week 2 Backpacking

Backpacking - Backpacks allow people to walk (or run, or paddle, or ski) while carrying a heavy load - Military requirements and programmes played a key role in the development of backpacks - Backpacking describes a combination of hiking and camping, often in ‘remote’ or ‘wilderness’ areas, also a certain mode of travel - Today backpacking is an object of study and market niche - If backpacking describes a mode of travel, then a series of governmental technologies make backpacking (im)possible , from passports to visa programmes - Series of developments make backpacking relatively easy - Like travel guides and agents helping plan a trip - Relatively cheap flight, public transport and backpacks enable backpackers to move along trails - Hostels, food outlets, vaccs, sunscreen help to be more comfortable - Credit cards, phones, DVDS - Backpacking and many things are one with each of its own unique history that came together in the achievement and reproduction of what we call globalization - Demands for connectedness help produce networked places - Backpackers bring home stories and skills - It is creative of immobility in that backpackers fix people and places through their representations Bonus text- Backpacking - Backpacks have a military origin - Norway in 1908 – for Norwegian Army - Linked to mobility (access to resources), processed food, modern travel - Currently a combination of hiking and camping in remote our wilderness areas - Primarily an affluent Western phenomenon? (backpacking) in (Australia, New Zealand, Canada, UK, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Israel and Japan) - common trails and enclaves in Bangkok, Bali, Sydney - Common practices, objects, stories, videos and risks/dangers Teachers notes- Backpacking - Government policies make backpacking desirable - youth work visas abroad (18-30), industries, travel guides, agents that help to facilitate this, decreased prices in the South - Backpacking as a form of globalization - Not paid work, not everyday life - destruction of societies and environments - tension between the immobility of locals and the mobility of the backpacker