Article

Assessing the Grounded Theory of Packing for Air Travel Using a Video-Ethnographic Case Study

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Abstract

Packing for travel is an intriguing aspect of tourist behavior. Until recently, no research has sought to explain what the modern traveler packs for air journeys or why these items are packed. Perhaps for some observers these questions appear mundane, and the answers appear obvious, yet these issues attract a great volume on commentary on websites, blogs, in travel books, in magazines, and conversations between travelers. From these sources, Hyde and Olesen (2011) developed a grounded theory of packing for air travel. The purpose of this article is to test the grounded theory of packing for air travel using video-ethnographic case study data. The findings are that the grounded theory for air travel is able to explain what possessions are packed and the motives for these items being packed. The emphasis that any individual places on the possessions they pack and the role these possessions play during a journey will differ by traveler. This adds to extant literature on packing for travel.

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... Yet, it is one of the many tourist practices that is perhaps so mundane, everyday or fleeting that it is difficult to articulate or document in order for tourism scholars to reflect on. Packing contributes to the way that tourists present and perform their identity and their position within global tourist cultures (Barry, 2016;Hyde and Olesen, 2012;Small and Harris, 2012;Walsh and Tucker, 2009) and it matters because it is emblematic of one of the many daily, embodied material practices that tourists undertake. It can be teased out to reveal relational networks that tourists experience and participate in (Barry, 2016;Jensen et al., 2015;Van der Duim et al., 2012). ...
... These fleeting and momentary experiences reveal the complexities of tourists' relationships with an array of materials, spaces and fellow tourists, and how they are encapsulated and enacted in everyday practices (Barry, 2016). Packing contributes to the way that tourists understand their identity in what kinds of things they bring with them (Hyde and Olesen, 2012;Small and Harris, 2012), or the way that they perform and are enabled by these things (Walsh and Tucker, 2009). Because packing is a hands-on engagement that forms and re-forms relationships, it is difficult to document the relations that are being mobilised. ...
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