Backpaking lifestyle
goods, clothes, practices, experiences, appearance and bodily dispositions’ are designed
together into a lifestyle (Featherstone, 1987, p. 59). Lifestyle practices such as habits of
dressing, what to eat, how to spend leisure time and even ‘favoured milieux’ become
‘decisions not only about how to act but who to be’ (Giddens, 1991, p. 81).
As increased consumer choice may afford a dizzying array of life options (Gergen, 1991),
the stylising of a distinctive mode of living also promises the opportunity to anchor one’s self
amidst the cacophony of liquid modernity (Bauman, 2000). Featherstone (1987) does
question, however, whether lifestyles actually cut across structures such as class and culture,
as the politics of consumption are still mired in economic asymmetries. Nonetheless, Giddens
(1991) offers that the more post-traditional and fragmented the context, the more lifestyle
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