Performing Global Geographies: Time, Space, Place and Pace in Narratives of Round-the-World Travel

This paper explores the spatio-temporal dimensions of round-the-world travel by focusing on the way travellers weave together space and time in their round-the-world itineraries. Through an analysis of the narratives that round-the-world travellers publish online and recount in interviews, the paper argues that round-the-world itineraries map place, time and tempo into a global geography. The paper suggests that pace is of particular importance in this performance of a global geography. Travelling around the world at pace enables travellers to encounter the world through a mobile panoptic gaze that both produces and consumes difference. The constant movement of round-the-world travel produces difference by juxtaposing an array of places and rhythms within a single trip, while allowing the traveller to collect and consume those differences.