Couchsurfing Cosmopolitanisms

The book provides unique insights into the culture of computer-mediated hospitality and how this has begun to transform contemporary tourism and travel practice. Focusing on Couchsurfing.org, one of the largest online hospitality communities worldwide, the authors explore how social relations, intimacy and trust are built in the online environment and then extended into the offline contexts of actual tourism and travel. Being active couchsurfers themselves, the authors scrutinise the candid claim by much of the online hospitality community that couchsurfing creates a »better world«. The book is key reading for anyone interested in how computer mediated communication is changing contemporary forms of contact, travel and hospitality, and the kinds of cosmopolitism it brings into being. Authors: David Picard, Sonja Buchberger, Jennie Germann Molz, Dennis Zuev, De-Jung Chen, Bernard Schéou, Jun-E Tan, Paula Bialski and Nelson Graburn.

Sharing Mobilities focuses on the emergence of future sustainable and collaborative mobility cultures. At the intersection of physical and virtual capacity and access to people, goods, ideas, and services, this book poses fundamental challenges and opportunities for governance, economy, planning, and identity. The future of new collaborative forms of consumption and sharing would play a key role in the organization of everyday life and business. Sharing mobilities is more than simply sharing transport, and its diverse impacts on society and the environment demand thorough theory-led sociological research. With an extensive global range, the contributors present radical manifestations of sharing capacities throughout diverse countries, including Germany, Denmark, Japan, and Vietnam. The phenomenon of mobility is highly actual and social as well as politically relevant and urging. This collection focuses on open questions from the perspective of the mobilities turn while presenting state-of-the-art theory-based articles with applied perspectives. An ideal read for scholars based in social science and the interdisciplinary research on mobility, transports, and sharing economy. Sociologists, geographers, economists, urban governance researchers, and research students would also find this book of interest.

This book examines how intimate relationships are built, negotiated and maintained through social media. The study takes a cross-platform approach, analysing three social media platforms of different genres – Badoo, Couchsurfing and Facebook – and exploring two interactive forces that shape the way people communicate through social media: the platforms’ architecture and policies, and actual practises of use. Combining analysis of the political economy of social media with users’ perspectives of their own practises – as well as exploring the tensions between the two – the book provides a detailed picture of intimacy as a complex structure of continuity and change.

Discover the essence of the Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit and what it has contributed to societies across the ages In Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit, author and expert, Bruce B. Lawrence, delivers a spiritual elan filtered through cultural practices and artefacts. Neither juridical nor creedal, the book expresses a desire for the just and the beautiful. The author sets out an original and fascinating theory, that Islamicate cosmopolitanism marks a new turn in global history. An unceasing, self-critical pursuit of truth, hitched to both beauty and justice, its history is marked by male elites who were scientific exemplars in the pre-modern period. In the modern period, these exemplars include women as well as men, artists as well as scientists. The Islamicate Cosmopolitans have had special impact across the Afro-Eurasian ecumene at the heart of civilized exchange between multiple groups with competing yet convergent interests. The Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit is a boundary busting challenge to those who think of the world merely in terms of an “Arab” Middle East. Readers will also benefit from: A thorough introduction to the Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit across time and space An exploration of premodern Afro-Eurasia and Persianate Culture in the Indian Ocean A practical discussion of the future of the Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit Perfect for all students of Islamicate civilization, both traditional and progressive, Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit will also earn a place in the libraries of general readers of world history and those grounded in the larger history of Islamicate Asia will find a perspective that centers their own contribution to the Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit.

Zusammenfassung: This is an open access book. Hanoi University of Science and Technology - School of Economics and Management, University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City, University of Economics and Business - Vietnam National University, Hanoi, National Economics University - Faculty of Business and Management, The University of Danang - University of Economics, Vietnam National University - International School, Foreign Trade University, University of Hertfordshire (UK), AVSE Global (France) and PPM School of Management (Indonesia) will organize The 11th International Conference on Emerging Challenges: Smart Business and Digital Economy, Vietnam on November 3-4, 2023. We would like to invite you to be a part of the ICECH2023 and submit your research papers for presentation consideration. The aim of ICECH2023 is to provide a forum for academics and professionals to share research findings, experiences and knowledge for adaptation and business strategy in a post-Covid as well as various uncertainties and complexities in the world in the Asia-Pacific region. We welcome the submissions in Economics, Business, Innovation Management, and Business Law

With contributions from anthropologists and cultural theorists, Study Abroad and the Quest for an Anti-Tourism Experienceexamines the culture and cultural implications of student travel. Drawing on rich case studies from the Arctic to Africa, Asia to the Americas, this impressive array of experts focuses on the challenges and ethical implications of student engagement, service and volunteering, immersion, research in the field, local community engagement, and crafting a new generation of active, engaged global citizens. This volume is a must-read for students, practitioners, and scholars. For more information, check out this presentation by Michael A. Di Giovine, coeditor of Study Abroad and the Quest for an Anti-Tourism Experience, or these podcast episodes: Sustainable Study Abroad with Dr. Michael Di Giovine by ODLI on Air Study Abroad and the Quest for an Anti-Tourism Experience by Meaningful Journeys

Lifestyle in Siberia and the Russian North breaks new ground by exploring the concept of lifestyle from a distinctly anthropological perspective. Showcasing the collective work of ten experienced scholars in the field, the book goes beyond concepts of tradition that have often been the focus of previous research, to explain how political, economic and technological changes in Russia have created a wide range of new possibilities and constraints in the pursuit of different ways of life. Each contribution is drawn from meticulous first-hand field research, and the authors engage with theoretical questions such as whether and how the concept of lifestyle can be extended beyond its conventionally urban, Euro-American context and employed in a markedly different setting. Lifestyle in Siberia and the Russian North builds on the contributors’ clear commitment to diversifying the field and providing a novel and intimate insight into this vast and dynamic region. This book provides inspiring reading for students and teachers of Anthropology, Sociology and Cultural Studies and for anyone interested in Russia and its regions. By providing ethnographic case studies, it is also a useful basis for teaching anthropological methods and concepts, both at graduate and undergraduate level. Rigorous and innovative, it marks an important contribution to the study of Siberia and the Russian North.

Through methodological elaborations on case studies, Tzanelli explains that we have entered a new era of tourism and hospitality mobilities dominated by crises of cultural representation and host presence.