Theorizing Hospitality

This new journal has been motivated by a paradox. As each of us has explored questions of hospitality from within our different areas of research, we have been struck by the extent to which the field has become intrinsically inhospitable to the interdisciplinary study of hospitality

The social affordances of flashpacking: exploring the mobility nexus of travel and communication

The proliferation of digital devices and online social media and networking technologies has altered the backpacking landscape in recent years. Thanks to the ready availability of online communication, travelers are now able to stay in continuous touch with friends, family and other travelers while on the move. This article introduces the practice of ‘flashpacking’ to describe this emerging trend and interrogates the patterns of connection and disconnection that become possible as corporeal travel and social technologies converge. Drawing on the concepts of ‘assemblages’ and ‘affordances’, we outline several aspects of this new sociality: virtual mooring, following, collaborating, and (dis)connecting. The conclusion situates this discussion alongside broader questions about the shifting nature of social life in an increasingly mobile and mediated world and suggests directions for future research at the intersection of tourism and technology

Unpopular Culture: Ecological Dissonance and Sustainable Futures in Media-Induced Tourism

The article deconstructs media-induced tourist development’s relationship with “sustainability,” “ecology” and the “popular”. I highlight the interconnected, but often competing interpretations of “ecology” as interactions among technics (representational regimes), technological regimes and institutions (media, tourism), social agents (media/tourism experts, fan tourists and their hosts), and the natural and built environment in which these take place. Constitutive of contemporary economic and sociocultural complexities in which media-induced “popular cultures” are produced and consumed, these ecological landscapes are increasingly in conflict between and within themselves. Such conflicts destabilize “popular culture” as ritualized behavior or experiential domain, enmeshing it into populist reactions against tourists/guests/strangers

Toward a network hospitality

The growing popularity of online hospitality exchange networks like Couchsurfing and Airbnb point toward a new paradigm of sociality for a mobile and networked society as hospitable encounters among friends and strangers become entangled with social media and networking technologies. Inspired by Andreas Wittel’s notion of ‘network sociality’, this paper introduces the concept of ‘network hospitality’ to describe the kind of sociality that emerges around these new mobile, peer–to–peer, and online–to–off–line social networks. This article discusses five key features of network hospitality — sharing with strangers, feeling like a guest, engineering randomness, pop–up assemblages, and guests without hosts — and illustrates how network hospitality is implicated in the way people now ‘do togetherness’ online, off–line, and in between

Tout (est) mobile : Convergence et distinction dans les modes de vie mobiles des familles pratiquant l’éducation par le voyage

Cet article contribue à l’exploration théorique des modes de vie mobiles en proposant les concepts connexes de « convergence des modes de vie » et de « mode de vie comme distinction ». En développant ce cadre conceptuel, l’article s’appuie sur l’exemple de l’éducation par le voyage (worldschooling), un mode de vie mobile en vertu duquel des parents de la classe moyenne du Nord global retirent leurs enfants du cadre scolaire conventionnel pour les instruire tout en parcourant le monde. Comme d’autres adeptes de modes de vie mobiles, les familles pratiquant l’éducation par le voyage recherchent la « bonne vie », un mode de vie qu’elles associent à la mobilité, à la liberté et à l’autonomie. Cette quête constitue une forme de convergence des modes de vie dans laquelle les façons de vivre, c’est-à-dire les pratiques quotidiennes inscrites dans les voyages des familles, et un style de vie s’entremêlent, c’est-à-dire se combinent aux aspirations esthétiques associées à la mobilité. En même temps, nous avançons que la convergence des modes de vie peut également reproduire des hiérarchies sociales qui permettent aux familles de la classe moyenne du Nord global de tirer parti de leurs privilèges existants et d’accumuler de nouvelles formes de capital numérique, cosmopolite et lié au réseau. En ce sens, les modes de vie mobiles peuvent également fonctionner comme une forme de distinction de classe. Cependant, ces résultats ne sont pas propres aux familles pratiquant l’éducation par le voyage et cet article suggère la perspective de la convergence et de la distinction pour comprendre les désirs complexes et les inégalités qui caractérisent plus largement les modes de vie mobiles.This paper contributes to theoretical explorations of mobile lifestyles by proposing the related concepts of “lifestyle convergence” and “lifestyle as distinction.” In developing this conceptual framework, the paper draws on the example of worldschooling, a mobile lifestyle in which middle-class parents from the Global North take their children out of conventional schooling and educate them while traveling the world. Like other mobile lifestyle adherents, worldschoolers are on a quest for the “good life,” a way of living that they equate with mobility, freedom, and autonomy. This quest constitutes a form of lifestyle convergence in which ways of living, i.e. the embodied, everyday practices of families’ journeys, intertwine with a style of life, i.e. the aesthetic aspirations associated with mobility. At the same time, it is argued that lifestyle convergence can also reproduce social hierarchies that enable middle-class families from the Global North to leverage their existing privilege and accrue new forms of digital, network, and cosmopolitan capital. In this sense, mobile lifestyles can also operate as a form of class distinction. These outcomes are not unique to worldschooling families, however, and the paper proposes the framework of convergence and distinction as a framework for understanding the complex desires and inequalities that characterize mobile lifestyles more broadly.Este artículo contribuye a la exploración de los estilos de vida móviles y propone los conceptos conexos de «convergencia de formas de vida» y «estilo de vida como distinción». En el desarrollo de este cuadro conceptual, el artículo se apoya en el ejemplo de la educación mediante el viaje (worldschooling), un modo de vida móvil en el cual los padres de clase media del norte del planeta retiran sus hijos del cuadro escolar convencional para educarlos mientras se pasean por el mundo. Como otros adeptos de las formas de vida móviles, los partidarios de la educación mediante el viaje buscan la «buena vida», una forma de vida que ellos asocian con la movilidad, la libertad, y la autonomía. Esta aspiración es una forma de convergencia de formas de vida en los cuales la manera de vivir, es decir, las prácticas cotidianas inscritas en los viajes de las familias, se mezclan con un estilo de vida, es decir, con aspiraciones estéticas asociadas a la movilidad. Al mismo tiempo, proponemos que la convergencia de modos de vida puede igualmente reproducir las jerarquías sociales que permiten a las familias de la clase media del norte del planeta aprovecharse de sus privilegios y acumular nuevas formas de capital digital, en red y cosmopolita. En este sentido, las formas de vida móviles pueden asimismo funcionar como formas de distinción de clase. Sin embargo, los resultados no son exclusivos a las familias que practican el viaje como educación y este artículo sugiere la perspectiva de la convergencia y de la distinción par comprender los deseos complejos y las desigualdades que caracterizan más ampliamente a los estilos de vida móviles

‘Watch us wander’: mobile surveillance and the surveillance of mobility

Social relations between geographically distant and mobile individuals are increasingly mediated through new information and communication technologies. In this paper I argue that the configuration of these mobile social relations can be understood through a model of interpersonal surveillance that, unlike hierarchical state structures of surveillance, constitutes a decentralised social relation between individuals. This shift may be characterised in the writings of Foucault as a move from the panopticon model of surveillance that mediates the relation between the state and the individual to his later writings on technologies of the self, which emphasise interaction between individuals as a source of self-discipline. Like the panopticon, this second form of surveillance also constitutes a power/knowledge regime that produces certain ways of seeing and certain objects of the ‘surveilling’ gaze. Drawing on empirical material from research on round-the-world travel websites, in this paper I outline the way metaphors of surveillance such as ‘watching’ and ‘following’ configure the mobile social relations that occur between travellers and their on-line audience.