Backpaking lifestyle
lifestyles as products of the same post-industrial period they can be used to analyse (Binkley,
2004). Lifestyles are central to debates about consumer culture and are often ‘articulated in
relation to shifts identified with post-Fordism and/or postmodernism’ (Bell & Hollows, 2006,
p. 1). Historical shifts from mass to specialised production in the context of urbanisation saw
western class distinctions begin to destabilise and a concurrent rise in niche consumption
practices as a means of symbolically conveying personal style (ibid). With a decline in
identities based on logics of production and tradition, Shields (1992) suggests selves are
instead increasingly fashioned and differentiated through aesthetic consumption practices.
Distinctive consumption becomes a life project wherein ‘the particularity of the assemblage of
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