1986). This macrostructure is composed of the normative philosophical commitments that are accepted in a research tradition without direct empirical support (Hudson and Ozanne, 1988). While a discussion concerning the normative philosophy of scientific paradigms has been opened in leisure research, the discipline has not yet explored models for making paradigmatic commitments explicit. The primary goal of this dissertation is to illustrate how one such model can be applied to wildland recreation research. Secondary goals are to introduce the normative commitments of an interpretive paradigm (productive hermeneutics) and to outline a hermeneutic research program for exploring leisure experience and relationship to resource. The core of the model of the macrostructure of science is Laudan's (1984) Reticulated Model of Scientific Rationality. This model describes scientific paradigms in terms of three interdependent sets of normative commitments: ontology (assumptions about reality and human nature), epistemology (assumptions about the nature, methods, and limits of knowledge), and axiology (the over-riding goals of a paradi~m). This model can be used to evaluate the "internal consistency" of the various commitments adopted by research programs and to match assumptions about the phenomena being studied to appropriate paradigms. The productive hermeneutic paradigm maintains that studying human action is more similar to interpreting texts than to gaining empirical knowledge of objects in nature. It is best described as a meaning-based model which: portrays humans as actively engaged in the construction of meaning as opposed to sin1ply responding to information that exists in the environment; focuses on idiosyncratic meaning rather than generic personality variables (e.g., past experience); and views experience as an emergent narrative rather than a predictable outcome. Its philosophical commitments are suited for studying phenomena that are unstructured, highly contextual, unpredictable, and characterized by meaning that changes across time and individuals (e.g., behavior linked to expressive, spiritual, and symbolic issues). / Ph. D.

The interpretation of landscape, the significance of walking and the relationships that exist between them are rarely considered or critically examined in much of leisure research or outdoor pedagogic practice, despite their significance within other fields of academic study such as anthropology and cultural geography. This research seeks to explore how a variety of landscapes are perceived, how cultural and social interpretations influence this perception, and whether these interpretations may be re-envisioned by walking, or wayfaring, as an alternate way of making understandings and meanings with landscape. In exploring the disparate interpretations surrounding landscape, the concept of place and its specificity comes to the fore, as does the importance of the relationship between walking and how we make sense of place. A mixed methodological approach is employed to explore this relationship, combining auto-ethnography, phenomenology and the practice of walking itself. Utilising written notes, photographs, and recordings of personal observations and impressions made whilst on a combination of single and multi-day walks in a variety of locales both familiar and unknown in England, a series of reflective narratives were produced. These narratives serve to describe the experiences gained whilst wayfaring, and provide the data through which critical consideration is given regarding how landscape and place are interpreted in cultural and social contexts. Themes emergent from the narratives and discussed include psychogeography and the urban environment, countryside and suburbanisation, and landscape as amenity. In addition, consideration is given to stories of place, authenticity of place, the changing demographics of walkers, walking alone and with others, walking in different types of landscape, and the significance of paths. Key findings are that landscape is increasingly becoming places of consumption through practices of conservation, urbanisation, heritage and recreational amenity that produce a homogenous and hybridised character, and reflects an urban sensibility in regards to rural culture and nature. This might be resisted by walking where an engagement with the sedimented characteristics of a taskscape and its multi-generational footpaths are experienced. Such an embodied practice is a meaningful activity that might be understood through the concept of existential authenticity and, particularly with regards to long distance walking, might be 3 recognised as having components similar to that of pilgrimage. Furthermore, it is suggested that wayfaring offers an alternate perspective as a practice in the development of a particular relationship with landscape and place and has profound implications for outdoor pedagogic practice.