DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

Microtravel

Confinement, Deceleration, Microspection

Charles Forsdick editor Zoë Kinsley editor Kate Walchester editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Anthem Press

Published:4th Jun '24

Should be back in stock very soon

Microtravel cover

This is a timely and original book that explores and historicizes the phenomenon of ‘microtravel’, a term coined to designate slow, more focused journeys, often within a limited radius, that allow new forms of experiencing the world. This has become a common experience in today’s world, in the light of health crises and a growing need for more sustainable modes of travel.

This volume explores and historicizes the phenomenon of 'microtravel', a term coined to designate slower journeys within a limited radius which allow, and sometimes necessitate, new forms of experiencing the world. The chapters study travelogues that recalibrate the scale of journeying, with travellers slowing down their journeys and readjusting their relationship to the proximate and nearby.

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic imposed immobility on large sectors of the world’s population, with confinement becoming an everyday reality. The lives of those who previously enjoyed the privileges of being ‘fast castes’ ground to a halt, while at the same time the displacement of more vulnerable populations along well-established migration corridors has been radically reduced. The result has been a recalibration of the scale of journeying, with travellers slowing down their journeys and readjusting their relationship to the proximate and nearby. This situation has provided an opportunity for those who study travel and travel writing to rethink their objects of study and approaches to them. This volume explores and historicizes the phenomenon of ‘microtravel’, designating slower journeys within a limited radius which allow, and sometimes necessitate, new forms of experiencing the world.

‘In keeping with its subject, Microtravel notices details that often go overlooked and recognises heterogeneity in an area supposed by casual observers to be homogeneous. Its topic and approach make this volume a rich and nuanced study, one that expands our understanding of both travel and writing.’ — Tim Youngs, Emeritus Professor of English and Travel Studies, Nottingham Trent University



‘This book turns travel on its head. Opening our eyes to the world doesn’t always mean covering long distances. Here we follow travellers and travel writers who move vertically, rather than horizontally, explore endotic rather than exotic geographies, stretching their powers of observation and imagination. Like all the best travel writing, this book is full of insights and delights.’ — Richard Phillips, Professor of Human Geography, University of Sheffield


‘A timely collection that boldly raises important questions and coaxes from its contributors refreshing new readings of what they demonstrate is a substantial body of texts with a long history. These finely contextualised case studies are sure to provoke renewed critical attention to modes of microtravel writing hitherto neglected and under-theorised.’ — Alasdair Pettinger, co-editor of The Routledge Research Companion to Travel Writing 


‘This is a fascinating and timely contribution to the scholarship of travel and travel writing. At a time when the experience of enforced states is still fresh in many minds, the pieces collected here compel us to reconsider the parameters of travel itself, and to focus less on the far horizon, more on the granular and immediate detail.’ —Tim Hannigan, author of The Travel Writing Tribe and The Granite Kingdom and Lecturer in Writing and Literature, The Atlantic Technological University Sligo


‘This stimulating collection of essays opens up new possibilities for understanding both the phenomenon of “microtravel” and its associated travel writing. Focusing on travel with limitations – of speed, of radius, of confinement, of immobility – the authors range widely and helpfully across historical periods, geographical locations and cultural contexts.’ —Betty Hagglund, University of Birmingham

ISBN: 9781839986581

Dimensions: 229mm x 153mm x 26mm

Weight: 454g

246 pages