Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
- Foreword
- 1 African dynamics of cultural tourism
- PART I CULTURE, IDENTITY & TOURISM
- PART II AT THE FRINGE OF THE PARKS
- PART III INTENSIVE CONTACT
- 11 Backpacking in Africa
- 12 ‘I'm not a tourist. I'm a volunteer’: Tourism, development and international volunteerism in Ghana
- 13 Becoming ‘real African kings & queens’: Chieftaincy, culture, & tourism in Ghana
- 14 Sex trade & tourism in Kenya: Close encounters between the hosts & the hosted
- 15 Host–guest encounters in a Gambian ‘love’ bubble
- AFTERWORD: Trouble in the bubble: Comparing African tourism with the Andes trail
- NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
- INDEX
11 - Backpacking in Africa
from PART III - INTENSIVE CONTACT
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
- Foreword
- 1 African dynamics of cultural tourism
- PART I CULTURE, IDENTITY & TOURISM
- PART II AT THE FRINGE OF THE PARKS
- PART III INTENSIVE CONTACT
- 11 Backpacking in Africa
- 12 ‘I'm not a tourist. I'm a volunteer’: Tourism, development and international volunteerism in Ghana
- 13 Becoming ‘real African kings & queens’: Chieftaincy, culture, & tourism in Ghana
- 14 Sex trade & tourism in Kenya: Close encounters between the hosts & the hosted
- 15 Host–guest encounters in a Gambian ‘love’ bubble
- AFTERWORD: Trouble in the bubble: Comparing African tourism with the Andes trail
- NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
- INDEX
Summary
Introduction
Backpacker tourism is a recent phenomenon that originated in the 1960s and 1970s and expanded exponentially in the 1990s. The emergence of backpacking as a large-scale contemporary tourism phenomenon is related to certain distinctive traits in Western societies and the position of youth in them. In the early days, Cohen differentiated between non-institutionalised tourists and their institutionalised counterparts. The latter complied with the conventional features of mass tourism, particularly in their preference for being confined to the Western ‘environmental bubble’ or ‘tourist bubble’, while the former were referred to as ‘drifters’ or ‘nomads’. A variety of names have been used in the literature since then to describe the drifter or nomad-style traveller, but studies in recent years have tended to refer to them as ‘backpackers’. Pearce is thought to have coined the term.
Most definitions of backpackers refer to ‘form-related’ attributes of tourism, as opposed to ‘type-related ones’. Forms refer to visible institutional arrangements and practices by which tourists organise their journey: the length of the trip, the flexibility of the itinerary, the destinations and attractions to be visited, the means of transportation and accommodation, and contact with local people. A frequently used, predominantly form-related definition is offered by Loker-Murphy & Pearce who see backpackers as young and budget-minded tourists who exhibit a preference for inexpensive accommodation, place an emphasis on meeting other people (locals and outsiders), have independently organised and flexible itineraries, take longer rather than brief vacations, and stress informal and participatory recreational activities.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- African Hosts and their GuestsCultural Dynamics of Tourism, pp. 225 - 238Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012