Hospitality & Society - Volume 5, Issue 2-3, 2015

This article gives an insight into the phenomenon of brand extension into the hospitality business by Italian luxury fashion labels and conceptualizes it in terms of luxury fashion flagship hotels. Examining the cases of Hotel Missoni Edinburgh and Maison Moschino this article investigates the different ways in which they refer to Italy and its culture. It is argued that within Hotel Missoni Edinburgh and Maison Moschino there are strategies of cultural opportunism at play that are aimed at deploying their Italianicity as a means to strengthen their association with their parent brands and increase their prestige, but also to augment their offerings, maximizing the brand extension potential of those labels. Through a semiotic analysis, it is contended that Hotel Missoni Edinburgh and Maison Moschino capitalize not only on parent brands Missoni and Moschino but also on the positive connotations associated with Italy and its lifestyle, so that they can convey meanings that concern a broader sociocultural context and that revolve around issues of national identity. The hotels portray versions of Italianicity based on different traits but both contribute to the creation of a myth of Italy that involves the commodification of the Italian national identity and promotes its symbolic consumption.

The phenomenon of hospitality is difficult to understand and define, perhaps because of the transactional nature that pervades what is essentially a moral duty, but also, because of the multifaceted nature of commercial hospitality. While it is useful to separate the philosophical and functional aspects of hospitality, this study explores the potential for these to coexist in the feelings of hospitality providers about their work. Experiences of hospitality service are recorded and the motives and rewards for hospitality work explored using a phenomenological approach. Paid hospitality work is portrayed as distinct from normal reality, and experienced as a love–hate relationship with an addictive quality. The study finds that motives for providing both commercial and private hospitality are primarily intrinsic, as server-hosts seek pleasure by providing pleasure to others. The article concludes by proposing that providers of hospitality experience their roles as a form of self-expression, which motivates them to persevere, often enduring difficult working conditions.

In this article I present a political analysis of hospitality, underlining the power relations that are involved with its practice. Because hospitality is consubstantial with boundaries, it is an apparatus both to welcome and control, which allows the passage of outsiders while legitimating the separation between inside and outside. Thus, the philosophical debate surrounding hospitality appears less relevant than the evaluation of the reasons why it matters to choose policies that involve hospitality. This wager maintains that inclusion – and participation of those included – is the bedrock of both hospitality and democracy.

This article explores two main philosophical approaches to the relationship between hospitality and hostility. First, the hermeneutic approach, inspired by Paul Ricoeur, committed to a paradigm of reciprocal exchange between host and guest. Second, the deconstructive approach following Derrida, which endorses an asymmetrical rupture between host and guest. In the second part of the article the author applies these respective models to critical readings of hospitality in the Greek and Biblical traditions and in some contemporary political examples.

This article argues for the importance of hospitality in discussions of international ethics, suggesting that, while Jacques Derrida’s thought on the concept ought to be central, we also need to go beyond it. In particular, Derrida’s focus on the threshold moment of sovereign decision has the effect of reinforcing International Relations’ focus on the state as the only ethical actor and space. In contrast, this article suggests that we think of hospitality as a spatial relation with affective dimensions and a practice that continues once the guest crosses the threshold of the home. Conceived as such, hospitality reveals a constitutive relation between ethics, power and space, which directs us to the way hospitality produces international spaces and manages them through various tactics seeking to contain the resistant guest. This argument is illustrated through an examination of perhaps the most urgent of contemporary international ethical spaces: the refugee camp.

We present an analysis of the visions of hospitality of the operators involved in Emergency North Africa (ENA), a welcoming project enacted in response to a higher than usual afflux of refugees in Italy in 2011, which exceeded the capacity of ordinary refugee housing structures. We do so thanks to three focus groups involving twelve operators who have worked on ENA in the Bologna area. We show the presence of a number of tensions existing between definitions of hospitality proposed by the different professions involved, between the rapidity required by the emergency organization and the ordinary pace of other bureaucratic processes, and between the visions of hospitality in terms of either aiming to integrate refugees within the territory or simply providing initial help prior to potential secondary migrations. We conclude by analysing the notions of hospitality expressed in terms of competing governmentalities.

In this article I analyse the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH) social movement in Spain through the concept of hospitality. In doing so, I develop a double hypothesis concerning the PAH. First, I consider the possibility of the PAH social movement as a public outcry of the ethics and politics of hospitality. Second, I identify a type of disobedient hospitality, practised by the PAH, which defies the legality enforced by dominant discourse. As a hospitality movement, the PAH promotes illegal hospitality based on civil disobedience and exploits the unconditional and conditional tensions within the idea of hospitality. I conclude that the activism of this social movement creates the possibility of a socialized and politicized hospitality that expands beyond its traditional private interpersonal sphere. I claim that in the future these concepts (basically hospitality as a movement) can be explored in other domains and political practices of social movements claiming rights and empowerment such as workers, immigration, gender or LGTB groups.

This article explores through the concept of dark hospitality why some people choose to die in a hotel, rather than at home, in a hospice or a hospital. Through in-depth interviews with hotel managers and junior staff at four luxury city hotels, this issue was explored from the perspective of ordinary hotel guests, all of whom had a longterm relationship with the hotel where they died. The hotel staff suggested that the reasons why some people choose to die in a hotel include loneliness, fear and minimizing emotional distress for their friends and relatives. The impact of managing such guests is also investigated and the results suggest that although managers do care about the impact on the reputation of the hotel, they, along with their staff, are very much affected emotionally by these types of planned deaths. The suggestion emerged from the interviews that with an increasing ageing population, perhaps in the not-too-distant future, the ‘hospice hotel’ could emerge as a new commercial hospitality product.

Everyone Eats: Understanding Food and Culture, E. N. Anderson (2014) 2nd ed., New York and London: New York University Press, 362 pp., ISBN: 9780814760062, p/bk, £14.56; ISBN: 9780814770146, h/bk, £47.56

The Cultivation of Taste: Chefs and the Organization of Fine Dining, Christel Lane (2014) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 384 pp., ISBN: 9780199651658, h/bk, £30.00

Vodka Politics: Alcohol, Autocracy and the Secret History of the Russian State, Mark Lawrence Schrad (2014) New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 512 pp., ISBN: 9780199755592, h/bk, £22.99

Street Food: Culture, Economy, Health and Governance, Ryzia De Cassia Vieira Cordoso, Michéle Companion and Stefano Roberto Marras (eds) (2014) Abingdon: Routledge, xviii+281 pp., ISBN: 9781138023680, h/bk, £85.00

Foodies and Food Tourism, Donald Getz, Richard Robinson, Tommy Andersson and Sanja Vujicic (2014) Oxford: Good Fellow Publishers Ltd, 239 pp., ISBN: 9781910158005, p/bk, $48.00/£29.99

Heritage in the Digital Era: Cinematic Tourism and the Activist Cause, Rodanthi Tzanelli (2013) Abingdon: Routledge, xv + 247 pp., ISBN: 9781415643801, h/bk, £90.00

Binational Human Rights: The U.S.-Mexico Experience, William Paul Simmons and Carol Mueller (eds) (2014) Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 300 pp., ISBN: 9780812246285, h/bk, £36.00

Contemporary Adulthood and the Night-time Economy, Oliver Smith (2014) Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 204 pp., ISBN: 9781137344519, h/bk, £58

Disruptive Tourism and its Untidy Guests: Alternative Ontologies of Future Hospitalities, Soile Veijola, Jennie Germann Molz, Olli Pyyhtinen, Emily Höckert and Alexander Grit (2014) Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, viii+167 pp., ISBN: 9781137399496, h/bk, £60.00

Identity and Intercultural Exchange in Travel and Tourism, Anthony David Barker (ed.) (2015) Bristol: Channel View, xi+220 pp., ISBN: 9781845414627, p/bk, £29.95

Market Place : Food Quarters, De sign and Urban Renewal in London, Susan Parham (2012) Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, xi + 332 pp., ISBN: 9781443841726, h/bk, £49.99