Beyond the Beach - An Ethnography of Modern Travellers in Asia

New Book Announcement

The following book has been published by White Lotus:

Beyond the Beach: An Ethnography of Modern Travellers in Asia

The book combines an ethnographic study of Western Backpackers in Asia with case studies from locations made famous by Alec Garland's novel "The Beach". It's aim is to illustrate the everyday lives of International Backpackers on the road and to investigate Strategies for the Sustainable Development of the Alternative Tourism Destinations they visit. An abstract is attached below.

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Beyond the Beach:

An Ethnography of Modern Travellers in Asia.

Studies in Asian Tourism No. 2. Series Editor: Erik Cohen

Abstract

Drifter-style tourism in Asia has become a sanitised and institutionalized tourism alternative. Over the last thirty years it has developed its own tourism myth and spawned a mobile subculture of Western travellers. The study seeks to illustrate the historical background, nature and ideology of present day travellers in Asia and to present an "insiders view" of the subculture based on more than 6o in-depth interviews conducted during the fieldwork.

It will also document the impact of those travelers on destinations in Asia by chronicling the fate of the islands Koh Samui and Koh Phangan in Southern Thailand. Those islands, at one stage or another, were among the largest traveller-centres in Southeast Asia and have subsequently achieved Hollywood Fame through Alex Garland's popular novel "The Beach".

However, even without Hollywood, Asia's traveller subculture is worth attention. With rapidly increasing numbers, it now represents a viable market in its own right, one that fits in well with an ecologically sustainable tourism product. However, development of this tourism alternative is being undermined by unsustainable growth due to a lack of planning and by the destruction of its destination sites by other tourism sectors. Experience shows that without advance strategies for their development, many of those sites develop either in an unsustainable sectors. This state of affairs has been instrumental in condemning travellers to remain always just one step ahead of conventional mass tourism.

Keywords:

Backpackers-Asia-Sustainable-Development-Thailand-Islands–Tourism-
The Beach
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Bibliographical Reference:

Westerhausen, Klaus:
Beyond the Beach: An Ethnography of Modern Travellers in Asia.
Studies in Asian Tourism No. 2.
Series Editor: Erik Cohen(Bangkok 2002)
ISBN 974-4800-09-7
Publisher:White Lotus Press
http://www.thailine.com/lotus
http://www.thailine.com/lotus/studies-asian/studies-asian.htm
Now available in the USA from:

George Dalley
Dalley Book Service
90 Kimball Lane
Christiansburg VA 24073
Tel: 540-382-8949 Fax: 540-382-1728
http://www.dalleybookservice.com

http://www.usedbookcentral.com/cgi-bin/texis/scripts/ubc/searchbooks.html?sid=10165&;author=westerhausen&title=&keywords2=&minp=&maxp=

e-mail: gdalley@dalleybookservice.com









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