Methodological bricolage: a journey on the road less traveled in tourism studies

This article, by exploring an approach to research, argues a case for bricolage as an acceptable approach in tourism research. Tourism researchers thinking about utilizing methodological bricolage as a research approach have little scholarly literature to draw from; therefore, it remains relatively underused and misunderstood as a means of qualitative inquiry. This article presents an account of getting to grips with a multiparadigmatic methodological bricolage as a way of understanding the world of backpacking and its inhabitants, who actively constitute, distinguish, and label themselves as backpackers. It is an approach that delivered a coherent conceptual scaffold, producing a rich, but always partial, understanding of a social world, those who inhabit it, and how they sustain it. It doing so, the research design adds to methodological innovation and diversification in tourism research.