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310 Pages·2001·7.504 MB·English
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Butterworth-Heinemann Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP 225 Wildwood Avenue, Woburn, MA 01801-2041 A division of Reed Educational and Professional Publishing Ltd A member of the Reed Elsevier plc group First published 2000 0 Reed Educational and Professional Publishing Ltd 2000 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright holder except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London, England WlP OLP. Applications for the copyright holder’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publishers British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data In search of hospitality: theoretical perspectives and debates 1. Hospitality - Philosophy 2. Hospitality industry - Philosophy 3. Philosophy and civilization I. Lashley, Conrad 11. Morrison, Alison J. 177.1 ISBN-10 0 7506 5431 7 ISBN-13 978 0 7506 5431 9 Transferred to digital print 2007 Printed and bound by CPI Antony Rowe, Eastbourne c I I began reading this volume in a somewhat anxious state of mind. I'd accepted the invitation to write a foreword without having any very clear idea in my mind about the meaning of 'hospitality' or about how the subject might engender the 'theoretical perspectives and debates' which were promised in the sub-title. I need not have worried. As soon as I began to read I realized that this was not only an area of study which connected with many of my own sociological interests in the 'escape attempts' provided by holidays and tourism but also provided me with a nice justification for further pursuing the amateur obsession I've had over the years with hotels and guesthouses. This interest was initially prompted by my friendship with the first editor of The Good HofeI Guide. I remember spending hours talking with Hilary about the possibility of such a guide and about whether it would be possible to persuade a sufficient number of people to write in with highly personal accounts of the places where they'd stayed. As it turned out, Hilary's optimism about the venture was entirely justified and now, like so many others, I find myself not only racing out to buy the latest edition but positively longing for the moment when I can settle back and savour the thousands of lovingly written independent reports on hotels, inns, guesthouses and B&Bs which make up its content. What makes the guide so fascinating is the insight it provides into the distinctive idea of hospitality held by the British middle classes. Every year, for example, the 'note for new readers' announces that most of the entries are for small establishments run by resident owners. Even though the bulk of hotel rooms in Foreword the country are to be found in large hotels run by managers, the guide knows its audience well enough to confidently dismiss their claims in a single sentence: 'We don't object in principle to large hotels . . .b ut in our experience they often fail to provide the welcome and care for guests' comfort that can be found in the best of the small individually-owned hotels'. Now, it would be difficult to argue with the idea that any self- respecting hotel or guesthouse should provide a reasonable welcome and show a concern for its guests' comfort, but even the briefest glance at any of the entries in the guide shows that these words are being used in an exclusive and specialized sense. No matter how enthusiastic the welcome provided by the reception- ist at a Hyatt or a Hilton, no matter how much concern for a guest's comfort is evidenced by the furniture and fittings within a Marriott or Moat House, there is no way in which such establishments can meet the distinctive welcome and comfort requirements of the typical guide reader. What exactly are these requirements? I can't pretend to have done a systematic content analysis of the 750 essays that make up the guide but there are several descriptions which regularly recur whether the facility under inspection is a five-bedroom B&B or a grand thirty-bedroom mansion. Guide readers almost always relish any establishment with a 'homely feel'. They like to feel 'at home', enjoy the sense of being in a 'private house', and relish a degree of 'informality'. Great emphasis is also placed upon the personality of the owners. They should above all be 'enthusiastic' (even 'exuberant'), 'friendly', 'unfussy', 'generous', 'kind, 'infor- mal', free of snobbery and pretension, and as proud of their establishment as they are knowledgeable about its history and setting. There's no need to go on. What we have here is a simple exercise in projection. Guide readers expect their hosts and hostesses to correspond as closely as possible in an imperfect world to their own idealized self-conceptions.T hey must provide a refreshing and reassuring reminder of the core middle class values which are so difficult to live up to in today's frenzied material world as well as preside over a 'traditional home' free from the disunity and fragmentation of contemporary domestic life. Above all they must contrive to give the impression, even on the morning when the final bill is presented, that they are not so much motivated by a desire for personal gain as living out a vocation. At this point I must draw a line under my own speculations and trust that the academics who have contributed to this collection of essays on the nature of hospitality will forgive my intrusion into their specialist area. My intention was solely to demonstrate a personal fascination with the subject matter of Foreword their research, to reinforce the view so often articulated in this volume, that hospitality is a concept which has not only been much neglected in the literature of social science, but also one which is well capable of taking its place alongside such other more familiar intellectual areas of enquiry as 'stratification', 'deviance', 'social mobility' and 'leisure'. All these now familiar areas of enquiry were preoccupied in their infancy with defining the exact nature of their subject area. This volume shows 'hospitality' going through a similar process and it was refreshing to find Elizabeth Telfer asking the question which at least implicitly preoccupies the editors of The Good Hotel Guide: 'Can a commercial host be hospitable?'. As she observes, 'On a superficial view this seems to be ruled out on the grounds that he or she always has an ulterior motive, namely the profit motive'. The Guide's resolution of this dilemma is to reserve the word 'hospitable' for those institutions where the profit motive is better concealed than others but as I have already indicated, in so doing, it is forced to ignore those larger hotels which may provide their guests with exactly what they require in terms of service, comfort and efficiency. Telfer avoids this trap by arguing that 'if a commercial host looks after his guests well out of a genuine concern for their happiness and charges them reasonably rather than extortionately for what he does, his activities can be called hospitable. . . To say that a commercial host cannot be said to behave hospitably simply on the ground that he is paid for his work is like saying that doctors cannot be said to behave compassionately because they are paid for what they do'. It's a neat point but I'm unhappy about that weasel word 'genuine'. How on earth are we to measure such 'genuine concern'? All we have to go on is the behaviour of the particular host and if this behaviour seems genuine enough to visiting guests, should the news that it was entirely learned during a six- week course on hospitality lead us to withdraw the epithet? What is important to hotel guests is surely a successful 'show of hospitality' in much the same way that patients visiting their local GP are delighted to find an appropriate display of compassion. This perspective is fruitfully adopted by Jane Darke and Craig Gurney in their analysis of hospitality as performance. By drawing upon Goffman's theory of presentation they avoid the need to question the 'genuineness' or otherwise of the hospitality that is being offered. As far as Goffman is concerned all self- presentation is accomplished by recourse to a variety of tech- niques which have affinities with the way an actor successfully brings off a role on stage. There is no more point in asking whether the motive behind the hotelier's successful performance Foreword ~ ~ ~ ~ of hospitality is genuine than in seeking to discover whether or not John Gielgud really was Hamlet. This perspective has two other advantages which are well exploited by Darke and Gurney. It allows for a very fruitful comparison between domestic and commercial hospitality in terms of what is required for successful accomplishment in both spheres as well as highlighting the dangers of the hospitality industry drawing too freely upon domestic metaphors. More importantly, it provides a basis for understanding the range of embarrassments and anxieties which lie around the practice of hospitality. As they write: 'The performance of hospitality is fragile and precarious'. There's one other critical way in which Goffman helps us in the characterization of hospitality. At the centre of all his work on presentation and performance lies the notion of reciprocity and exchange. Visitors to a hotel are not merely passive observers of the staffs attempts to provide them with hospitality, they provide the conditions for that performance by colluding with the presentation. They have, in other words, a vested interest in the performance being successful in that its breakdown creates an embarrassment which denies them their chance to carry off their own role of hotel guest. The running joke in Fawlty Towers is not John Cleese's incapacity to perform successfully the role of hotel manager but the manner in which this failure creates havoc among guests who persist even in the face of the most appalling insults and provocation in continuing to cling to their own circumscribed role of hotel guest. Although Brotherton and Wood do not draw upon Goffman in their conceptual chapter on hospitality and hospitality manage- ment, they are commendably insistent upon placing the idea of exchange (economic, social and psychological) at the heart of their synthesis. As they suggest, this emphasis promotes an 'exploration of trans-historical and cross-national studies of cvri hospitality as well as immediately raising questions about the La- relationships between 'private/domestic and public/commercial L9. hospitality'. I hope I've said enough to indicate that I find much of the discussion in this text to be important and timely. There have been occasions in my regular column in the Times Higher Education Supplement when I've rather lazily used 'Hospitality Studies' as shorthand for all those new-found university cour- ses which seem to be prompted rather more by student fashion and the requirements of the job market than any deep seated intellectual curiosity. I will take more care in future. This book amply demonstrates that the study of hospitality is as intellectually valid as any other area of human relations. It Foreword is also of the moment. The massive expansion of the tourist industry and the dramatic increase in the use of private homes as sites for dinner parties and weekend stopovers means that most of us are now regular consumers as well as purveyors of hospitality. Anyone who is curious about the implications of these developments for our notions of interpersonal reciprocity, gender relations, hyperreality, and public and private space now has a valuable work of reference. As essential hotel reading it sure as hell knocks spots off the Gideon Bible. Laurie Taylor a * Introduction This book aims to both reflect and open up a number of debates between academics working in the field of ‘hospitality manage- ment’ and academics from the wider social sciences. As Airey and Tribe show in Chapter 15, hospitality management is a relatively new academic discipline that has been largely concerned with the hospitality industry. In many ways ’hospitality’ has been used as a term to describe activities that were called ‘hotel and catering’ in earlier times. The study of ’hospitality’ presents avenues of enquiry that the more prosaic title of hotel and catering tends to discourage yet which are essential for understanding host and guest relationships. When the possibilities are explored, hospital- ity and hospitableness can be studies in private and in wider social settings. There have been a number of recent books dealing with food and social aspects of eating. For example, the work of Visser 4 (19911, Mennel, et al. (1992), Wood, (19951, Beardsworth and Keil 3 (1997) all address aspects of eating and meals. With few ’-i exceptions, these texts rarely touch on or mention hospitality and 5, g1-G relationships between guests and host through a study of mutual obligations and the practice of hospitableness. Telfer’s work ol: (1996) and Heal’s (1990)e xploration of hospitality in early middle 2 England are notable in providing analysis that can inform future ? study. -*-> Current interest in defining hospitality as an academic subject -: outlined in this book stems from a meeting held in Nottingham in -t. 9 April 1997. The meeting aimed to explore subjects of common interest amongst some of the leading researchers and writers in -h Introduction hospitality subjects within the UK. This text draws together some of the ideas both presented in discussion papers written by colleagues, and in some of the other texts mentioned earlier. The book is therefore exploratory, intended as a medium for dissemination, debate and future directions of work in the discipline. By the very nature of the project, the contents are eclectic. Chapters have been commissioned, in some cases because authors were already working in a discipline that had a contribution to make about the nature of hospitality. In other cases, chapters have been volunteered by those involved in research activities that shed insights into the topic. In some cases, authors write from different philosophical and epistemological perspectives, and the book deliberately aims to reflect a plurality of views in which some individuals do not agree with others. Our aim in selecting chapters has, therefore, been concerned with reflecting insights into the study of hospitality that encompass the commercial provision of hospitality and the hospitality industry, yet at the same time recognize that hospital- ity needs to be explored in a private domestic setting and studies hospitality as a social phenomenon involving relationships between people. It is our hope that these chapters will each in their own way encourage further research and study. The book is, therefore, not intended as the final word, but more a beginning from which the subject will develop and grow. Conrad Lashley School of Tourism and Hospitality Management, Leeds Metropolitan University Alison Morrison The Scottish Hotel School, University of Strathclyde References Beardsworth, A. and Keil, T. (1997) Sociology on the Menu. London, Routledge. Heal, F. (1990) Hospitality in Early Modern England. Oxford, Clarendon Press. Mennel, S., Murcott, A. and van Otterloo, A.H. (1992) The Sociology of Food: Eating, Diet and Culture. London, Sage. Telfer, E. (1996) Food for Thought: Philosophy and Food. London, Routledge. Visser, M. (1991) The Rituals of Dinner. Toronto, HarperCollins. Wood, R.C. (1995) The Sociology of the Meal. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press. About the authors Amel Adib is a research student in the South Bank Business School at the University of the South Bank David Airey is Professor of Tourism Management in the School of Management Studies for the Service Sector at the University of Surrey Hazel Andrews is a research student in the Centre for Leisure and Tourism Studies at the University of North London Stephen Ball is Principal Lecturer in Hospitality Management in the School of Leisure and Food Management at Sheffield Hallam University David Botterill is Director of Research and Enterprise in the School of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff I Bob Brotherton is Principal Lecturer in the Department of Hotel, - I -- Catering and Tourism Management at Manchester Metropolitan University .> .:: Jane Darke is Lecturer in Housing in the School of Planning at Oxford Brookes University - Craig Gurney is Lecturer in Housing at the Centre for Housing -' - Management and Development at the University of Wales Yvonne Guerrier is Professor and Head of the Division of Leisure and Tourism in the South Bank Business School at the University of the South Bank About the authors Peter Jones is Forte Professor of Hotel Management in the School of Management Studies for the Service Sector at the University of Surrey Keith Johnson is Professor of Human Resource Management in the Business School at the College of Ripon and St John Conrad Lashley is British Institute of Innkeeping Professor in Licensed Retail Management in the School of Tourism and Hospitality Management at Leeds Metropolitan University Andrew Lockwood is Professor of Hospitality Management in the School of Management Studies for the Service Sector at the University of Surrey Paul Lynch is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Queen Margaret’s University College Doreen MacWhannell is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Queen Margaret‘s University College Alison Morrison is Director of Research in the Scottish Hotel School at the University of Strathclyde Sandie Randall is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Hospital- ity and Tourism Management at Queen Margaret‘s University College Tom Selwyn is Professor of the Anthropology of Tourism, Centre for Leisure and Tourism Studies at the University of North London Elizabeth Telfer is Reader in Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Glasgow John Tribe is Principal Lecturer in Tourism in the Faculty of Leisure and Tourism at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College John K. Walton is Principal Lecturer in Urban History in the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies at the University of Central Lancashire Alistair Williams is Senior Lecturer in Marketing in the Division of Hospitality Studies at the University of Huddersfield Roy C. Wood is Professor in Hospitality Management in the Scottish Hotel School at the University of Strathclyde

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Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.