Tom Selwyn

An Anthropology of Hospitality

This chapter offers a social anthropological view of hospitality. An opening section briefly considers the purpose and social function of hospitality and then offers some comparative historical and ethnographic material on the subject. Some preliminary comments are made about the social, ritual and cognitive structures within which acts of hospitality are carried out. A second section considers the importance to the practice of hospitality of food. This is illustrated and developed mainly from one ethnographic example, and the chapter ends by returning to more general themes of hospitalitfs structural organization.

Hospitality and eroticism

Purpose – This paper aims to provoke discussion and reflection on the role of the erotic in the cultivation of spaces of hospitality, and to provide a theoretical consideration of the structural similarities of hospitality and eroticism.Design/methodology/approach – With reference to classical studies as well as debates in the social science literature, the paper starts by examining some of the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings to hospitality and eroticism. It then develops this analysis by considering examples drawn from ethnographic studies of “traditional” hospitality settings as well as of commercial hospitality environments of charter tourism.Findings – The main outcome of the discussion is to demonstrate the structural relations between hospitality and eroticism. By situating the analysis within a broad theoretical and ethnographic context, it is shown that the erotic has historically functioned as a socially‐binding and communicative mode of social intercourse that, while undermined by th...

Images of Reproduction: An analysis of a Hindu marriage ceremony

Expression symbolique des relations entre les sexes et entre les parents| legitimation ceremonielle de la hierarchie des castes.

Anthropology and tourism

Abstract Tourism has always been interdisciplinary, and in recent years it has additionally become the object of anthropological investigation. In this article, Dr Tom Selwyn, Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Social Administration at the Roehampton Institute, briefly discusses the three ways in which anthropology can illuminate the study of tourism before describing the first of these. Articles detailing the further applications of anthropology are to be published in future editions of Tourism Management.

Informal tourism entrepreneurs’ capital usage and conversion

ABSTRACT This article examines informal entrepreneurs’ capital usage and conversion in the Thai tourism sector. On the Bourdieusian assumption that people perpetually transform tangible and intangible forms of capital, this study seeks to answer how informal tourism entrepreneurs transform intangible capital into tangible capital, and vice versa, at different stages of their development process. A visual dataset of 78 filmed interviews and of 426 photographs of informal entrepreneurs in three tourist-island destinations in Thailand was compiled and analysed using thematic qualitative analysis. The results show the importance of diversification of capital mix at informal entrepreneurs’ different development stages. Whereas cultural and symbolic capital are more salient for freelancers and small-size entrepreneurs, economic and social capital are more important for mid-size and large informal entrepreneurs. Furthermore, this study introduces dream capital as a new form of capital. Developing countries are recommended to introduce a policy on profiling informal tourism entrepreneurs so that the appropriate level of regulation can be applied in order to maintain or increase their benefits to society.

For a Sociology of India: Leaf's Alternative Theory of Social Action

ment to credit Leaf with lies, precisely, in the boldness and clarity of his theoretical pretentions. Leaf adopts a modified version of Weaver’s communication theory as a basis for his hypothesis. Before proposing it, however, he first looks at what he considers to be the deficiencies in some traditional approaches to the study of social life. The tradition that started with the Platonic notion of &dquo;natural law&dquo; and that included Comte’s idea of &dquo;organic state&dquo;, found forceful expression in Durkheim’s related views that social theory was concerned with social laws, that society was a reality, sui generis, and that actions were, therefore, to be

Anthropology and tourism II

Abstract In the March 1990 issue of Tourism Management Dr Tom Selwyn, Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Social Administration at the Roehampton Institute, introduced the topic of the relationship between social anthropology and tourism by considering the idea of tourism as a sacred journey. In the second of three articles he discusses another way in which anthropologists have approached the study of tourism.