Tourism and extraordinary ordinary life

This study examines how nature-based tourism and everyday life intertwine to shape meaning and personal transformation. Drawing on constructivist grounded theory and evidence from observations in four protected areas alongside thirty-eight interviews with Chinese tourists, it identifies a four-stage process of becoming: departing, encountering, returning, and transforming. Informed by Deleuzian philosophy, tourism is reimagined as an immanent and open-ended force embedded within the rhythms of everyday life rather than a temporary escape or quest for authenticity. Findings challenge binaries between the ordinary and the extraordinary, showing how subtle affective encounters can profoundly reshape self and world. The study proposes a more inclusive and ontologically grounded understanding of tourism, while questioning modernist, class-based assumptions. • Explores how tourism and daily life intertwine in a continuous process of becoming. • Identifies four stages: departing, encountering, returning, and transforming. • Shows how more-than-human encounters reshape perceptions and practices. • Reconceptualises tourism as an immanent force within ordinary, everyday life. • Challenges binaries to support a more inclusive and grounded tourism theory.