 |
 |
MOBILISING HOSPITALITY: the ethics of social relations in a mobile world 26-27 September 2005 Centre for Mobilities Research Lancaster University http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/sociology/events/hospitality/mobhome.htm This workshop aims to bring together researchers from across disciplines to think about hospitality as a concept for theorising social relations in an increasingly mobile world. Whether engaged as a cultural, ethical, commercial or technological concept, scholars are using the notion of hospitality to think about such relations, from the politics of multiculturalism, migration and welcoming the stranger to the relationship between hosts and guests in tourism mobilities to cybernetic encounters with the other through virtual mobilities. The notion of hospitality holds particular potential for thinking through various kinds of mobilities, including complex contemporary configurations of ‘dwelling in mobility’ and ‘mobilising dwelling’. As well as exploring the power relations between mobile populations (hosts and guests) and attitudes (hospitality and hostility), this workshop also examines spaces of hospitality and mobility such as hotels, asylums, restaurants, camps, homes and homepages. However, just as the question of mobility has to be supplemented by the idea of immobility, the question of hospitality raises the spectre of hostility and the inhospitable. How are these relations marked by exclusion as well as inclusion, by violence as well as by kindness, as a way of promoting encounters, but also policing them? Scholars have deployed the concept of hospitality across a wide range of phenomena, from commercial forms of hospitality, such as those provided by the travel and tourism industry, to less explicit forms of hospitality extended by the nation to migrants, refugees or asylum seekers, to new forms of hospitality enabled by technological forms such as the ‘homepage’ and to intellectual hospitality. Thus a primary aim of this workshop is to consider how the deployment of the concept of hospitality in one context may provide insights in another. We hope to mobilise hospitality both as a theoretical concept and across disciplines. Some of the themes we hope to explore are: -hospitality as an ethics for a mobile world -cosmopolitan hospitality -multiculturalism and postcolonial hospitality -tourism hospitality -hospitality in cyberspace/hosting and information technologies -economies of hospitality -spaces and landscapes of hospitality -hospitality, hostility and the inhospitable -intellectual hospitality within and across disciplines Confirmed Speakers: Prof Tim Cresswell, University of Wales, Aberystwyth Dr Ghassan Hage, University of Sydney Dr Karima Laachir, University of Birmingham Dr Tom O'Dell, Lund University, Sweden Prof Judith Still, University of Nottingham Prof John Urry, Lancaster University Prof Soile Veijola, University of Lapland Workshop Artist: Elly Clarke For more information, please contact the workshop organisers: Jennie Germann Molz [log in to unmask] Sarah Gibson [log in to unmask] http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/sociology/events/hospitality/mobhome.htm __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com