Israeli Backpackers: From Tourism to Rite of Passage (Israeli Studies) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0791464970 ISBN 13: 9780791464977

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 2005

Synopsis

Examines the backpacking trip usually taken by Israeli youth following military service.

In the period after their military service, Jewish Israeli youth customarily embark on a unique touristic practice: the backpacking trip. Combining sociological, anthropological, and psychological research-based on innovative fieldwork conducted with Israeli backpackers in Israel and abroad-this book depicts the complex relationship between the traveling youth and their society of origin. Via a perspective the editors term "outside-in," we learn how social and cultural tensions and tenets, identities, fantasies, and preoccupations are acted out within a symbolic, touristic space by scores of Israeli youth.

About this title

About the Author

Chaim Noy teaches in the Department of Communication at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Erik Cohen is George S. Wise Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is the author of many books, including Contemporary Tourism: Diversity and Change.

From the Back Cover

In the period after their military service, Jewish Israeli youth customarily embark on a unique touristic practice: the backpacking trip. Combining sociological, anthropological, and psychological research-based on innovative fieldwork conducted with Israeli backpackers in Israel and abroad-this book depicts the complex relationship between the traveling youth and their society of origin. Via a perspective the editors term "outside-in," we learn how social and cultural tensions and tenets, identities, fantasies, and preoccupations are acted out within a symbolic, touristic space by scores of Israeli youth.

"These studies touch on central issues in the study of contemporary global youth culture. They elaborate in illuminating ways how Israeli identity is reproduced and reinvented 'away from home.' In-depth, analytically rich, and lively, Israeli Backpackers addresses important questions in the fields of Israeli and Jewish studies, the anthropology of tourism, and the cultural study of travel and place making." - Tamar Katriel, author of Dialogic Moments: From Soul Talks to Talk Radio in Israeli Culture

"This volume underlines the extent to which people carry their identities with them as psychological baggage on their journey. The differing reactions to being apparently freed of the constraints of everyday social contexts is illuminating, as in the development of rituals and structures to maintain an 'imagined community.' This is a major contribution to the debate on the formation, maintenance, and transformation of social bonds in mobile, postmodern societies." - Greg Richards, editor of Cultural Attractions and European Tourism

Contributors include Lisa Anteby-Yemini, Dalit Bloch-Tzemach, Erik Cohen, Jackie Feldman, Ayana Shira Haviv, Darya Maoz, and Chaim Noy.

Edition details

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0791464970
• ISBN 13: 9780791464977
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 268
• Editor: Noy Chaim, Cohen Erik