General Background of the Study

1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

1.1 General Background of the Study

Modern society has created a new world for us, world that serves well. Modern society offers so much facilities and physical comforts like car, train and plane for transportation at one end and computer technology for information exchange and automation on the other. To add the world even smaller we have revolutionary information technology. It has helped people in exchanging information from one corner of world to another just in minute via internet. This has eliminated the need to travel. One can shop without visiting store or mall. The same technology provides so many option for enhance entertainment for recreation. On the other hand, just like a coin which has two faces, besides offers us a lot of better facilities in our life, modern life gives us new aspects of life they are: bureaucracy, disenchantment of the world, rationalization, secularization, individualism, universalism, chaos, mass society, industrial society, democrationism, hierarchical organization and so on. Modern society has brought new definition about time, rules, money and bureaucracy in our life. In our modern life, time is the most important thing. Time is a limitation or a border of life’s schedule for people Stewart, 2008, 1. For rules, people still wondering although law and legal system is getting 2 well patterned but we still have unsolvable problems such as corruption, inequality of life, injustice of laws and etc. Money has a very important role in our life: we live in a world of materialist values, where ownership of the most expensive objects seems a worthy goal. Society dictates that a person’s worth can be judged by how much money they earn. Money has unfortunately become an essential part of life. Most of us have lost the ability to live by our own power, we need to work hard to earn money, which is become essential for us. Thus, because something is essential to survive, it needs to be the main focus of life. There is a bureaucracy in the modern society. One cannot exist in a society without bureaucracy; there are no other possible alternatives. This is the way of the world modern operates, particularly in the West, and those who born into it are bound by it. This is why Max Weber referred it as an “iron cage”. Bureaucracy is applicable to any task or organization to handle it administratively. It is a way of getting done with a high degree of efficiency. Because there are written rules, orders and rankings, it is also the most rational means of controlling people. But the unintended consequence is that, once in motion, bureaucracy cannot be destroyed. Weber pointed out its dominance, threat to individual freedom and the spread of rationalism into every institution that it becomes a trap where, when in it, there would be no escape- hence, the “iron cage” of rationality Weber, 109. All the things above make people live like a bird in the golden cage. It gives us good facilities but not serves them well or makes them happy. As 3 time goes by, people found out that travel or tourism can be an “escape” from the golden cage. In the eyes of some commentators e.g. MacCannell, 1976, the tourism has become an icon of the restlessness and the alienation of modern life. The search for meaning in modern societies encourages pilgrimage to the sites of differentiation created by modernity and a search for the ‘primitive’ and pre-modern cultures it has displaced MacCannell, 1992a. The disappearance of pre-modern cultures makes them all the more attractive as sites of tourism consumption and distinction – a chance to see the past before it disappears. Globalization not only increases the speed at which cultures are marginalized, but also increases the speed with which the tourist can travel to see them. The presence of tourists around the globe is not only a sign of the progress of globalization, it is also an integral part of the globalization process. The presence of tourists ties more and more places into the global economy and modern communication networks. Tourists make the places they visit increasingly like home, which stimulates their restless search for difference still further de Botton, 2002. According to James Clifford 1997: 1, travel is arguably an integral part of the postmodern ‘new world order of mobility’. Society as a whole is becoming more restless and mobile, in contrast to the relatively rigid patterns of modernity. One of the cultural symbols of this increasingly mobile world is the backpacker. Backpackers are found in every corner of the globe, from remote villages in the Hindu Kush to the centers of London or Paris. They carry with them not only the emblematic physical baggage that gives them 4 their name, but their cultural baggage as well. Their path is scattered with the trappings of the backpacker culture – banana pancakes, bars with ‘video nights’ and cheap hostels Iyer, 1988. According to some authors e.g. Westerhausen, 2002 growing numbers of people who do travelling are reacting to the alienation of modern society by adopting the lifestyle of the backpacker. Their nomadic existence is supported by the increasing ease of international travel, a growing network of budget hostels and travel companies, and the increasing flexibility of life path and work. The sense of freedom offered by backpacking may well be one of its major attractions. As Binder and Welk show in their contributions to this volume, the ability to decide one’s own itinerary, to change travel plans at will and not to be weighed down by cultural or physical baggage are features of travel important to backpackers. The problem is, of course, that this freedom also has its own constraints, such as a lack of time or money, or the sheer physical impracticality of visiting all the sites one wants to see. The backpacker’s freedom to travel also becomes a freedom to change the very places that they travel to see, as their own travel which every people has their own destination, such as: Asian people want to go to Europe, and European eager to visit exotic places, which most of them are in Asia begins to impact on the ‘unchanged’ or ‘authentic’ cultures they want to visit. The backpacker is therefore forced into adopting a nomadic style of travel in an attempt to avoid other travelers – a strategy that is bound to fail, given the propensity of the 5 Lonely Planet and other guide books to open up new destinations to hordes of other travelers also seeking to escape from each other. Not surprisingly, what many backpackers regard as an ‘authentic’ destination is one untouched by other tourists Timmermans, 2002. Backpackers therefore seem to be driven into the far corners of the globe by the ‘experience hunger’ of modern society de Cauter, 1995, which also forces them into becoming nomadic. Once they have consumed the experiences offered by one place, they need to move on to find new ones. Just like traditional nomadic people, the global nomad constantly moves from place to place Backpacking life itself is a nomadic life. It offers people unlimited freedom and adventure, life without time limitation and rules. For example: we do not have to wake up in early morning just to go to school or school, we do not have a deadline for our job, in simple word “schedule is not important anymore” anonymous. The interpretation of the travel style by Pearce 1990 introduced the term ‘backpacker’ into the academic literature. Pearce’s analysis is primarily concerned with motivational aspects, particularly related to extending one’s education: travel as escape from pressing life choices, and ‘occasional work’ to extend travel time. Most significantly, Pearce identifies a fourth theme related to the emergence of a subculture focused on the pursuit of health and outdoor activities 6 Form of dissatisfaction or protest against modern society not only exist in real life but also emerges in literary works. They are portrayed in literary works which can notice the social problem. The various personalities on every character in every literary works can be referred to as a form of the author expression of his thought or ideas which is reflection in real life. As a student of English Literature, I want to discuss and analyze about the relationship between backpacking life and modern society. The reason why I discuss the relationship is because of the dissatisfaction people toward modern society and backpacking life which become an “escape “of some people in this era. The research about backpacking is conducted, because not only to see and know how backpacking life it is, but also to understand message which is implied in backpacking life and the relationship to modern society.

1.2 Reasons for Choosing the Topic