Backpaking lifestyle
Whilst social scientists dispute just how ‘new’ mobilities are to our lives (Creswell, 2010;
Sheller & Urry, 2006), less disputable is that globalisation, with mobility as a crucial
characteristic, is leading to different ways of understanding identities and relating to place. As
such, the current paper not only contributes the first empirical material to advance past
speculative evidence that backpacking can extend to a way life (Noy & Cohen, 2005; Welk,
2004; Westerhausen, 2002), but it also contextualises this form of lifestyle travel within a
wider discussion in the social sciences of how physical mobility can affect and challenge the
ways in which we experience ourselves, others and places over time. Based on ethnographic
interviews with lifestyle travellers in India and Thailand in 2007, I use theory on lifestyle
consumption to frame a nuanced understanding of the practices, ideologies and social identity
annaabi.ee 
