Backpaking lifestyle
ways of understanding identities and relating to place.
Keywords: lifestyle consumption; backpacker; mobility; drifter; identity
INTRODUCTION
Within the social world of backpacking, there exist a small proportion of tourists who
travel as a lifestyle for years on end. Reminiscent of Cohen’s (1972) seminal ‘drifter tourists’,
but subverting connotations of aimlessness implicit in this term, these extreme tourists, who I
reconceptualise as ‘lifestyle travellers’, move beyond an episodic consumption of
backpacking. Backpacking is instead extended to an ongoing lifestyle practice that on a micro
level provides both a unique sense of self to its practitioners and on a macro level comprises a
distinct and recognisable social identity. Lifestyle travel in a broader sense can take on
different forms, whether, for instance, through backpacking, ocean yacht cruising (Macbeth,
2000) or caravanning (White & White, 2004)
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