Young backpackers and the rite of passage of travel : examining the transformative effects of liminality

The notion that travel can result in change, renewal or greater self-awareness is, as these statements from young backpackers and the theme of this collection suggest, enduring. Travel is considered by many to be a fecund space, a space that is ripe with possibility. Indeed, journeys, touristic and otherwise, are firmly fixed in the cultural consciousness as avenues by which new experience and, by extension, new knowledge can be sought and found. Correspondingly, as a number of scholars have pointed out (see for example, Bauman 1996, Elsmd 2001, MacCannell 1989), pilgrims, pioneers, explorers, sailors, tramps, hikers, exiles, nomads, tourists and wanderers litter our histories, our cultural outputs and our imaginings as symbols of freedom, adventure, progress and discovery.