Research On Group Identity Of Backpacker Subculture

In recent decade, backpacker tourism was quietly emerging in China with a high speed development. However, domestic academia didn’t pay enough attention to the phenomenon, and few people were concerned with it. On the contrary, backpacker tourism has gained close attention abroad, since1970s. Foreign sociologists studied the phenomenon of backpacker tourism from the angle of sociology, anthropology, geography, and achieved fruitful results. With the theory of group identity as the analysis framework, this article adopts participant observation, unstandardized interviews, and literature analysis method to analyze the group of domestic backpackers, based on plentiful empirical investigations. In this paper, I analyze the process of people identify the group of backpacker, and summary the characteristics and connotations of backpacker subculture, give a deep think on social modernity. The thesis consists of six chapters.Chapter one introduces the origin of my theme, and the study of the significance of backpacker tourist, the comparing of the study results between the countries, and the translation of the concepts of backpacker tourism, subculture and so on. Chapter two is the foreshadowing of the whole text, it concludes the development of the subculture of domestic backpacker tourism, and summarizes the characters of them, based on the writer’s empirical investigations. Chapter three, chapter four, and chapter five are the main parts of my thesis, with the theory of group identity as the analyze framework, I analyze the process of backpackers getting identification, from social categorization to social comparison, from identity construction to identity constitution or reconstruction. It is also the process of backpackers wonder, test, establish group, strengthening and rebuilt the value and behavior convention. During the whole process, social modernity has a very great influence. Chapter six is the conclusion of whole thesis, it points out the characteristics and connotations of backpacker subculture, backpacker subculture encourages people to explore, to self-discover and find out the reality of society underneath the constraint of social institution. It advocates for pursuing simple life without money and power, which is different from popular life style. The fast development of backpacker subculture in China is the result of social modernism, it exposes that rational modernism dose has an obvious effect on humans.