networks and tourism: mobile social life

Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 34, No. 1, pp. 244–262, 20070160-7383/$ - see front matter � 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Printed in Great Britain

doi:10.1016/j.annals.2006.08.002www.elsevier.com/locate/atoures

NETWORKS AND TOURISMMobile Social Life

Jonas LarsenRoskilde University, Denmark

John UrryLancaster University, UK

Kay W. AxhausenETH, Institute for Transport Planning and Systems, Switzerland

Abstract: This article shows that much tourism should no longer be seen as marginal andby implication ‘‘unnecessary’’. Rather, traveling, visiting, and hosting are necessary to sociallife conducted at-a-distance. It is argued here that research has neglected issues of socialityand corporeal copresence and thereby overlooked how more and more tourism is concernedwith (re)producing social networks—with (re)visiting and receiving the hospitality of friendsand kin living elsewhere and fulfilling social obligations. The article documents how muchtourism is not an isolated ‘‘exotic island’’ but a significant set of relations connecting andreconnecting ‘‘disconnected’’ people in face-to-face proximities where obligations andpleasures can go hand in hand. Keywords: mobility, social networks, proximities, obligations,visiting. � 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Resume: Reseaux et tourisme: vie sociale mobile. Cet article montre que le tourisme nedevrait pas etre vu comme marginal et donc «inutile». Voyager, rendre visite et recevoir sontplutot necessaires a une vie sociale a distance. On soutient que la recherche a neglige lesquestions de la sociabilite, la co-presence corporelle et le fait que de plus en plus de tourismeest une affaire de (re) produire des reseaux sociaux – de rendre visite et de recevoir l’hospit-alite de la famille et des amis qui habitent ailleurs et de remplir des obligations sociales. L’arti-cle montre que beaucoup de tourisme n’est pas une «ıle exotique» mais un ensemble derelations entre personnes «deconnectees» dans des proximites «face-a-face» ou obligationset plaisir peuvent aller de pair. Mots-cles: mobilite, reseaux sociaux, proximites, obligations,visites. � 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

The last decade or so has seen striking increases in tourism in gen-eral, business tourism, and migration, and in communications at-a-dis-tance through mobile phone calls, text messaging, emailing,videoconferences, and so on. The rich societies of the West and Northhave experienced a remarkable ‘‘time-space compression’’ (Harvey

Jonas Larsen (Department for Geography, Roskilde University, postbox 260, 4000Roskilde, Denmark. Email <[email protected]>) publishes articles on photography and is co-author of Performing Tourist Places. John Urry’s books include The Tourist Gaze, PerformingTourist Places, and Tourism Mobilities: Places to Play, Places in Play. Kay Axhausen publishes inTransport Reviews, Transport Policy and Transportation. Together they have co-authoredMobilities, Networks and Geographies.

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1989:240), as people can travel to and connect with absent others fas-ter, and more conveniently and cheaply than before. Such societiesseem to have shifted from little boxes, where there was strong, overlap-ping membership of different social groups, to a system of networkswhere connections are spatially dispersed and membership in one doesnot necessarily overlap with others (Wellman 2002). ‘‘Time-space com-pression’’ can also involve ‘‘time-space distanciation’’ (Giddens1990:18–19) or the spatial stretching of social networks. More peopleon the move, in search of work, education, love, peace, and home, haveclose connections with others at-a-distance and they must travel consid-erable distances to visit and to receive the hospitality of their closefriends and family members (Urry 2000).

As Franklin and Crang argue, ‘‘it seems almost impossible not to seetourist studies as one of the most exciting and relevant topics in thesetransnational times . . . and yet it is not’’ (2001:5). This is partly becausemainstream research still treat tourism as a predominantly exotic set ofspecialized consumer products that occur at specific places and times.By contrast, this article shows that tourism studies should be of widerrelevance to the social sciences because tourism, visits, and hospitalityhave moved to the center stage of many people’s more mobile lives. Itis demonstrated that the practices and meanings of tourism multiplyand move into other aspects of mobility and social life: through busi-ness tourism, migration, family life, and friendship. Studies have mostlyneglected issues of sociality and copresence and overlooked how muchtourism is concerned with (re)producing social relations.

Aggregate statistical data partly document the changing significanceof tourism for visiting friends and relatives. World Tourism Organiza-tion statistics show that in 2001 there were 154 million internationalarrivals for ‘‘VFR [visiting friends and relatives] health, religion,other’’, compared with 74 million in 1990. The average annual growthwas 8.5%. In the same period, conventional trips undertaken for‘‘leisure, recreation and holidays’’ only increased 4.2% per annum.In 1990 there were five times more ‘‘leisure, recreation and holidays’’tourists than ‘‘VFR, health, religion, other’’ tourists; but by 2001 thisreduced to a little more than twice as many (WTO 2005). This turnto the ‘‘social’’ can be seen in relationship to recent international arriv-als to the United Kingdom. While holiday visits to this country between1999–2003 fell 1.8 million to 8.0 million, visits to friends or relatives in-creased by 1.3 million to 7.0 million. Thus, almost as many interna-tional tourists state that they visit the United Kingdom to see theirdaughter or their best friend as to visit Big Ben or the Lake District(Travel Trends 2004). Connections at-a-distance are widespread andtravel to meet with significant others is more feasible, as many placesare within reach quickly and cheaply.

This indicates that much tourism should not necessarily be seen asmarginal. Rather traveling, visiting, and hosting are necessary to muchsocial life conducted at-a-distance. This article argues that tourismoften involves connections with, rather than escape from, social rela-tions and the multiple obligations of everyday social life (this argumentpartly critiques Urry 1990). It de-exoticizes the understanding of

246 NETWORKS AND TOURISM

tourism, it discusses how social obligations and the need for proximityto significant others generate tourism, and how it is coupled with itsother forms. It draws upon research on social networks and mobilityamong youngish employees in the northwest of England to analyzehow such people use tourism to connect their social networks.

Here tourism is taken to refer to all kind of non-work-related physicaltravel that results in at least one overnight stay away from home, but forno more than a year. This definition roughly distinguishes it from daytrips, business tourism, and migration. Yet the nature of tourism willnot be effectively examined by drawing inappropriate borders around it.

DE-EXOTICISING TOURISM

Much early theory defines the nature of tourism through some ratherfixed dualisms: leisure as opposed to work, away as opposed to home,authenticity as opposed to inauthenticity, the extraordinary as opposedto the ordinary, and guest as opposed to host (Cohen 1972; MacCan-nell 1976; Smith 1978; Urry 1990). These distinctions identify worth-while places or moments of the ‘‘tourist gaze’’. Cohen argued that‘‘tourism is essentially a temporary reversal of everyday activities—it isa no-work, no-care, no-thrift situation’’ (1972:181). The tourism escapeis portrayed as special event (such as the annual summer holiday) tak-ing place in contained places designed, regulated, or preserved moreor less specifically for tourism, such as resorts, sightseeing buses, hotels,attractions, paths, promenades, and beaches. It is an escape from theordinary and a quest for more desirable and fulfilling places to con-sume (Urry 1995). Differences among tourists are explained in termsof the places they are attracted to and how they consume them, visuallyor bodily, romantically or collectively, as high-cultural texts or liminalplaygrounds, or places where the active body comes to life (the litera-ture on pilgrimage is a little different in its emphases).

In MacCannell (1976) and Urry (1990), the tourist is portrayed as a‘‘sightseer’’, visually consuming places through gazing, photographing,and collecting signs. The experience is narrowed down to one of‘‘facing’’ places. Veijola and Jokinnen (1994) were among the first tosuggest that this (male) visual paradigm overlooks the corporeality ofpractices. Recently, however, male theorists—alongside womenresearchers such as Johnston (2000) and Wearing and Wearing(1996)—have turned to ideas of embodiment and performance todestabilize the visual hegemony of images, cameras, and gazes (Bæren-holdt, Haldrup, Larsen and Urry 2004; Coleman and Crang 2002; Eden-sor 2000; Franklin 2003; Franklin and Crang 2001). This literaturedemonstrates how, inter alia, backpackers, adventure tourists, and fam-ilies consume places by bodily immersion in the corporeal and culturalsensescapes of local cultures, mountains, and beaches. Whetherresearchers examine gazing or performing (Perkins and Thorns2001), they agree that tourism is about place (Bærenholdt et al 2004:1).

However, this focus neglects issues of sociality, especially with ‘‘sig-nificant’’ others. Insofar as questions of social relations are discussed,these are located within rather fixed dichotomies of hosts and guests,


or ‘‘us’’ and ‘‘them’’ (Smith 1978), and tourist and guides, where so-cial relationships are instrumental, commodified, and ridden withpower. Thus, it is necessary to analyze proximity, obligations, and‘‘meetingness’’ in relation to mobility. Despite the proliferation ofcommunication technologies, corporeal travel and copresent meet-ings are of increasing importance because they produce thick,embodied socialities of corporeal proximity where people are accessi-ble, available, and subject to each another (Boden 1994; Urry 2002,2003). Copresent interaction is fundamental to social interactionwithin institutions, families, and friendships, for producing trust, sus-taining intimacy, and pleasurable gatherings. So far, virtual communi-cations are often about coordinating physical travel and enabling talkin-between visits and meetings rather than substituting for corporealtravel.

This theory and research indicates that the geographical ‘‘stretchingout’’ of social networks makes tourism desirable and indeed necessary,because social networks so far do not only function through phonecalls, texting, and email. One cannot share a meal or buy rounds orhug one’s mother or cuddle one’s grandchild or kiss the bride overthe telephone or through an email or a videoconference. Unlike tele-phone conversations, where many struggle to talk for more than 15 to30 minutes, people often talk for hours over a coffee, a restaurantmeal, or drinks, because copresent talk is embodied and located withina shared physical place, temporarily at least ‘‘full of life’’. Some places,indeed, are particularly ambient in especially affording the conditionsfor face-to-face sociality. Thus, one might say places can matter in VFRtourism, although differently from more straightforward sightseeingforms of tourism.

Thus the increase in VFR trips stems from what Boden (1994) calls acompulsion to proximity, the desire to be physically copresent withother people (Boden and Molotch 1994). By contrast with profes-sional, commercialized hospitality, VFR tourism is about being copre-sent with significant ‘‘faces’’, being their guests, and receiving theirhospitality and perhaps enjoying their knowledge of local culture. Itfollows that contemporary tourists are often in effect both guests andhosts. Repeated hospitality is offered to people that also have ‘‘opendoors’’ (this might be slightly different with family members), withsystems of hospitality involving reciprocity.

Some theory conceptualizes tourists as free-floating individuals seek-ing to maximize their hedonistic pleasures. It fails to notice the manyobligations that choreograph ‘‘tourism escapes’’ which are more orless binding and pleasurable obligations requiring intermittent face-to-face copresence (Urry 2002). Elsewhere it is argued that it is neces-sary to distinguish between obligations to people, places, objects, andevents, that some travel consists of combinations of these obligations,and that each results in a powerful need to be bodily present withpeople, place, object, or event (Larsen, Urry and Axhausen 2006b,2006c).

In particular, obligations to family and friends involve very strongnormative expectations of presence and attention. One survey shows


that 70% of UK respondents agree that ‘‘people should keep in contactwith close family members even if they don’t have much in common’’(McGlone, Park and Roberts 1999:152). There are social customs, obli-gations, and activities that substantial majorities identify as among thetop necessities of life. These events include celebrations on specialoccasions such as Christmas (83%) and attending weddings and funer-als (80%), visits to friends or family (84%), especially to those in hos-pital (Gordon, Adelman, Ashwoth, Bradshaw, Middleton, Pantazis,Patsios, Payne, Townsend and Williams 2000).

Fulfilling social obligations often requires copresence, performingrituals, and sustained quality time, often at particular moments. Theseobligations involve not only face-to-face talk but also sharing a well-pre-pared Christmas turkey, having an anniversary dinner, celebrating theChinese New Year, exchanging birthday gifts, sipping champagne onNew Year’s Eve, and so on. If these rituals do not take place at theirright time, they cease to be meaningful. Telephone calls, text messages,or courier-delivered flowers can only substitute for a journey to andphysical presence at a church, hospital, or Christmas dinner, if peoplehave a really good excuse for not being able to attend. Communica-tions will often be thought too one-dimensional to fulfill certain kindsof social obligation that cannot be missed.

Fulfilling such obligations required relatively little long distance tra-vel when walking and cycling were the major transport modes and so-cial networks were socially and spatially close-knit. Indeed, recentresearch shows that people in advanced capitalist societies socialize lessfrequently with each other on such a weekly basis, indicating, some ar-gue, a decline in social capital (McGlone et al 1999; Putnam 2001). Yetthese studies overlook how some kinds of tourism can counteract this,since when distant friends or family members do meet up, each visit islikely to last longer and be especially meaningful. People may compen-sate for the intermittence of meetings and the cost of transport (time,money, weariness) by spending a whole day or weekend or week(s) to-gether, often staying in each other’s homes. In other words, frequentbut short visits may turn into intermittent yet longer periods of face-to-face copresence, of hosting and visiting. Obligations of visitingand showing hospitality become central to tourism and indeed sociallife at-a-distance, as cheaper and faster travel ‘‘compresses’’ ‘‘stretchedout’’ networks.

Thus, recent work has begun to challenge the traditional distinctionsbetween home and away, the ordinary and the extraordinary, work andleisure, everyday life and holidays, by arguing that in transnationaltimes tourism moves into less obviously touristic places. Franklin andCrang argue that:

Tourism is no longer a specialist consumer product or a mode of con-sumption: tourism has broken away from its beginning as a relativelyminor and ephemeral ritual of modern life to become a significantmodality through which transnational modern life is organized . . .it can no longer be bounded off as a discrete activity, containedtidily at specific locations and occurring during set aside periods(2001:7).


Therefore, tourism enters the lives of business people and globalprofessionals, second homeowners and their friends and families, ex-change students and gap-year workers abroad, migrants and (former)refugees, people with distant friends and kin, and even otherwise‘‘immobile’’ people with friends and families in distant places. It be-comes less the privilege of the rich few than something involvingand affecting many people, as otherwise ‘‘immobile’’ individuals mightoccasionally visit or host distant kin or be heartbroken when theyremain at-a-distance.

The notions of ‘‘dwelling-in-travel’’ and ‘‘traveling-in-dwelling’’(Clifford 1997:Chapter 1) deconstruct distinctions between homeand away by pointing to the possibilities of being at home while travel-ing and coming home through travel. Kaplan (1996) describes how herfamily was scattered across the United States and other continents.Tourist travel was thus ‘‘unavoidable, indisputable, and always neces-sary for family, love and friendship’’ (1996:ix). Through it she cameto be at home at various places and face-to-face with loved ones. Tour-ism, we may thus hypothesize, represents not just an escape from homebut also a search for home(s).

These notions enable researching how tourist type visits are essentialto the lives of migrants, diasporic cultures, and their families andfriends (Coles and Timothy 2004; Willams and Hall 2000). ‘‘Manyforms of migration’’, as Williams and Hall say, ‘‘generate tourism flows,in particular through the geographical extension of friendship andkinship networks. Migrants may become poles of tourist flows, whilethey themselves become tourists in returning to visit friends and rela-tions in their areas of origin’’ (2000:7). O’Reilly (2003) shows howmigration and tourism are complexly folded into each other in thecase of British home owners on Spain’s Costa del Sol (Caletrio 2004;Gustafson 2002). Retirement migration from northern Europe to des-tinations in southern Europe generates much tourism. On average, re-tired immigrants receive seven visits a year from the United Kingdom,and two out of three of these migrants ‘‘return home’’ to this countryat least once a year (Williams, King, Warnes and Patters 2000:40–41).Such visits are clustered around Christmas, holiday periods, and impor-tant family events (birthday, wedding, funerals, and so on), indicatingthat they are tied into obligations of family life.

Migration is far from a one-way journey of leaving one’s homelandbehind, but often a two-way journey between two sets of ‘‘homes’’(Ahmed, Castaneda, Fortier and Sheller 2003). ‘‘The migration pro-cess appears to require a return, a journey back to the point ofdeparture’’ (Goulborne 1999:193). This is particularly the case withmany migrants who are members of distinct diasporas. While thesetraditionally entail a desire for a permanent return, today’s migrantscan fulfill their compulsion to proximity with their homelandthrough frequent virtual communications and especially with occa-sional visits.

In Trinidad, for example, it is said that one can really only be a prop-er ‘‘Trini’’ by going abroad and returning home occasionally to visitfriends and kin. About 60% of nuclear families are thought to have


at least one family member living abroad (Miller and Slater 2000:12,36). Sutton’s (2004) ethnographic study shows how cheaper, easier,and faster travel enables large-scale family reunion parties amongAfro-Caribbean migrants, assembling in one significant Caribbeanplace dispersed family members from most North Atlantic countries.At many gatherings, family members living abroad will outnumberCaribbean-based members. Mason (2004) demonstrates how Englishpeople with Pakistani ancestors regularly visit Pakistan to be copresentwith their kin, to keep their family networks ‘‘alive’’. Three-fifths ofjourneys undertaken by Korean-New Zealanders are to Korea, followedby journeys to Australia and Japan, where many Korean-New Zealand-ers have kin members (Kang and Page 2000:57).

Moreover, the social obligations implicated within diasporic culturesare often intricately intertwined with obligations to visit specific places,especially monuments, religious sites, and places of cultural victory orloss. Duval’s (2004a, 2004b) research on return visits among Caribbeanmigrants provides good examples of how parents of Caribbean originfeel obliged to keep in touch with their homeland and to introduceits key features personally to their children.

The compulsion to proximity is central to family holidays. Bæren-holdt et al (2004) highlight how most tourists bring their own bodiesand their loved ones when they are on holiday. They not only encoun-ter other bodies and places but also travel with significant others.Places are valued for their ability to afford intimate proximities. Thus:‘‘[T]ourists are not merely searching for authenticity of the Other.They also search the authenticity of, and between, themselves’’ (Wang1999:364). Holidays render the family members available and presentto each other. They are together, not separated by work, commutingtrips, schools, homework, leisure activities, and the like. Here familiesinvest much work in staging and enacting happy social life—somethingespecially shown through their performances for the camera (Haldrupand Larsen 2003; Larsen 2005).

It also seems that tourism even to typical tourist places can often in-volve visiting friends and family. Kyle and Chick’s (2004) ethnographyof an American fair demonstrates how families repeatedly return to thefair because it turned into a meeting place where tourists maintain pre-cious relationships with family members and friends living elsewhere.In a similar fashion, Caletrio’s study of Spanish tourists in Costa Blancashows that many are repeaters who have established strong relation-ships with others doing the same. Such people, one might say, areengaged in dwelling-in-tourism (Pons 2003).

Therefore, much tourism involves a particular combination of placesand significant people; many tourists take a trip with significant others(unlike solitary business tourists), and they might visit or meet up withfriends or kin. Few see the world through a solitary romantic gaze ortravel the world as a single flaneur without an intended destination.Europeans travel to see their parents in their old hometown or theirmigrated parents in Spain or their best friend now living in Beijingor an old university friend now lecturing in Calcutta or their daughterstudying in Toronto. As such, when tourists visit friends or kin they


simultaneously travel to particular places that are experienced throughthe host’s social networks and their accumulated knowledge of the lo-cal scene or of pertinent landscapes. Thus, sociality matters in sightsee-ing, and places matter in visiting people. A further topic for researchwould be whether places seen through the ‘‘eyes’’ of local ‘‘hosting’’residents are viewed differently from where places are encounteredthrough guidebooks and websites.

Researching Networks and Tourism

The significance of these distant connections and tourism to visit sig-nificant others and to fulfill social obligations are striking in the re-search conducted with a purposive sample of 24 youngish (under 38years of age) architects; sales managers, personal trainers, and recep-tionists in health and fitness clubs; and security doormen and porters.This research explores to what degree social networks are geographi-cally ‘‘stretched out’’ and what the consequences are of this ‘‘stretch-ing’’ for people’s social life and their likely future tourism patterns.The focus is upon these three occupations/industries because theyare expanding (and likely to continue to do so), and they significantlydiffer with regard to education, salary/status and, it is hypothesized,mobility patterns (Larsen et al 2006a, 2006b, 2006c).

In 2004, these youngish people made on average 2.4 internationalleisure journeys and almost 10 UK leisure journeys of more than 100miles, while the average number of business trips were 0.2 and 2.4,respectively. Out of the 24 people, 19 traveled abroad for leisure atleast once during that year, while only two went on an internationalbusiness trip. That is, they travel more for life than for a living. Thereare also some disparities among them. The three who made most longdistance journeys in 2004 undertook 27, 25, and 10 trips, while sixmade only one or none (the figures are not straightforwardly propor-tional with income).

Why, then, do these people travel so much for leisure? Around halfof their international journeys involve visiting other places withoutother connections or obligations, while seeing significant others (andattending weddings, stag nights, funerals, and reunions) accounts foraround one third of their overseas journeys. The remaining quarterof trips abroad are a hybrid with visiting places and meeting goinghand in hand. As one respondent reported,

It’s usually a combination. Obviously with the cost of traveling and thecost of staying somewhere, if we can make the best out of the trip, thebetter. So if we can get in doing the tourist thing, doing the relaxationthing and doing the family thing all in one go, then that’s convenientbonus. If my friend’s in Berlin, then that’s great because I’ve neverbeen to Berlin before so I’m killing two birds with one stone. I’mlooking forward to Berlin (male sales adviser in fitness and healthclub, late 20s).

Another way of ‘‘killing two birds with one stone’’ is by scheduling abusiness meeting on a Friday so that it can be continued as a weekend


break: ‘‘I’m canny basically on this. If I can, I’ll find a reason to bedown in London and I can get a ticket off work. It’s an open ticketso I can use it whenever. . .. So I can sort of like arrange a meetingon Friday, sorted’’ (male architect, early 30s).

Another male architect gives a specific example:

The last [holiday]. . .. was my mum’s 60th birthday . . . we reallycouldn’t afford it but we were keen to make it a special birthday forher so we got cheap flights . . . So we went to Rome for 3 or 4 days. . . I mean family is very important to me, and the year before itwas my dad’s 70th birthday so we went to Prague with him and wekind of felt we really had to do something for my mum as well forher 60th . . . my sister, who didn’t come, did contribute towards theprice of the flights and things like that (male architect, early 30s).

One female personal trainer explains how she and her partner in-vited her parents to Las Vegas to see the singer Celine Dion on their35th wedding anniversary:

My mum and dad are big fans of Celine Dion . . . It was actually their35th wedding anniversary and it was kind of a Christmas present,anniversary present, and birthday present all rolled into one; just avery nice treat. Even when we went to see Celine Dion we got superbtickets. We were 5 rows from the front and we could see everything.And she could see us and we could see her and it was just amazing(female personal trainer, early 30s).

These offspring thus demonstrate their love for their parents by giv-ing them a special holiday. The somewhat obligatory nature of the holi-day to Rome is shown by how it takes place despite a lack of money andthe need for the absent sister’s financial contribution. These gifts aremore than the tickets; they represent a desire for being with their par-ents and having ‘‘quality time’’, for experiencing the places and eventstogether as a family. The concert in Las Vegas offers proximity to a fa-mous star and also to each of the family members; it evaporates the40 or more miles that separate their homes and prevent them beingcopresent at home as they would otherwise like.

Thus, VFR tourism is distinct in that it requires more than just eco-nomic capital. It also needs far-flung friends or family members whooffer hospitality. Distant connections occasionally enable people withmodest incomes to travel further and more frequently than their in-come would otherwise allow. As a male porter with a ‘‘rich’’ uncle inSan Francisco says:

I have been to San Francisco twice [within the last couple of years] . . .he said oh you must come . . . The company that my uncle was work-ing for, he got all these air miles . . . I stayed at my uncle’s place . . .Yeah, he’s always got things planned, like we’ll go and watch a base-ball or basketball game. He’s always got tickets there waiting for us,so it’s quite cheap when we get there (male porter, mid-20s).

This is one example of how VFR tourism involves sightseeing andevents and yet is also network strengthening. Others describe how theygo abroad more often now that their parents have a villa in Spain or


France. The lure of free accommodation means that people living ininteresting places are especially likely to receive guests (sometimesagainst their will):

I’m organizing a trip to Mexico because I know he’s [friend] onlythere for another year, so there’s no point on missing out on freeaccommodation . . . You know, say it was somewhere like Azerbaijan,I don’t think I would be that keen on going, but you know Mexico,I’d quite like to go there (male architect, late 20s).

This example illustrates how some VFR tourism might actually onoccasions be damaging to social relationships because it takes place be-cause of the place and the free accommodation and not because of therelationship. Obligations of hosting can be a trying experience.

International tourism to see significant others is thus relatively wide-spread among all groups with most having friends or family livingabroad. On average, the respondents each have friends in two foreignplaces. The three migrants have friends ‘‘back home’’; several of theuniversity graduates made friendships while studying abroad or withexchange students; others again meet friends when working or travel-ing abroad. Half of the sample has one or more close kin living abroad,and everyone had visited at least one of these family members withinthe last couple of years. International tourism to see friends and rela-tives is particularly significant to migrants to the United Kingdom.The Irish male architect returned to Ireland three times in 2004. Oneach occasion he toured various places to see friends, family members,and the national rugby team playing crucial games, thus combiningobligations to significant people and live events. As such, timing wascrucial on these trips.

For the doorman and his family who had lived 25 years in South Afri-ca before returning to England, annual holidays to South Africa arethought of as essential, even though they are expensive and preventthem from touring other places. It was very important to ‘‘returnhome’’ to stay in contact with, and introduce his daughter to, theirfamily as well as to the nature of South Africa. These visits also enablehim to reunite with friends living in Cape Town, elsewhere in UnitedKingdom, and Europe, as his transnational circle of friends and theirfamilies coordinate their holidays so that they visit Cape Town at thesame time. He also explained how the last time that his family-in-lawcame to visit them in the United Kingdom was straight after theyhad their first baby. The parents stayed for three months to help outwith the baby and to provide general support.

Obligations and caring were also part of the reason why the architectfrom Russia had to travel ‘‘home’’ three times in 2004:

I was there in December and at New Year, then I was there . . . at thebeginning of summer to my best friend’s wedding and then my grand-dad passed away so I went only 3 weeks after that . . . My mum phonedme in the evening, I was in the office. I stayed in the office overnightjust to finish off things, and booked flights first thing in the morning,called a taxi, called for passport and I was in Russia in about. . .I don’tknow, less than a day after she phoned. He lived with us for 17 years. I


really had to be there. I went for a week and then I went in Decemberagain–for Christmas (female architect, early 30s).

This example illustrates how intimate networks of care, support, andaffection can be traced over geographical distance, as scholars of kin-ship and migration have long described. This architect speaks withher mother in Russia every Saturday morning for an hour or so, andshe is in more or less daily email contact with her brother in Russiawho needs her help with various issues. While caring at-a-distance worksin most cases, the death of her granddad means that ‘‘she really has tobe there’’, to care in proximity with the rest of family. She has to care ina much more embodied and social way than is permitted by phone callsand emails. Timing is everything; this woman has to be on time for thefuneral, and thus she is in an acute rush to fulfill her work obligationsand arrange the journey. This example illustrates how flexible and effi-cient coordination and tourism depend upon access to, and skilful useof, phone, mobile, the Internet, email, and webpages, as well as thefinancial means to buy last-minute tickets and to take a taxi.

Trips abroad to ‘‘catch up’’ with friends in the United Kingdom arecommon. Long work hours, and commitments to partners and dis-persed social networks make it difficult for friends to spontaneouslymeet up at the same time, so meetings have to be coordinated inadvance and tourism brings networks together:

My friends from back home in Chester, everyone does their ownthing. It’s quite difficult to all meet up at the same time. We’ve allgot like our partners and things like that, and our partners aren’treally from the same area so they don’t really know each other verywell. Quite often, if we are going to meet up, we try and go away orsomething together (male sales advisor in fitness and health club, late20s).

A male architect—who has studied and worked in various placesthroughout United Kingdom—explains how a recent stag night to Pra-gue might turn out to be an annual reunion:

. . .basically it was a circle of friends who I’ve known since I was at sixthform, college and university . . . It’s very very rare that we’re all in thesame spot at any one time, all of us together, so there’s been a lot oftalk about arranging it as a yearly thing because it is so rare that every-one can meet up for personal reasons, some have got family, marriedor live far away or you know work commitments. It seems like a reallygood excuse just too sort of say this year we’re going to Berlin for 3 or4 days (male architect, early 30s).

He also talks about how he goes snowboarding once or twice a yearand how these trips are important social events where people catch upwith old friends and friends of friends, and meet new people as newfaces join this revolving snowboard network stretching across UnitedKingdom and Europe. On the last trip to Canada ‘‘there were 12 ofus . . . people in Glasgow and Aberdeen . . . people in London . . . rightdown to people in East Grinstead and Surrey and stuff like that. I’msort of in the middle’’ (male architect, early 30s). These meetings often


take place at very specific timed events. One respondent notes withregard to weddings:

A problem I have . . . I find a lot of my holidays have been taken upwith going to weddings and going to stag dos. This year I’ve got 7 wed-dings to go to . . . I’m going to have to take out a mortgage (malearchitect, late 20s).

Fulfilling these obligations through tourism will often be costly. Thisalso means that mobile social networks may in effect exclude those whowould otherwise meet up if less travel, or less expensive travel, were re-quired. In the quote above, a male architect expresses his financial con-cern over the many weddings and stag nights that he has to attend.Reflecting that the average age of the interviewees was 28.5, weddings,stag nights, hen nights, and honeymoons trigger much tourism. Theinterviews reveal that stag nights in what are thought to be vibrantplaces for this age group, such as Berlin, Amsterdam, and Prague,are now common. Low-cost airlines can assemble dispersed social net-works in such places at a cost that is little more than the cost of meetingup within the United Kingdom.

Most respondents agree that it is more or less obligatory to attendstag nights and especially the weddings of important friends and familymembers, even if it requires substantial travel:

With weddings, it’s a big thing, isn’t it? You only get married once, soif it’s a close friend you definitely feel obligated . . . I can’t think ofone invite we’ve turned down. We’ve probably been to about threeor four and we’ve got about five or six over the next two years to goto. All over the place . . . you would just have to go wherever theyare really. Like I say if it’s in France or Greece or whatever (malearchitect, late 20s).

Weddings faraway mobilize otherwise ‘‘immobile’’ people and bringtogether friends and family members who seldom meet because dis-tance separates them. The female personal trainer and her partnerare particularly touched that her two American friends that she talkswith once a week on the phone but hardly ever sees, will come toher wedding, especially because one of them: ‘‘. . . has never beenout of the United States. And to turn round and say I’m making theeffort to your wedding, and she doesn’t like flying either . . . and it’sgoing to 9–10 hours . . . I think to myself WOW’’ (female personal trai-ner, early 30s). After the wedding, she is taking the Americans on aguided tour of London in order to demonstrate her appreciation thatthey made the long journey and were there at her wedding.

The obligatory nature of weddings creates dilemmas if they clashwith other obligations. As one dedicated Liverpool soccer fan reflects:

I have a record of not missing a match for about 10 years at home . . .this year my partner’s cousin is getting married in April [on a Satur-day] and [perhaps] it clashes with a home match . . . her auntie hasinvited everyone round to her house for a get together the day afterthe wedding . . . I’m not going to miss the wedding, I can’t miss thewedding . . . but if Liverpool are playing on Sunday then I will be


tempted to come up on my own to watch the match because I don’tfeel it’s quite as important, but again that will really be frowned upon,so. . .. (male architect, early 30s).

Not fulfilling social obligations can have significant consequences; inthis example, the architect will ‘‘be really frowned upon’’ if he fulfilshis obligations to his close Liverpool soccer friends rather than tothe wedding.

Obligations are thus not fixed in time and space, but are negotiated,contested, and enforced. Moral work is often required to remind peo-ple of their obligations. As one person says about the surprisingly bigturn out for his wedding in Spain, ‘‘I think my father probably put alot of pressure on his brothers and sisters, my aunties and uncles, tocome over from Ireland, because they were all there’’ (male architect,early 30s). Perhaps this ‘‘pressure’’ was needed because none of thefamily members have connections with Spain. The couple got marriedthere because they wanted it to be special, and this was possible becausethey have wealthy friends who have retired to a well-known tourist spot:

So I was talking to a couple of friends of ours who . . . . . they’re retire-ment age, 65, quite wealthy and they’d just bought a house over inSpain, a villa, a holiday home. And I was telling them my predica-ment. I said we just don’t know what to do . . . We just want to goand get married somewhere. So they said why don’t you get marriednear the villa in Spain? (male architect, early 30s).

During the wedding preparations this couple traveled four times toSpain, where they also enjoyed the hospitality of their friends. Thisillustrates yet again how connections at-a-distance afford possibilitiesfor extensive mobile lifestyles.

Many of these meetings with friends and family take place on week-ends. One respondent explained, ‘‘Normally about three nights. Wedon’t normally go down for two nights. Longer than three nightsyou start getting in each other’s way’’ (male doorman, early 30s). Suchtourism is of relatively short duration because it takes place in privatehomes (with perhaps too little space for extra people) and throughnon-commercialized hospitality; it requires substantial domestic workand ‘‘guiding’’ to host friends.

The car is crucial here for this extended pattern of life:

I was discussing with my wife last week that it would be horrible nothaving a car because of the weekends. We don’t use the car duringthe week very much. When it’s local we cycle. Then at the weekendsit’s fantastic. It means it’s achievable (male architect, mid-20s).

Weekend trips by car are thought to be both cheaper (partly becausecouples rarely travel alone) and more flexible. As an architect argues,

I’m always [traveling] with my wife and if there’s two people in a carit’s always the cheapest I find. I think the train’s very expensive. Prob-ably the main reason is the convenience because you have your owntimetable, you can go when you want to, you can come back andyou can go exactly where you need to be. And often we use the carwhen we get to the destination (male architect, early 30s).


Cars afford flexibility with regard to route and time schedule (Urry2004). This is desirable because weekend trips normally involve visitingpeople located in different places within a short period.

Because of their distant connections, respondents made 10 long dis-tance journeys in the United Kingdom in 2004. Only three do not havefriends in English towns or cities more than 100 miles away. Nine travelfor more 100 miles to meet with their parents or sisters or brothers.While they see their ‘‘local ties’’ more often, connections to distantfamily members and friends are sustained by phone calls or text mes-sages or emails, but especially through regular face-to-face visits.

Such tourism to see friends and relatives is particularly widespreadamong those who have been educated at university. One Liverpool-based respondent, who grew up in Warwick and went to university inPlymouth and Liverpool, reflects upon why he spends many hourson the road every second week:

I think it’s because I now live in Liverpool and my family and myschool friends are still back in Warwick, and I went to university inPlymouth so I’ve got friends from Plymouth, and then I’ve got friendsin London . . . Some people I know in London were school friends,some people were at university in Liverpool, some people were at uni-versity in Plymouth, and they’ve gone to London (architect, mid-20s).

This explanation is actually incomplete since many of his journeysresult from his partner’s equally ‘‘stretched out’’ social network. Ashe says, ‘‘Well last weekend I drove down to High Wycombe nearLondon. My wife’s grandmother is ill, we think she will die soon sowe went to visit her’’. Indeed the interviews reveal how tourism is rarelyan isolated decision pursued by individual agents, but a collectiveaction involving friends, family members, partners, and their friendsand family members. When people talked about where they traveland why, they talked about complex relationships with (two setsof) family and friends. Their accounts are highly relational. Peopleare enmeshed in social dramas wherein tourism depends uponnegotiation, approval, and feelings, with social and emotional conse-quences. The fact that many family events are more or less obligatorybegins to explain how tourism has little to do with simple personalchoice:

. . .[my partner’s] family are very rigid in the fact that there are certaindays of the year like Easter, Boxing Day where it’s a kind of compul-sory family get together, so you have to make that effort to go downthere. Your absence would be noted if you weren’t there. (male archi-tect, early 30s).

For many people, being in a relationship means traveling a lot sincethey are likely to have two sets of parents, brothers and sisters, unclesand aunts, grandparents, as well as friends. This indicates that one can-not understand tourism if the individual is taken as the unit of analysis.Individuals are enmeshed in networks that both enable and constrainpossible ‘‘individual’’ actions. These complex networks mean thatweekend touring can be especially stressful:


. . .we’ve got different groups of friends, her friends and my friends,who live in London. And I actually hate going to London becausewe’ve got so many friends that are down there, so when you go downthere you feel you have to try and see everyone, and at the end youcome back on the Sunday and you wish you had another couple of daysoff. It just never feels like a weekend when you go down there. Andthere will always be arguments because someone will find out thatyou’ve been down to London but you purposely haven’t told thembecause you know you can’t fit them in (male architect, late-20s).

This brings out how such visiting and hosting is effectively network-ing, sometimes enjoyable and stimulating, sometimes tedious and tir-ing. Social life at-a-distance and tourism is certainly not cost-free.

CONCLUSION

This article has explored various transformations of tourism throughan analysis of the ‘‘stretching out’’ of people’s social networks resultingfrom ‘‘time-space compressing’’ technologies and the mobilities of la-bor markets, higher education, family life, migration, and diasporictrips. While communicative tourism is crucial to dispersed social net-works, its substitution effect upon corporeal forms is so far small, inpart because it connects far-flung networks within places of intermit-tent copresence. This makes tourism seem essential for many in sucha networked world. Thus as one respondent claimed:

[Travel] is essential. I don’t think we could go on just by making emailsand phone calls. It is very necessary for us to go and see friends andfamily . . . I think it would be emotionally bad for us if we didn’t. Weneed to travel (male sales advisor in fitness and health club, late-20s).

Thus, it is necessary to de-exoticize tourism theory. Tourists may notsearch for ‘‘lost authenticity’’ (MacCannell 1976) but on occasions atleast seek for distant connections. Whereas MacCannell believed thatthe tourist quest for authenticity was doomed to fail, connecting peo-ple through tourism may be more effective at producing ‘‘authentic’’experiences. Tourism is not merely an isolated ‘‘exotic island’’ but of-ten also a significant set of social and material relations. This studyshows how these relations connect and reconnect ‘‘disconnected’’ peo-ple in intermittent face-to-face proximities. Obligations and pleasurescan go hand in hand.

Thus whereas sightseeing used to be a fitting basis for theory, net-working is now also an illuminating concept, although not intendedto replace the other. There are a number of key elements about thisnetworking approach. First, networking highlights how tourism is a so-cial practice that involves embodied work, of scheduling, traveling, vis-iting, guiding, hosting, cleaning, and so on. In other words thisfunction is in part work. Second, tourism patterns are relational andembedded within social networks and their obligations; they are notfree-floating and unrelated to everyday patterns of social life, family,and friendship. Tourists are increasingly to be found in everyday places


and are for once literally off the beaten track. Third, tourism involvesnetworking tools such as email, mobile phones, webpages, and accessto cars, trains, and planes. The concept of ‘‘network capital’’ relevanthere may mean that tourism can generate and sustain ‘‘social capital’’through facilitating richer and more interdependent patterns of socia-bility (Larsen et al 2006b, 2006c). Fourth, tourists should be seen asproducers of social relations as much as they are passive consumers;and this relates more generally to the so-called ‘‘performance turn’’within tourism studies. Finally, places will be very variably experiencedthrough being visited through these different modalities, as a place ofsightseeing, re-meeting friends, family encounters, professional/busi-ness meetings, meeting at specific events, and more.

Therefore, what is important for future research is deciphering theinterconnections among place, events, and sociabilities, where experi-ences of place are complexly multifaceted. These interconnections setout a new agenda so as to examine the multiple ways in which placesand performances are elaborately intertwined. In this new configura-tion, networking is one of the new modalities through which placesare seen as desirable sites for being visited and revisited. This articlesuggests that the analysis of obligations, social networks at-a-distance,and social capital should be central to 21st century tourism analysis.If this is correct about the power of social networks to engender obli-gations to be face-to-face, especially within places otherwise distant,then making tourism environmentally sustainable is even more of achallenge. Given the exceptionally distributed character of many peo-ple’s important social network connections, and presuming people donot live lives entirely ‘‘on the screen’’, then places are going to be phys-ically traveled to for a long while yet, especially to connect with knownothers living at a distance.

Acknowledgements—This research was generously funded by the UK Department for Transport.However, the agency is not responsible for the material or arguments presented here.

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networks and tourism: mobile social life

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