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Host and guest

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Encyclopedia of Tourism

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The relationship between host and guest lies at the heart of tourism. It also forms part of the title of one of the founding volumes in tourism studies, Smith’s (1977, revised in 2001) edited Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism, the overall theme of which is the relationship between hosts and guests in tourist destinations. While the original version treated host/guest relations as the primary issue in anthropological studies of tourism, the revised edition gives more space to the complex global and local political economies of tourism within which these relationships are embedded.

The etiology of host and guest

Before going further, it is necessary to consider aspects of the etiology of the two terms together with the web of interlocking and overlapping meanings, contexts, and connotations that surround them.

O’Gorman observes that the “hypothetical proto-Indo-European root ghos-ti” means “stranger, guest, host: someone with whom one has reciprocal duties of hospitality” (2007...

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References

  • Beek, W., and A. Schmidt (eds.) 2012 African Hosts and Their Guests: Cultural Dynamics of Tourism. New York: James Currey.

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  • Hocart, A. 1952 (1927) The Divinity of the Guest. In The Life Giving Myth, A. Hocart, ed., pp.78-86. London: Methuen.

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  • O’Gorman, K. 2007 Dimensions of Hospitality: Exploring Ancient and Classical Origins. In Hospitality: A Social Lens, C. Lashley, P. Lynch and A. Morrison, eds., pp.17-33. Oxford: Elsevier.

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  • Picard, D., and S. Buchberger (eds.) 2013 Couchsurfing Cosmopolitanisms: Can Tourism Make a BetterWorld? Bielefeld: Transcript.

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  • Ritzer, G. 2004 The McDonaldization of Society. London: Pine Forge.

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  • Selwyn, T. 2000 An Anthropology of Hospitality. In In Search of Hospitality, C. Lashley and A. Morrison, eds., pp.18-37. London: Routledge.

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  • Smith, V. (ed.) 1977 Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

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  • Smith, V. (ed.) 2001 Hosts and Guests Revisted: Tourism Issues of the 21st Century. New York: Cognizant.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology and Sociology, SOAS University of London, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, WC1H 0XG, London, UK

    Tom Selwyn

Authors
  1. Tom Selwyn
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Correspondence to Tom Selwyn .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Wisconsin-Stout, Menomonie, USA

    Jafar Jafari

  2. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China

    Honggen Xiao

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Selwyn, T. (2016). Host and guest. In: Jafari, J., Xiao, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Tourism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01384-8_102

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