Beyond the common: being in/with the snowy mountain bike trails

ABSTRACT
This paper draws attention to the somewhat neglected domain of mountain biking activity on snowy trails in the study of the commons and organization studies. The paper argues that an MTB company that does business in an unusual way can act as a commoner. Its performances, the construction of snow trails, and the guided bike tours are performances of commoning practices. In exploring the trailscape performances, the study uses a posthuman practice theory approach that combines the commons-literature with scholarship on the body, the senses, and movement. The analysis from four-year sensory ethnographic fieldwork details how different carriers of practice (builder/biker, snow, weather, technology) encounter each other, their actions meet, and their practicing bodies intra-act on a snowy trail. These interplays create a temporally folding, practice-cantered becoming in the more-than-human MTB commons assemblage. The assemblage sheds light on how a corporate-made snow MTB trail becomes a place of commons co-constituted in the dynamic encounters between humans and the more-than-human material world and in the organizational place work practices that nurture these relationships. It also explains how the place of commons, and the practice of commoning, can be extended.