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This paper discusses processes of tourism and socio-cultural change in a Turkish village context by exploring how gender identities and gendered spaces are being reconstituted through tourism-related work. As tourism has developed in the region surrounding the World Heritage Site of Göreme in central Turkey, men have become tourism entrepreneurs and gained tourism employment whilst women have remained largely excluded from tourism work. This is because in Göreme society tourism work is considered a man's activity as it is inappropriate for women to work in the 'public' sphere. During the past five years, however, there has been a marked increase both in women's paid employment in local tourism small businesses and in women's microscale entrepreneurial activity associated with tourism. Based on long term anthropological fieldwork, this paper considers the processes through which this example of tourism and social change has taken place. It considers some of the broader influential aspects of social change, and it also looks at how the spatial and moral boundaries have shifted in order to allow women to work in the tourism domain.

The question of what constitutes backpacker identity has been one of the central topics of backpacking tourism research. With the economic boom in China, the last two decades witnessed the proliferation of Chinese backpackers. By adopting quantitative methods, this study provides a comprehensive understanding of what makes one a "backpacker" in China. Comparing results from t-tests, binomial logistic regression, and multiple linear regression, it is found that Chinese backpackers' social identities are mostly associated with external-oriented motivation, work alienation, and detachment from home centers. Behavioral characteristics, which have up until now been widely used to define backpackers, have very limited relationship to their identities in China. This finding calls for future research to rethink what is a backpacker. The research makes an important contribution to the understanding of this growing market and its particular identity factors.

Backpacking tourism has gained in popularity among Chinese young people since the 1990s. While learning from their western counterparts, Chinese backpackers have also developed their own unique group identification strategies. By focusing on how backpacker identity is socially constructed in the Chinese context, this research explores the meaning and process of becoming a backpacker in China. Grounded theory was adopted, and the structure "image-identitystrategy" emerged to organise the process of becoming a backpacker into three phases. The findings show that Chinese backpackers employ various strategies to continuously negotiate and reconstruct their backpacker identity. It is thereby shown how the process itself of becoming a backpacker is always ongoing.