This project examines how three groups in a winter resort town develop criteria of distinction through their everyday interactions. These groups—working-class locals, ski bums from privileged backgrounds holding low-wage jobs, and wealthy vacationers—each employ the idea of “nature” to distinguish themselves. Locals perform their perceived connection to “nature”—their interaction with and dependence on physical surroundings—to ski bums. Ski bums then draw on prior knowledge to redefine “nature,” stressing its separation from humans, in order to apply it as a criterion of exclusion back toward the locals. Vacationers adopt a similar definition and use it to ally themselves with the ski bums, exclude the locals, and establish their own legitimacy. Challenging most models of cultural diffusion, the privileged ski bums and vacationers implicitly recognize the terms of distinction set by the marginalized locals, indicating that group’s potential for cultural innovation.
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