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Abstract

Although the concept of lifestyle is gaining speed as a theoretical tool in the social sciences, it has not yet been used as a level of social analysis within the field of tourism. This presentation uses theory on lifestyle to conceptualise and subsequently empirically illustrate a tourism niche that has also received scant attention within the academe, that of lifestyle travellers. Lifestyle traveller is a social category representing individuals with extended engagement in corporeal mobility as a style of life, in this case through the mode of backpacking. I illustrate the practice of tourism as a lifestyle through empirical material drawn from ethnographic interviews carried out with backpackers in northern India and southern Thailand in 2007. The findings suggest that certain individuals move beyond the practice of backpacking as part of a transitional phase or time-out from ‘normal’ life and instead style their lives around an ongoing involvement with backpacker tourism. This practice of tourism as a lifestyle choice intersects with issues of identity and expressivity that come to the fore in late modernity. A theoretical implication of this research is that former related, but arguably outmoded, social categories within tourism, such as that of E. Cohen’s (1972) ‘drifter’, should be replaced by a contemporary description of lifestyle travellers.

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• Lifestyle travellers: backpacker tourism as a style of living. (deposited 25 Apr 2010 12:44)
  • Lifestyle travellers: backpacker tourism as a style of living. (deposited 16 Nov 2010 08:18) [Currently Displayed]