Backpaking lifestyle
produce ‘superior cultural capital over and against others’. Andreas (Swedish, 25), for
example, used his consumption of ‘exotic’ foods as a way to try to distinguish himself from
his friends in Sweden: ‘I go home and I have a completely different taste because I’ve tasted
foods from across the world that they might never have heard of.’
The participants more often embody performances of what has been referred to as
‘mundane cosmopolitanisms’ (Skrbis et al., 2004). Their day-to-day ‘actually existing
cosmopolitanisms’ (Germann Molz, 2006) manifested mainly in the consumption of regional
cuisine and, for the many not choosing basic casual clothing, the wearing of romanticised
versions of ‘ethnic’ dress. Within Hottola’s (2008) study of diversity in backpacker dress
styles, this latter attire largely reflects the ‘countercultural’ category, in which loose-fitting
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