ABSTRACT
This research has highlighted the centrality of corporeal travel to extended social networks. In particular the respondents take for granted the historically low costs of travel and communications and have developed social patterns that take advantage of new geographies of access. We have shown that while sightseeing used to be a fitting basis for thinking about why people travelled in their leisure time, networking is now at least as pertinent. Networking highlights how travel is a social practice that involves embodied work of scheduling, travelling, visiting, guiding, hosting, cleaning and so on (networking is effectively work); that travel patterns are relational and embedded within social networks and their complex obligations; that travel involves tools and resources; that there are marked variations in access to such network capital; and that tourist travel often develops and produces social capital.
