Hospitality

Paul Lynch, Alison Morrison, Conrad Lashley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780080450933
• eBook ISBN: 9781136398353
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

Hospitality: a social lens follows on from the unique contribution made by In Search of Hospitality: theoretical perspectives and debates. It progresses debate, challenges the boundaries of ways of knowing hospitality, and offers intellectual insights stimulated by the study of hospitality. The contributing authors provide tangible evidence of continuing advancement and development of knowledge pertaining to the phenomenon of hospitality. They draw on the richness of the social sciences, taking host and guest relations as a means of studying in-group and out-group relations with and between societies. The chapter contributors represent a multi-disciplinary, international grouping of leading academics with expertise in hospitality management and education, human resource management, linguistics, modern languages, gastronomy, history, human geography, art, architecture, anthropology, and sociology. Each lends their expertise to apply as a social lens through which to view, analyse, and explore hospitality within a range of contexts. Through this process novel ways of interpreting, knowing and sense-making emerge that are captured in the final chapter of the book, and have informed future research themes which are explored.

Chapter 1

Hospitality: An Introduction

Conrad Lashley, Paul Lynch and Alison Morrison

‘… both old and young alike ought to seek wisdom, the former in order that, as age comes over him, he may be young in good things because of the grace of what has been, and the latter in order that, while he is young, he may at the same time be old, because he has no fear of the things which are to come’.

Epicurus, Extract from Letter to Menoeceus (Circa 300BC)

Introduction

Since the publication of In Search of Hospitality: Theoretical Perspectives and Debates (Lashley & Morrison, 2000) there has been growing international interest in the study of hospitality from a number of social science perspectives. That publication represented the culmination of a discussion group based on academics from the field of hospitality management education. However, increasingly the study of hospitality has included academics from many fields of study in the social sciences and arts. For example, theologians (Pohl, 1999, Koenig, 1985), sociologists (Goffman, 1969; Douglas, 1975; Bourdieu, 1984; Finkelstein, 1989; Featherstone, 1991; Bell & Valentine, 1997; Beardsworth & Keil, 1997; Ritzer, 2004; Warde & Martens, 2000), historians (White, 1970; Heal, 1990; Strong, 2002; Walton, 2000), anthropologist (Selwyn, 2000), and philosophers (Derrida, 2002; Telfer, 1996). Clearly many of these distinguished academics recognise the potential value of studying hospitality from perspectives not traditionally concerned with management of commercial hospitality service organisations. This is reflected in the content of this book, which should not be considered as a replacement for the earlier one. Indeed, the editors are convinced that many of the chapters in the first contribution have current relevance and deserve to be read as a companion to this text. That said, there is evidence of advancement and development of knowledge pertaining to the phenomenon of hospitality during the intervening years between the two publications. For example, one aspect explored In Search of Hospitality was that of definitional debates relative to what is ‘hospitality’. Brotherton and Wood (2000) proposed that it can be differentiated from other forms of human exchange, and is defined by Brotherton (1999, p. 168) as:

‘A contemporaneous human exchange, which is voluntarily entered into, and designed to enhance the mutual well-being of the parties concerned through the provision of accommodation, and/or food and/or drink’.

More recently, Morrison and O'Gorman (2006, p. 3) offered the following more multi-faceted definition:

‘It represents a host's cordial reception, welcome and entertainment of guests or strangers of diverse social backgrounds and cultures charitably, socially or commercially with kind and generous liberality, into one's space to dine and/or lodge temporarily. Dependent on circumstance and context the degree to which the hospitality offering is conditional or unconditional may vary’.

What is evident is the extent to which the study of hospitality is gaining momentum, depth, critical mass, and maturity indicating its significance as a fertile and substantial research domain.

Hospitality Studies

As the hospitality academic field has matured, alternative schools of thought have evolved (Jones, 2004; Lashley, 2004; Litteljohn, 1990), one of which is that of hospitality studies. This facilitates the analysis of hospitality as business and a cultural phenomena; not necessarily unrelated; a view supported by Wood (1999), Lashley (2000), and Airey and Tribe (2000). Furthermore, it is apparent that the study of hospitality can usefully co-exist with a hospitality management school of thought, as the difference between them is essentially one of the emphasis (Jones, 2004). Hospitality studies allow for the intellectual pursuit of the social dimensions, alongside those of an economic nature. Consequently, opportunities are presented to surface novel areas worthy of study, and moving previously peripheral hospitality themes towards the centre of interest and into the mainstream of the social sciences debate (Brotherton, 1999).

In this respect, Lashley (2000) made a worthy contribution in offering a three-domain model as a means of commencing the understanding of such a broader conceptualisation of hospitality. It recognised that the root of the study is the relationship between hosts and guests. He provided a simplistic but useful framework within which to locate hospitality studies. The three inter-related domains consist of social and cultural, private or domestic, and commercial. At a social and cultural level, different societies require varying degrees of obligation to be hospitable with duties and obligations on both guests and hosts. Importantly, these obligations do change over time as a result of ‘modernity’ or increased contact with tourists. For example, many of those approaching the study of hospitality from social science disciplines are interested in relationships not only between host communities and between tourists, but also migrants and asylum seekers (Hage, 2005; Garcia & Crang, 2005). On the private or domestic level, individuals learn about hospitality in the home settings which may be seen by some as producing more genuine and authentic hospitality. Also at work in this domain is the quasi-commercial operation of micro and small hospitality firms offering accommodation and nourishment within their home space, intrinsically merging domestic and private with that of the commercial. The commercial domain represents the industrialisation of hospitality based on economic business models. Interwoven are elements of the other two domains that socially structure the meanings, values, and emotional dimensions of host and guest relations and service interactions, understanding of which has the potential to inform and enhance effective competitive strategy.

Consequently, Lashley (2004, p. 15) sums up the debate between an emphasis on management versus that of studies, as follows: ‘the study of hospitality allows for a general broad spectrum of enquiry, and the study for allows studies that support the management of hospitality’. This statement explicitly acknowledges that the intellectual growth and progression of hospitality as an academic field of study is best served through the critical analysis of the concept of hospitality as broadly conceived. Important is the emphasis placed on the adoption of critical perspectives about which there has been a growing debate within the hospitality management field of study. It is argued that this needs to inform the intellectual stance adopted in research and teaching activities, and that critical thinking skills should be developed in students being prepared for careers in the hospitality industry sector. In this respect, Morrison and O'Mahony (2002, p. 196) in their discussion of a liberal approach to undergraduate education for hospitality management curricula conclude by stating: ‘It is proposed that there is potential that traditional management may be challenged, inherited rituals questioned, and breakout from historical mindsets achieved to revitalise the future rather than simply replicate the past’. Botterill (2000, p. 194) augments this by saying that the status of the field could be increased as: ‘Critical social science promises, therefore, to provoke, in this case to raise the status of hospitality and thereby elevate the interests it represents, including, ironically, the hospitality industry’. Thus, equally valued are the study of hospitality and the study for hospitality management within a critical analysis framework, for as Morrison and O'Mahony (2003, p. 39) highlight a blend of schools of thought have ‘potential to generate new ways of thinking and a wider appreciation of world views’.

Critical Perspectives

Kurland (1999) defines critical perspectives as being concerned with reason, intellectual honesty, and open-mindedness, as opposed to emotionalism, intellectual laziness, and closed-mindedness. A stance supported by the above debate. Brotherton and Wood (2000), and Morrison (2002), propose that for those immediately concerned with the education of hospitality management practitioners, it is strongly argued that broadening the study of hospitality to incorporate more liberal, social science and critical perspectives can better inform the management of hospitality. Furthermore, Morrison (2002, p. 163) says that: ‘If hospitality management research is to progress, those associated with it must reflect more deeply over its essential nature and practical manifestations’, while Brotherton and Wood (2000) argue that there is an urgent need for both researchers and practitioners to challenge complacency and unquestioning mindsets. Morrison (2002, p. 163) goes on to say that as a field of study hospitality, ‘… may benefit from introspection in the sense that it's very epistemological basis and the conceptualisation of its nature, incidence and forms … to liberate it from current functionalism’. Moreover, the need for an escape from a ‘tyranny of relevance’ has been highlighted (Airey & Tribe, 2000, Taylor & Edgar, 1996), with Lashley (2004, p. 13) arguing that: ‘the tyrants of the relevant should not be allowed to deflect them from responsibilities to empower students through education and the pursuit of knowledge’. This involves a shift of mind set from a preoccupation with management and relevance to industry which can be an intellectual cul-de-sac, or as Botterill (2000, p. 193) describes it, ‘a closed expert system in which experts speak to experts in an ever decreasing circle, defending conventional ways of gaining knowledge’. Greater understanding of, and contact with, academics in the social science and arts is essential if the hospitality field of study is to escape this closed system. In particular, engagement with critical perspectives is the key to future development, because a consequence is that conventionalism limits imagination and endeavour. By way of illustration, Lashley and Watson (1999) confirmed many of these more generic observations. They found that much of the applied research studying the management of people within the hospitality industry was concerned with a managerial agenda, and dominated by technocratic and pragmatic research topics. These aimed at informing management practice without ever, or rarely, questioning the likes of the nature of management, the consequences of organisational power, or cultural and political barriers.

Critical perspectives can be informed by critical theory which reflects a human interest in emancipation from accepted orthodoxy through criticism and liberation, reflecting on existing knowledge. The term critical theory was defined by Horkheimer (1937) of the Frankfurt School of social science. He proposed that critical theory is social theory oriented towards critiquing and changing society as a whole, in contrast to the traditional theory oriented only to understanding and explaining it. Central to this notion is that critical social theory integrates all of the major social science theories that help grasp the major dimensions of society (Horkheimer, 1972). Although this conception of critical theory originated with the Frankfurt School, it also prevails among some other recent social scientists, such as Bourdieu and Foucault. In recent years critical theory has become an umbrella term for an array of theories within the academic world. Ultimately critical theories have focused on the synthesis, production, or construction by which the phenomena and objects of human communication, culture, and consciousness come about (Kellner, 1989). In short, critical theory provides a series of tools for exploring human actions and views of the world in which these actions take place (Calhoun, 1995).

Thus, the relevance of critical theory to this text is that academics are increasingly questioning prevailing business and management conceptions of hospitality, reflecting a growing dissatisfaction with the manner in which it offers only a partial understanding of the phenomenon. Advocating for a critical perspective represents a move towards plural social lenses through which to view and understand hospitality. This offers a multi-disciplinary approach which combines social science perspectives, thus overcoming the bounded nature endemic to the academic field of hospitality management in order to address issues of the phenomenon of hospitality as broadly conceived. Thus, critical theory questions imposed academic divisions that separate hospitality from social theory encapsulated in other disciplines. It transgresses established disciplinary boundaries and creates new critical discourses that avoid the deficiencies of hospitality as bounded by, and reduced to, the unitary perspective of a commercial domain. Thus, through social inquiry, critical theory seeks connection with the historic and contemporary world, and social movements and behaviours that construct hospitality, concerned as it is with the social life of human beings (Sim & van Loon, 2001).

This linkage between critical theory and explanations of social actions and forms in the way they influence presuppositions about inquiry is an important one. Simmons (2004, p. 6) provides the following overview: ‘In a more general sense, however, critical social theory, refers to qualitative theories which adopt hermeneutic strategies in seeking to interpret and understand social action in contrast to quantitative approaches, and at the same time evaluate as well as describe and explain social action’. It enables the study of hospitality through the meanings associated with it by the various participants in hospitality transactions. Lynch's work (2005) exploring the experiences of being a guest in small hotels and guests houses, for example, provides insights into the use of public and private spaces in the ‘commercial home sector’. Of note, he suggests that there are some interesting conflicts of meanings and intents between hosts and guests. Often guests chose this form of accommodation because they wish to experience ‘genuine hospitality’ with a ‘real family’, while hosts frequently want to maintain their own private space which is excluded from their paying guests. Randall's (2000) contribution on the meanings created by television food programmes also adopts a critical theory perspective. She uses the work of Bourdieu, developed to critically analyse literary, and cultural outputs to be able to point to signs and signifiers which develop meanings. Similarly work on special meal occasions (Lashley, Morrison, & Randall, 2005) employs semiotic analysis so as to build a picture of the ways individuals recount special meal occasions. Such research approaches employing language, symbolism, text and meaning have been influenced by the likes of Saussure (1916/1966), Mead (1934), and Barthes (1964), and allow for exploration and interrogation behind the veil of perpetuated notions of existing social and political structures.

A further example of the use of language to influence social meanings and perceptions of activities can be provided in the use of the term hospitality to describe the commercial hotel and catering sector. Hospitality emerged in the USA in the late 1970s/early 1980s as a label for the industry, for the title of academic journals and subsequently for the field of study, and for academic departments, programmes and subject associations. Taking a more interpretive approach allows recognition of the word to convey meanings influenced by cultural, historical, domestic, and everyday manifestations of hospitality to describe activities which are founded on commercial relationships. The ‘hospitality industry’ suggests a relational dimension, that of providing hospitality, and its associated benefits of welcome, of security, of being a revered guest, etc. as a commercially driven activity. Hotels, restaurants, and bars are establishments which are recognised as offering goods and services at a price. Hospitality allows impressions to be created of emotional needs being met and benefits beyond the merely commercial. At the same time, hospitality has enabled academics to engage with a discourse that explores these wider meanings beyond the commercial spin intended in the first instance. Hospitality, therefore, represents an interesting paradox, as originally intended it was obfuscating and designed to mask the commercial purpose of the sector, yet at the same time it has opened up a rich pluralistic radical route of inquiry that can be used as a critique of commercial organisational practice.

Furthermore, a critical theory approach to hospitality is not out of step with most other topics in social sciences and the arts. For as Simmons (2004, p. 8) says: ‘The bigger picture is that critical theory made inroads into almost all of the arts and social science departments during the 1980s and 1990s from accountancy to art history, from management to media...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Advances in Tourism Research
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Contributors
• Preface
• 1.  Hospitality: An Introduction
• 2.  Dimensions of Hospitality: Exploring Ancient and Classical Origins
• 3.  Transgressing Hospitality: Polarities and Disordered Relationships?
• 4.  Hospitality and Gastronomy: Natural Allies
• 5.  Hospitality and Tourism in Ngadha: An Ethnographic Exploration
• 6.  The Role of the Hospitality Industry in Cultural Assimilation: A Case Study from Colonial Australia
• 7.  Hospitality and Urban Regeneration
• 8.  Commodifying Space: Hotels and Pork Bellies
• 9.  Commercial Home Enterprises: Identity, Space and Setting
• 10. Inhospitable Hospitality?
• 11. The Power of Hospitality: A Sociolinguistic Analysis
• 12. Opening Pandora’s Box: Aesthetic Labour and Hospitality
• 13. Ways of Knowing Hospitality
• Author Index
• Subject Index