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- Volume 14, Issue 3, 2024
Hospitality & Society - Volume 14, Issue 3, 2024
Volume 14, Issue 3, 2024
- Articles
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‘Pic first, eat later’: An investigation into motivations behind the ‘foodstagramming’ phenomenon
Authors: Vegas Dyce, Madeleine Marcella-Hood and Elliot PirieThis research explores the motivations and behaviours behind the social phenomenon of foodstagramming. Qualitative interviews were carried out with Millennial and Gen Z participants who share food-related photographs on Instagram and foodstagramming was found to be an important and habitual part of the dining experience for these participants. The findings reveal some of the positive effects of foodstagramming, which include memory preservation, identity, belonging and connection. Some negative implications were also uncovered surrounding the pressure felt by foodstagrammers to document their food-related experiences, which sometimes detracted from the lived experience of that moment. Conclusions are drawn around the societal implications of foodstagramming, where the significance of visual culture and food-related aesthetics in the context of the hospitality sector are highlighted.
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Digitally mediated hospitality and algorithmic hostility in the platform economy: Emerging interactions across the virtual domain
More LessThe platform economy continues to draw scholarly attention. However, the human impacts and social elements of platform work remain under-researched and poorly understood. Framed by Lashley’s domains of hospitality, this article investigates where and how platform-based food delivery workers – predominantly migrants – interact with others. This involved a multi-sited ethnography including face-to-face and digital participant observation (predominantly bicycle shadowing), and semi-structured interviews with food delivery workers and key stakeholders. The findings illustrate where interactions occur within the commercial, private and social domains of hospitality. The article then documents digital interactions that transpire beyond existing domains – demonstrating the need for a new virtual domain – which accounts for exchanges at the threshold of material and virtual contexts. The article then discusses how digital, physical and embodied artefacts are used to mediate hospitality. Finally, this article introduces the concept of algorithmic hostility to demonstrate how platforms, restaurant staff, customers and others utilize digital technologies and existing social divisions to exploit contingent workers – furthering our understanding of how people interact at the human-digital frontier.
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Capitalism on a bun: Profitable reconciliations and fast-food chicken sandwiches
By Adam WeaverSimple restaurant menu choices speak to more complex practices and processes. This study uses fast-food chicken sandwiches to understand the way in which capitalism reconciles apparent contradictions profitably. Capitalism has been conceptualized as a system riddled with contradictions, but it is also characterized by synthesis. There can be harmony – and capital accumulation – in juxtaposition. A qualitative analysis of trade journal articles is undertaken. Scholarly sources and journalistic exposés that examine industrial-scale chicken production are also examined. These publications feature information about specific products, restaurant chains and the fast-food industry overall. Thematic analysis and a contrapuntal reading of texts are used to identify patterns across the data. Fast-food chicken sandwiches, it is argued, are the outcome of a series of profitable reconciliations. These reconciliations encompass a series of seemingly contradictory tendencies that exist in tandem and in a manner conducive to making money. The disconnect that many North Americans experience with respect to the production of their food can be counterbalanced with the various connections addressed in this article. There is connection in the context of disconnection. Knowledge of the reconcilable qualities of capitalism enhances understanding of the crucial connections that structure the production, distribution and marketing of chicken sandwiches. Fluency with respect to capitalism and its complexities are helpful to those seeking to create economic value as well as promote more profound societal change. A single fast-food restaurant item can be emblematic of a series of connections. Through products of the commercial hospitality industry, one can achieve a deeper understanding of the functioning of capitalism. Comprehending hospitality contributes to efforts to comprehend the wider world.
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Welcoming volunteers: A case study on supporting hospitable behaviours in hospitals
Authors: Geesje Duursma, Erwin Losekoot and Gjalt de JongHospitality has been researched in many settings across domestic, commercial and not-for-profit organizations. The role of volunteers in hospital settings has become more important in recent years. This study investigates how management can foster and maintain hospitable behaviour by host volunteers and what factors facilitate or hinder hospitable behaviour. The case study took place in a public hospital in the northern part of the Netherlands and used academic literature from hospitality, volunteering and organizational (safety) culture fields. Sixteen interviews were conducted with hospital management, volunteer managers and the volunteers themselves. Thematic analysis was used based on themes derived from the literature and emerging from the interviews. Findings show that hospitable behaviour, particularly in welcoming gestures, is often taken for granted, that managers and volunteers each have their own interpretation of hospitality and that there are three different levels and goals for hospitality within the hospital organization: strategic, tactical and operational hospitality. Due to different motives, expectations and interpretations of hospitality at those three levels, ‘hospitension’ can arise. The systems and structures of the hospital also provide a self-reinforcing culture of (in)hospitality. These are all areas on which hospital management can have an impact, providing opportunities for further research.
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