Title: Tourism ‘things’: The travelling performance of the backpack
Abstract: The study of material culture is gathering momentum in tourism research. The following article illustrates the performance of the backpack in backpacking travel. On extended trips from home, backpackers depend on various objects and other material ‘things’ to guide and assist in their journeys. Amongst these ‘things’, the backpack is one of the most important. This material object is synonymous with backpacking travel. In the article, however, the authors depart from the level of symbolism and propose that this object is performative within backpacking. Through reflection on their own experiences of travel, the authors show that a large part of backpacker identity creation and embodied performance is tied to the performative effects of the backpacks that backpackers carry with them. In short, the article proposes that these material objects do important things. But what do they do? In what ways do these objects perform? These fundamental questions give rise to the authors’ call to follow innovative leads in contemporary discussions of materiality to account for the social performance of tourism ‘things’.
Publication Year: 2009
Publication Date: 2009-12-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 37
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