Couchsurfing Cosmopolitanisms: Can Tourism Make a Better World?

by David Picard (Editor), Sonja Buchberger (Editor)

Overview

The book provides unique insights into the culture of computer-mediated hospitality and how this has begun to transform contemporary tourism and travel practice. Focusing on Couchsurfing.org, one of the largest online hospitality communities worldwide, the authors explore how social relations, intimacy and trust are built in the online environment and then extended into the offline contexts of actual tourism and travel. Being active couchsurfers themselves, the authors scrutinise the candid claim by much of the online hospitality community that couchsurfing creates a "better world". The book is key reading for anyone interested in how computer mediated communication is changing contemporary forms of contact, travel and hospitality, and the kinds of cosmopolitism it brings into being.

Authors: David Picard, Sonja Buchberger, Jennie Germann Molz, Dennis Zuev, De-Jung Chen, Bernard Schéou, Jun-E Tan, Paula Bialski and Nelson Graburn.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783837622553
Publication date:	01/14/2014
Series:	Culture and Social Practice
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.70(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

David Picard (PhD) is a Research Associate at the Instituto Superior de Agronomia at the University of Lisbon, Portugal. His research explores tourism and tourism development in different contexts around the globe, divination, healing and witchcraft, and hospitality in Madagascar, and the culture of winemaking in Portugal.
Sonja Buchberger lectures at the Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne (EHL) and the School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, where she is currently completing her doctorate. Working in Tunisia and Morocco, she focuses her research on the tourism/hospitality nexus, the politics of new travel and intimacy in the Maghreb.

Table of Contents

1
Content 7
1. Introduction: Couchsurfing in Lisbon, Tunis and Brisbane 9
2. Cosmopolitans on the Couch: Mobile Hospitality and the Internet 43
3. Hosting Marco in Siberia: Couchsurfing Hospitality in an "Out of the Way" Place 65
4. Rooted Cosmopolitanisms, Deceived Kinship and Uneasy Hospitality among Couchsurfers in Tunisia 83
5. Learning to Perform the Exotic: Cosmopolitan Imagination, Participation and Self-Transformation among Taiwanese Couchsurfers 107
6. Allures of the Global, Gender and the Challenge to Confucian Hospitality among Vietnamese Couchsurfers from Ho Chi Minh City 123
7. Cosmopolitanism as Subcultural Capital: Trust, Performance and Taboo at Couchsurfing.org 141
8. Online to Offline Social Networking: Contextualising Sociality Today Through Couchsurfing.org 161
9. Anthropology and Couchsurfing - Variations on a Theme (An Afterword) 173
List of Contributors 181
Index 185

Editorial Reviews

"The various experiences as hosts and guests plus nine different writing styles make the book a varied reading. Following the authors experiences, the results of their studies are sometimes presented as interested facts nearby; hence it is not like reading an academic paper but fun and informative. Moreover it makes the book accessible for a broader audience and allows an ongoing exchange between academic and current discussions."

Paula Salomo

"Being skillfully written, making use of a narrative approach, and enriched by exciting and originial chapters ›Couchsurfing Cosmopolitanism‹ is a recommanded read for those who are eager to delve deeper and better understand the phenomenon of promoting cosmopolitanism as a desire for and openess to difference."

7 (2014) Variety Fair

"Die Beiträge zeigen die Fußangeln vernetzt-kosmopolitischer (Selbst-)Entwürfe auf, doch begegnen die Autoren stets respektvoll jener Idee des materiell uneigennützigen Teilens mit dem Reisenden."

Andrea Schilz

"Sowohl in der Fähigkeit, dieses digital gestützte Reiseverhalten in größere, kulturwissenschaftliche Zusammenhänge zu stellen, wie auch im Bemühen, Fallstudien unterschiedlichster Art von kompetenten, jungen AutorInnen zusammenzuführen, gelingt Picard und Buchberger hier ein kluger Beitrag zum Ineinanderwirken digitaler und körperlicher Kommunikation."

Regina F. Bendix

"[The book] exhaustively covers multiple topics with high contemporary relevance ina very accessible way."

Anastasiya Astapova