Paper long abstract:

This abstract is based on my ethnographic research "The temporary mediterranean "Lebenswelten" of German Second-Home Owners in Italy". I understand residential tourism as an example of the postmodern way of life influenced by tendencies of mobility- and multilocality in tourism. Moreover I want to show that residential tourism transforms historical and cultural patterns. Those developments into modern conditions and modifications shall be framed into the debate of "transnational spaces".

"Second-home" means to create a space imbued with possibilities which allow people to double up their lifestyle, being at home somewhere else. I propose to discuss the tension between mobility and settledness as an idea and a way of life. The old motive "anti-urban search for rural idylls" can be found in the motivations and practices of urban middle-class second-home owners in the 21st. Century. The splitting of the way of life into a place for work and representation, and into a place for leisure and privacy, is already manifested in the summerhouse and cityhouse conceptions of the 19th. Century .Tourism and mobility as a postmodern cultural practice transform historical and cultural habits into new frames and conditions.

New cultural transnational spaces emerge in rural Italy. Mental pictures of urban North-- and Middle-Europeans are manifested by creating those spaces. In this context "locality" significates a relational category and must be seen as a "structure of feeling". The temporary "Lebenswelten" (A. Schütz) of second-home owners depend on idealised conceptions of a mediterranean way of life, and are related to distant geographical and social spaces.

I want to pursue the questions: What means that for the relationship beetween host and home communities? How are mediterranean elements integrated, modificated, or negotiated by creating these "holiday spaces"? Does the local culture has any influence at all?

The multilocal lifestyle of second-home owners in rural Italy is a new touristic phenomenon oscillating between historical cultural patterns and transnational touristic expierences.