Hazel Andrews, Les Roberts and Tom Selwyn
This paper aims to provoke discussion and reflection on the role of the erotic in the cultivation of spaces of hospitality, and to provide a theoretical consideration of the…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to provoke discussion and reflection on the role of the erotic in the cultivation of spaces of hospitality, and to provide a theoretical consideration of the structural similarities of hospitality and eroticism.
Design/methodology/approach
With reference to classical studies as well as debates in the social science literature, the paper starts by examining some of the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings to hospitality and eroticism. It then develops this analysis by considering examples drawn from ethnographic studies of “traditional” hospitality settings as well as of commercial hospitality environments of charter tourism.
Findings
The main outcome of the discussion is to demonstrate the structural relations between hospitality and eroticism. By situating the analysis within a broad theoretical and ethnographic context, it is shown that the erotic has historically functioned as a socially‐binding and communicative mode of social intercourse that, while undermined by the demands of a market‐based culture of commercial hospitality, is also able to flourish within these same adverse conditions.
Research limitations/implications
This paper invites further research into the connections between hospitality and eroticism in settings similar to and different from those described in the paper. A fuller ethnographic study of the relationship between the two is needed, as well as an exploration of more theoretical perspectives on hospitality drawn from the social science literature.
Practical implications
By highlighting the socially binding role of eroticism in the structuring of host‐guest relations, the paper draws on and contributes to a broader politics of love and sensuality that will inform critical reflections on commercial and market‐driven hospitality practices.
Originality/value
This paper provides an original insight into the interrelationship between hospitality and eroticism. It further illuminates previous writings on both subjects but particularly that of eroticism and is supported by empirical data. It is of particular interest to those studying hospitality from a social science perspective.
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Bruno Sousa, Laurentina Vareiro, Ana Rita Marques, Vasco Ribeiro Santos and Marco Valeri
Maximiliano E. Korstanje and Hugues Seraphin
An increasing number of studies claim on the decline of hospitality in the West. These works focus on the lack of tolerance or expressions against foreigners as the clear sign…
Abstract
Purpose
An increasing number of studies claim on the decline of hospitality in the West. These works focus on the lack of tolerance or expressions against foreigners as the clear sign that something is changing. Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic mainly marked a type of intolerance with the foreign tourists. This book chapter brings reflection on the plot of HBO Saga Westworld to understand the ways forms of hospitality in a post-modern world.
Design/Methodology/Approach
The present book chapter is based on the technique of content analysis or film ethnography which dissects elements of films and movies. In so doing, film ethnography occupies a central position in the constellations of qualitative methods.
Findings
The present piece is a critique on what specialists dubbed as robot tourism. Westworld shows not only the cautions policymakers should have on robot tourism but also how the depersonalisation process works. Basically, Westworld speaks us of a dystopian amusing park where rich guests travel to torture and victimise humanoids (hosts) who are unable to retaliate. Westworld brings reflection on the decline or the end of hospitality, at least as we know it.
Originality/Value
Just after 9/11 some critical voices alerted Western hospitality was in decline. This chapter goes on in the same direction. Westworld brings the problems of free choice, the liberty as well as hospitality into the foreground.
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The Day the World Stopped is a science fiction film that narrates the days of mankind amid an alien invasion headed to avoid the climate change. We made the decision to use a…
Abstract
The Day the World Stopped is a science fiction film that narrates the days of mankind amid an alien invasion headed to avoid the climate change. We made the decision to use a similar title to narrate the facts that precede the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, and its immediate effects on the industry of tourism. Over years, scholars cited John Urry and his insight over the tourist gaze as well as the importance of tourism as a social institution. Of course, Urry never imagined that one day this global world would end. This chapter centers on the needs of discussing the concept of the wicked gaze, which exhibits the end of hospitality, a tendency emerged after 9/11. This chapter punctuates on the decline of hospitality—at least as it was imagined by ancient philosophers—in a way that the tourist gaze sets the pace to a wicked gaze. Whether hospitality and free transit were the foundational values of West, COVID-19, and the resulted state of emergency reveals a new unknown process of feudalization which comes to stay. The chapter is framed based on long-dormant philosophical debates, but given the complexity of this issue, the efforts deserve our attention.
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Purpose: The present chapter includes discussing the effects of COVID-19 in the tourism industry. Although much has been written on COVID-19 in these days, literature emphasizes…
Abstract
Purpose: The present chapter includes discussing the effects of COVID-19 in the tourism industry. Although much has been written on COVID-19 in these days, literature emphasizes on the economic devastating consequences of lockdown on tourism industry. The chapter goes in an opposite direction revealing the fears, expectance, and hopes of tourism staff in Argentina.
Design-Methodology: Because of the methodological impossibilities to conduct face-to-face interviews, we have employed digital platform to conduct 50 interviews in tourism professionals geographically located in different Argentinean cities as well as coming from different subsectors in the tourism industry. The used method was snowball which means that each interviewee recommended another one once the interview ends. The sample was drawn in 20 females and 30 males from 25 to 55 years old.
Findings: The findings suggest three important assumptions. Interviewees expressed some partisan or ideological hostilities against China and Eastern countries. The Chinese tourists were seen with some mistrust for interviewed people as well as the reaction of Chinese government to stop the pandemic. In other cases, old inter-class rivalries were found when interviewees blamed the stranded (rich) tourists as the main carriers of the virus in Argentina-wide. Hostilities and chauvinist expression against neighboring countries such Bolivia or Chile were overtly uttered. These narratives escalate when interviewees manifest their wages have been unilaterally slumped down. By the side, digital technologies offer as fertile ground to exploit new forms of tourism in the years to come.
Research Limitations: The obtained outcome should be validated in next approaches because the sample is not statistically representative of the universe. The restrictions imposed by the lockdown impeded further research today. In the same line, the sample was limited to tourism professionals, which suggests that policymakers should be included in the future research.
Practical Implications: Understanding the fears and hope of tourism staff is an alternative way to enact sustainable policies to mitigate the negative effects of the pandemic in the tourism industry. While these policies construct a bridge between theory and management, no less true is that the future of tourism remains uncertain.
Originality Value: The present chapter provides an original empirical insight into the viewpoint of tourism staff, which is today subject to countless fears and deprivations. The extensive lockdown imposed by Argentinean government, accompanied by the impossibility to orchestrate a preparedness program of mitigation, has led the industry to a slow agony. The chapter reflects the rise of an anti-foreign discourse and sentiment oriented to demonize not only the Chinese (Asian) tourists but also expatriates living abroad. This anti-tourist discourse, which oppose to the neologism offered by Urry as the “tourist-gaze,” univocally exhibits the start of a radicalized hospitality we dubbed as “the wicked-gaze.” The “Other” is not an object of curiosity any longer, but “a potential enemy” to be controlled.
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Yvonne Ai-Chi Loh and Arul Chib
This paper presents a framework to measure the digital divide by considering a more comprehensive index of information and communication technology (ICT) predictors. The authors…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper presents a framework to measure the digital divide by considering a more comprehensive index of information and communication technology (ICT) predictors. The authors also address the conceptual and methodological problems in the digital divide field, given that its focus has been shifted from technological access to higher-order divides over the years. The proposed framework is hypothesized and tested in the context of unemployed and underemployed residents in Singapore.
Design/methodology/approach
Through a quantitative survey, 302 unemployed and underemployed workers were asked what ICT “access”, “usage” and “appropriation” meant to them. Factor analyses were deployed to identify the underlying, granular dimensions of ICT access, usage and appropriation.
Findings
The factor analyses revealed an interesting breakdown of the main factors of ICT access, usage and appropriation. The authors found that one's purpose for which technology is accessed, used and appropriated determines how each of the levels of ICT assets is defined. Thus, the authors propose new operational definitions for ICT access, usage and appropriation based on the analyses.
Originality/value
This study aims to provide a more robust measure of the digital divide from access, capabilities to outcomes. The authors hope that this framework, besides complementing current digital divide models, can be applied to different types of participants.
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This qualitative research explores factors that influence social studies teachers’ issue-selection for classroom discussion. Four high school teachers—three from an urban setting…
Abstract
This qualitative research explores factors that influence social studies teachers’ issue-selection for classroom discussion. Four high school teachers—three from an urban setting and one from a suburban high school—participated in the study. Data were gathered over three months via interviews, classroom observations, and field notes; all were analyzed using the constant comparative technique of the grounded theory approach. Two claims are made: Teachers’ social positioning influences their curriculum choices, and media influences social studies teachers’ issue-selection.
Tom Cockburn, Peter Treadwell and Cheryl Cockburn‐Wootten
We compare and contrast two paradigms of the digitalisation of HE. One is the British Government‐sponsored University for Industry (Ufi) which is based on a distributed campus…
Abstract
We compare and contrast two paradigms of the digitalisation of HE. One is the British Government‐sponsored University for Industry (Ufi) which is based on a distributed campus with multiple hubs connecting individual puchaser‐learners to HE providers. This is contrasted with a sociable paradigm, based at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff (UWIC). The first is based on an isolating and less empowering conception, alienating the learning from the community. The second aims to socialise the learning in the community of practice. The UWIC GROWTH network project underpins a regenerative project for SMEs in South Wales. It is seeking to facilitate a self‐organising, stakeholder‐community of SMEs committed to economic regeneration and capital anchoring in the South Wales area and is funded by the EU. We also refer to the EU‐sponsored Intelligent Information Interfaces (I3) project to demonstrate an alternative, sociable use of ICT.
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Debbie Isobel Keeling, Ko de Ruyter, Sahar Mousavi and Angus Laing
Policymakers push online health services delivery, relying on consumers to independently engage with online services. Yet, a growing cluster of vulnerable patients do not engage…
Abstract
Purpose
Policymakers push online health services delivery, relying on consumers to independently engage with online services. Yet, a growing cluster of vulnerable patients do not engage with or disengage from these innovative services. There is a need to understand how to resolve the tension between the push of online health service provision and unengagement by a contingent of health-care consumers. Thus, this study aims to explore the issue of digital unengagement (DU) (i.e. the active or passive choice to engage or disengage) with online health services to better inform service design aligned to actual consumer need.
Design/methodology/approach
Adopting a survey methodology, a group of 486 health services consumers with a self-declared (acute or chronic) condition were identified. Of this group, 110 consumers were classified as digitally unengaged and invited to write open-ended narratives about their unengagement with online health services. As a robustness check, these drivers were contrasted with the drivers identified by a group of digitally engaged consumers with a self-declared condition (n = 376).
Findings
DU is conceptualized, and four levels of DU drivers are identified. These levels represent families of interrelated drivers that in combination shape DU: subjective incompatibility (misalignment of online services with need, lifestyle and alternative services); enactment vulnerability (personal vulnerabilities around control, comprehension and emotional management of online services); sharing essentiality (centrality of face-to-face co-creation opportunities plus conflicting social dependencies); and strategic scepticism (scepticism of the strategic value of online services). Identified challenges at each level are the mechanisms through which drivers impact on DU. These DU drivers are distinct from those of the digitally engaged group.
Research limitations/implications
Adding to a nascent but growing literature on consumer unengagement, and complementing the engagement literature, the authors conceptualize DU, positioning it as distinct from, not simply a lack of, consumer engagement. The authors explore the drivers of DU to provide insight into how DU occurs. Encapsulating the dynamic nature of DU, these drivers map the building blocks that could help to address the issue of aligning the push of online service provision with the pull from consumers.
Practical implications
This paper offers insights on how to encourage consumers to engage with online health services by uncovering the drivers of DU that, typically, are hidden from service designers and providers impacting provision and uptake.
Social implications
There is a concern that there will be an unintentional disenfranchisement of vulnerable segments of society with a generic policy emphasis on pushing online services. The paper sheds light on the unforeseen personal and social issues that lead to disenfranchisement by giving voice to digitally unengaged consumers with online health services.
Originality/value
Offering a novel view from a hard-to-reach digitally unengaged group, the conceptualization of DU, identified drivers and challenges inform policymakers and practitioners on how to facilitate online health service (re)engagement and prevent marginalization of segments of society.