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German gast: stranger, foreigner, enemy. Thanks
largely to Smith's �1977) eponymously entitled
collection of essays on the social and cultural
implications of tourism, both terms are indelibly
associated with the birth of the anthropology of
tourism. Related to such words as hospice, `a house
of rest and entertainment for pilgrims, travellers,
or strangers', guest house �a term in use at least
since the tenth century) and hospitality, the act of
being hospitable, host and guest denote persons
concerned with the process of transforming
strangers into familiars and enemies into friends.
The relationship between host and guest thus
connotes a sense of ambivalent hostility and
friendship. This is a theme which has extensive
literary references. For example, one may point to
Chaucer �1374), `there is right now y-come in to
towne a geste, a Greek espie' �Troylus and
Criseyde), and Shakespeare �1605), `Conduct me
to mine host, we love him dearly' �Macbeth). It is
also a theme which has provoked a significant line
of enquiry both in mainstream sociology and
social anthropology. In the case of the former, the
work of Simmel �1950) on the stranger, and the
attendant social processes provoked by the presence
of a stranger, is seminal. In social anthropology,
the ritual formulas associated with
relations between host and guest, and the social
and cultural elaborations to which these give rise,
have been the subject of a substantial corpus of
ethnographic studies �see ethnography), most
noticeably those concerned with Mediterranean
and Middle Eastern society. Pitt-Rivers's �1977)
`The Law of Hospitality', for example, which itself
builds on earlier studies in the genre, is one classic
example of the ethnography of the relationship
between host and guest in the Mediterranean.
These observations illustrate one of the ways in
which tourism studies in general, and the anthropology
of tourism in particular, are founded upon a
preoccupation with themes which have been
established in both literature and anthropology
since very early days. Two questions, closely related
to each other, follow. What distinctive and new
insights have tourism studies brought to the
understanding of the relationship between host
and guest in a modern and postmodern world in
which tourism plays a distinctive role? How, in the
light of social processes associated with the tourism
host and guest 287
industry, have the terms host and guest acquired
new meanings and connotations?
Taking these questions together, there are at
least three distinct areas of enquiry in tourism
studies which are concerned directly with the
nature of hosts and guests, and the relationship
between them. The first of these concerns the
transformation of social and cultural relations in a
world in which all relations are increasingly subject
to commoditisation. Originally conceived in
terms of the changing nature of relations within
traditional social settings, such as villages in
southern Europe, which have become tourism
destinations, debates about commoditisation have
more recently become concerned with the extent
to which the global marketplace has come to define
relations everywhere. In such a world do the roles
�in a destination, for example) of host and guest
dissolve and become transformed into versions of
buyer and seller?
The second follows directly and concerns the
formulaic nature throughout the world, including
the destinations of the South, of host±guest
relationships in such tourism-related institutions
as hotels, restaurants and bars. What is interesting
here is the extent to which the course and
character of social relationships in such settings is
determined not by any sort of indigenous
cultural tradition but by standardised `management
handbooks' composed by tourism industry
specialists from regions such as North America and
northern Europe. The broader question concerns
the extent to which all Southern cultural texts
about hospitality, and the relation between host
and guest, have given way to texts composed by
Northern scriptwriters associated with the industry.
The third is rather different �being informed
perhaps by a slightly more optimistic tone). There
is a growing collection of studies which are charting
the way in which the relationship between local
hosts and guests, in such diverse settings as bed
and breakfast establishments in the English West
Country and the tourism circuits of Malta, have
come to be articulated by women. One emphasis
here is on the way in which the economic
structures and demands of the industry have given
rise to changes at local levels in both economic
and social structures which have affected gender
roles within families and households in such a way