Travel Worlds : Journeys in Contemporary Cultural Politics

African-American musicians head East for Kung-Fu kicks while paedophiles go for cheap sex pilgrimage; Western bible-bashers adopt missionary positions in India while heroic Saint George signs on as an Arab soldier in Britain; the scars of Partition mock the protocols of transit, while nomadic insurgents resist the Bangladeshi nation state with lyrical persuasion; Kula Shaker and Madonna trinketize the `Orient' while dead tourists exchange values with travelling `terrorists'; British Mirpuris and Black women travel back to the `Old Country' and beyond in ways that are not quite as they seem; and ethnographers collide with tourists in the carousel of Goa's resorts. Including poetry and fiction alongside academic essays, this book refuses simplistic dichotomies of north/south and east/west and confronts head on existing conventions of writing about travel in post-colonial, literary and cultural studies.

In so doing, it sheds new light on:* the shortcomings of border theories and nation-state parameters* the politics of diasporic and transnational travels* the relations between tourism and terrorism* the limitations of `alternative' tourismTRAVEL WORLDS plots the politics of diverse journeys; it is `something of a travel guide, something of a hold-all backpack, and something of another compass'.