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Hospitality: A timeless measure of who we are?
Abstract
This article provides a historical perspective to understand better whether hospitality persists as a measure of society across contexts. Focusing on Homer and later Tragedians, it charts ancient literature’s deep interest in the tensions of balancing obligations to provide hospitality and asylum, and the responsibilities of well-being owed to host-citizens by their leaders. Such discourse appears central at key transformative moments, such as the Greek polis democracy of the fifth century BCE, hospitality becoming the marker between civic society and the international community, confronting the space between civil and human rights. At its center was the question of: Who is the host? The article goes on to question whether the seventeenth-century advent of the nation state was such a moment, and whether in the twenty-first century we observe a shift towards states’ treatment of their own subjects as primary in measuring society, with hospitality becoming the exception to be explained.
... For example, in ancient Greece, xenia, the concept of hospitality, institutionalized generosity, gift exchange, and reciprocity, represented a moral contract between guests and hosts. These early manifestations of hospitality have led some to refer to it as a virtue of human nature (O'Connor, 2005), "a timeless measure of who we are" (Isayev, 2018) on the spectrum of civilization because of how we relate to each other, and often, with a "higher power". 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 o n a l J o u r n a l o f C o n t e m p o r a r y H o s p i t a l i t y M a n a g e 6 Other more "philosophical" explorations of the concept of hospitality have also occurred (Still, 2005). For example, Derrida's query of a hyperbolic unconditional hospitality, which assumes a timeless and unchanging aspect of hospitality, proffers the acceptance and embracing of the stranger without condition or question as a moral human imperative (Chiovenda, 2020;Lashley, 2008;Popke, 2007). ...
Purpose
The purpose of this conceptual paper is to provide a critical reflection on the role of hospitality in society. Specifically, this research criticizes contemporary conceptualizations of hospitality in academic research and practice and suggests a reconceptualized approach for capturing the full potential of hospitality to elicit transformative social change.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is based on a critical analysis of hospitality research and practice as reflected in the extant literature. A typological approach to conceptualization is used to develop a framework that views hospitality from three distinct epistemological pathways.
Findings
Hospitality has largely been conceptualized as an industry- or a business-level context in which economic activity takes place, a pathway referred to as application. This paper offers the hospitality-oriented society of tomorrow (HOST) framework, which urges researchers and practitioners to explore two additional pathways – infusion and transformation – through which hospitality can contribute to society. The nonrecursive relationships between these three pathways and the five pillars of sustainable development espoused by the United Nations 2030 Agenda are proposed to form the basis of future inquiry into the role of hospitality in society.
Practical implications
The HOST model provides a framework whereby stakeholders within and outside of the traditional contours of the hospitality industry can benefit from a broader conceptualization and implementation of the hospitality phenomenon.
Originality/value
The paper offers a thought-provoking assessment of the fundamental tenets of hospitality as an academic discipline and social phenomenon. It offers a unique framework that should inform the evolution of hospitality research and practice if the discipline is to bolster its social significance.
... It was not so long ago that Europeans were fleeing the ravages of the Second World War in their millions, and some, such as the parents of the theatre director Stefan Kaegi, found refuge in Morocco; others relied on the Middle East Relief and Refugee Administration (MERRA), established by the British in 1942, which placed around 40,000 Europeans in camps set up in Syria, Egypt, and Palestine. 17 These actions bring into view other 16 For hospitality -Xenia -as part of ancient discourse on the measure of society, see Isayev (2018). 17 The remembering of this episode has been coming to the surface and public consciousness in the last few years; see for example articles and summaries on the following diverse media sites (all accessed 22 April 2019): ...
Sovereignty has been at the heart of political philosophy for centuries, and yet it is far from clear what work sovereignty is actually doing in the modern world. Is sovereignty indivisible? Why are some international interventions acceptable but others condemned or resented? Is sovereignty always popular? What role does sovereignty have in a world of international finance, global information exchange, and supranational regulation? Is sovereignty only relevant to some parts of the world or of global relevance? This volume will place the intellectual roots of sovereignty in a conversation with sociological theory and the realities of a globalised world to create a broader context for our contemporary debates.
Since the beginning of Europe’s “refugee crisis,” Pope Francis has repeatedly argued that we should welcome refugees. This, he said, is an obligation for Christians who have “a duty of justice, of civility, and of solidarity.” This religious justification is a problem for liberal political philosophers who are committed to the idea of public reason: state action, they argue, must be justified to all citizens based on public, generally accessible reasons. In this article, I argue that the claim that liberal public reason fully excludes religion from the public sphere is misguided; not all religious reasons are incompatible with the demands of Rawlsian public reason. Understanding how a religious reason can be public requires looking into both what makes a reason religious and what makes a reason public. I show that the pope’s reason supporting the claim that we should welcome refugees is both religious and public.
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