Backpacker: a social and personal constitution of “backpacking”

Abstract

This article discusses and presents the social and personal representation of the contemporary backpacker, approaching the historical-social-academic construction and the backpacker’s perspective, from the multiple views about the travelers and the act of traveling. Starting from the approach / differentiation between tourists and travelers, and changing the economic focus of the trips to the relational aspect, this research enters the subjective world of backpackers revealing their identity construction. This intrinsic relationship between subject-action, traveler-trip, which move the subjecton discontinuous time / space and causes, by the otherness experience, a double strangeness in being different from one self and the other, makes the backpacker’s practise, as well as analternative way to travel, a life time experience and represent a way of being in the world: being backpacker. To reach the meanings of this human experience, we used a qualitative approach with multiple research methods: literature search; Field research with field observation; Semi-structured interviews; Snowball sampling and data analysis.