Chaim Noy’s book, A Narrative Community: Voices of Israeli Backpackers, grew out of his 2002 PhD dissertation at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Since 2002, Noy has written several articles on the topic of Israeli backpackers and tourism and has co-edited a collection of essays with Professor Erik Cohen (Israeli Backpackers and their Society: A View from Afar, 2005). In A Narrative Community, his more recent single-authored book, Noy examines the discourse that helps create and define a three-decade-old, evolving community of Israeli backpackers who--while they may not all know each other--share similar experiences, a viable imagined identity, and a useful social network. His book is an excellent contribution to communication studies and ethnographic methodology. As a folklorist drawn to the word narrative in the book’s title, I will admit to some disappointment in the lack of what I would consider really good stories, but I do think the study is one that can be of great use to teachers, students, and scholars interested in how discourse functions within groups that actually have minimal face-to-face interaction.
Chaim Noy’s primary contribution here is in identifying a functioning community and in demonstrating the important role that ethnographic interviews can and do play in eliciting previously unrecognized social networks and patterns of interaction. He begins his book with a very helpful review of backpacking as a widely practiced Israeli custom that began following the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He describes the practice as a rite of passage, a kind of secular pilgrimage, that harkens back to the native Sabra culture’s deep respect for adventure and exploring the land on foot. Contemporary Israelis--both men and women--typically begin their travels upon finishing two or three years of service in the Israeli army. Most backpackers are young and used to the collective behavior associated with people in uniform.
This collective backdrop is responsible for much of the shared authority that dominates the discourse among present and former backpackers. As Noy demonstrates, a primary goal for any backpacker is to be able to share the frame of reference common to all who have already taken the “grand journey.” Much of Noy’s middle chapters are devoted to showing how intertextuality allows people who do not know each other to nevertheless participate in an emerging discourse about traveling in distant places. He culls out quotations or “direct reported speech” from the interviews and shows how they index competence among backpackers who exchange pieces of travel dialogue after they return home. One interesting example is in his discussion of “trail stories,” which are more like directions rather than anecdotes--as in “you cross a bridge, on your left you’ll see a stream--continue straight until you see a waterfall” (131).
Such trail stories are typically part of larger discourses that describe what backpackers do. Noy found that while examples of this kind of discourse did emerge in some alumni-style events, more often it was his own role as interviewer that provided a context for such exchanges to occur. Furthermore, he found that his own potential recruitment as a future backpacker was often essential in eliciting the kind of rhetorical performances he hoped to study. (He later admits to his interviewees that he had already taken the tour). The act of interviewing is obviously significant as part of the methodology and part of the performance. And it allows Noy to ask for additional contacts and construct a “snowball” social network of other community members. Of the forty-three people Noy interviewed for his study, three of his original contacts led him to thirty-six of the other people, in three snowball stemmata. This clear demonstration of how the networks create a community is an important contribution. It underlines the significance of connections that are not maintained directly in face-to-face groups.
Chaim Noy has given us a transparent examination of how community is created and maintained without many of the usual markers we have come to associate with community. He offers insights on how discourse helps define community. He--perhaps inadvertently--shows how the ethnographic interview can serve as a context for identity-building and dialogue. And he demonstrates how the technique of “snowballing” can be used to identify a functioning community. What I wish he had included in his study is more attention to some of the contributions folklore as a discipline could have brought to his project. While he singled out “trail stories” as a feature of larger metalinguistic texts, he did not seek out or name other genres that were used expressively. He identified some linguistic patterns but did not consider whether some actions or behaviors might be similar to narrative motifs. His discussion of narrative was sociolinguistic rather than folkloric, and while he made good use of the kind of performance study Richard Bauman is noted for, he did not include examples of striking stories as Bauman always does.
I suppose it is this longing for memorable stories that interfered with an entirely positive response to the book. Perhaps the heavily indexed exchanges that occur when backpackers meet are sufficiently stimulating and rhetorically effective for them. But as expressive performances for people outside of that community--even after Noy’s careful analysis--the narratives are rather thin. I suppose I risk sounding like Paul Hogan’s Crocodile Dundee when he says, “Now THIS is a knife” if I argue that Meirav’s story about getting ahead of her hiking group is too weak to be a “real story.” In contrast, I recall from one of the business self-help books I read for a recent study a backpacking story related by David Whyte (The Heart Aroused, 1994). Whyte tells of hiking by himself along a mountain trail and coming to a gorge with a broken bridge stretching across it. Seeing the deep ravine below and fearful of trying to cross with the bridge only partially intact, he decides he will have to return the way he came. As he turns, an old woman approaches with her head down; she is looking for yak dung to use as fuel. She is startled when she sees Whyte’s boots, but she bows and says “Namaste.” Before Whyte can reply, she moves quickly across the broken bridge and disappears on the other side. Without a second thought, Whyte follows the old woman and crosses the bridge in six or seven quick but frightening strides. Now that’s a story!
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[Review length: 1052 words • Review posted on June 19, 2008]