Drifting towards the global nomad

According to James Clifford (1997: 1) travel is arguably an integral part of the postmodern ‘new world order of mobility’. Society as a whole is becoming more restless and mobile, in contrast to the relatively rigid patterns of modernity. One of the cultural symbols of this increasingly mobile world is the backpacker. Backpackers are to be found in every corner of the globe, fromremote villages in the Hindu Kush to the centres of London or Paris. They carry with them not only the emblematic physical baggage that gives them their name, but their cultural baggage as well. Their path is scattered with the trappings of the backpacker culture – banana pancakes, bars with ‘video nights’ and cheap hostels (Iyer, 1988). The questions that this book sets out to examine arewhydo somanypeople become ‘global nomads’, what do they gain from their travel, and what impact do they have on the places they visit? The varied contributions to this debate analyse both the theoretical implications of the backpacker phenomenon and the practical implications that it has for tourist destinations, local communities and policy makers.