Neo‐Nomadism: A Theory of Post‐Identitarian Mobility in the Global Age

This article focuses on a theoretical discussion about the interrelations between global hypermobility and subjectivity formation. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among expatriates that circulate through global circuits of countercultural lifestyle, the study initially evinces the cultural and conceptual significance of global nomadism. It then detects conceptual limitations for the investigation of fluidic and metamorphic formations in global studies. Through a dialogue between the anthropology of nomadism and philosophy of nomadology, the article then seeks to integrate tropes of fluidity, rootlessness and aesthetic reflexivity into an ideal‐type of postidentitarian mobility (neo‐nomadism), a device for investigating the cultural effects of hypermobility on self, identity and sociality. It includes methodological notes on nomadic ethnography. The article concludes that the neo‐nomad is both a phenomenon and a concept that allows us to rethink models of subjectivity formation in globalization.