Everyday life and water tourism mobilities: mundane aspects of canal travel

Kaaristo, M and Rhoden, S (2016) Everyday life and water tourism mobilities: mundane aspects of canal travel. Tourism Geographies, 19 (1). pp. 78-95. ISSN 1461-6688

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Abstract

GroupTourism is frequently construed as unusual and extraordinary in contrast to the routines and predictability of work and home life. However, the tourism spaces are co-created through practices that are simultaneously mundane and unusual. Yet everyday touristic practices are seldom researched, especially regarding water tourism. The mundane strategies of creating the boatspace form an important part of the tourist experience of everyday life on canals of England. Movements of bodies in the space, gastronomic experiences, and hygiene practices studied here via ethnographic fieldwork (participant observation and semi-structured interviews with leisure boaters) become defining characteristics of the leisure boaters’ everyday. We show that spatial practices, temporal structures, and search for ontological security are essential elements of domesticating and co-creating the emergent boatspace, where physical and social space are negotiated between various actors.