Vagabonds and Tourists

Abstract

Vagabond and tourist are two metaphors introduced to sociology by Zygmunt Bauman to analyze the human condition in globalization. The metaphorical pair highlights key aspects of an increasingly globalized and polarized human life in a world moving into what Zygmunt Bauman famously coined as liquid modernity. In a liquid modern and globalizing world, mobility is the main stratifying factor. Both tourists and vagabonds move, but they do so in a highly uneven fashion and under starkly different conditions. Movement for the tourist is effortless and desirable, but for the vagabond it is burdensome and forced. The tourist metaphorically stands for the globalized elite and the vagabond for the precarious poor. The two metaphors are key examples of Bauman's methodological application of metaphors and are put effectively to use in his widely influential and critical sociology.