Couchsurfing Cosmopolitanisms
Can Tourism Make a Better World?
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.
"This remarkable book (...) lifts the anthropology of travel and tourism out of many of its more established paradigms and places the book at the cutting edge of the field." (Tom Selwyn, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London)
Overview Chapters
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Frontmatter
Seiten 1 - 6 -
Content
Seiten 7 - 8 -
1. Introduction: Couchsurfing in Lisbon, Tunis and Brisbane
Seiten 9 - 42 -
2. Cosmopolitans on the Couch: Mobile Hospitality and the Internet
Seiten 43 - 64 -
3. Hosting Marco in Siberia: Couchsurfing Hospitality in an "Out of the Way" Place
Seiten 65 - 82 -
4. Rooted Cosmopolitanisms, Deceived Kinship and Uneasy Hospitality among Couchsurfers in Tunisia
Seiten 83 - 106 -
5. Learning to Perform the Exotic: Cosmopolitan Imagination, Participation and Self-Transformation among Taiwanese Couchsurfers
Seiten 107 - 122 -
6. Allures of the Global, Gender and the Challenge to Confucian Hospitality among Vietnamese Couchsurfers from Ho Chi Minh City
Seiten 123 - 140 -
7. Cosmopolitanism as Subcultural Capital: Trust, Performance and Taboo at Couchsurfing.org
Seiten 141 - 160 -
8. Online to Offline Social Networking: Contextualising Sociality Today Through Couchsurfing.org
Seiten 161 - 172 -
9. Anthropology and Couchsurfing - Variations on a Theme (An Afterword)
Seiten 173 - 180 -
List of Contributors
Seiten 181 - 184 -
Index
Seiten 185 - 188
27 June 2013, 192 pages
ISBN: 978-3-8376-2255-3
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