Hospitality

The act or practice of being hospitable, that is, the reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers, with liberality and goodwill. Hospitality frequently refers to the hospitality industry jobs for hotels, restaurants, casinos, resorts, clubs and any other service position that deals with tourists.

Hospitality as a sociological phenomenon

Hospitality is a sociological phenomenon, and it's norms differ per society. So there might be:

• Christian view of hospitality,
• Middle Eastern(Arab) rules of hospitality,
• Greek hospitality (Xeniais Greek hospitality, but not neccessarily norms that arabs follow),
• and any other hospitality norms that differ in various world cultures,
• and very contemporary, in virtual communities like Wikipedia.

Contemporary Usage

Contemporary usage seems rather different from historical uses that lend it personal connotations. NO. Today's hospitality conjures images of throwing good parties, gracious hosts entertaining, etiquette, Martha Stewartor even talk shows, or, the hospitality services industry as it relates to the entertainmentand tourismbusiness. On the other hand, hospitality used to be, and may still be, a serious personal duty or responsibility.

Hospitality is a prosaic word, even trivial, that everyone can relate to, perhaps even more concretely so outside of North American culture. It seems perhaps even a candidate for having something like a universal meaning or agreement, if not positive value.

In the western context, with its dynamic tension between Athens and Jerusalem, two phases can be distinguished with a very progressive transition: a hospitality based on an individually felt sense of duty, and one based on "official" institutions for organized but anonymous social services: special places for particular types of "strangers" such as the poor, orphan, ill, alien, criminal, etc. Perhaps this progressive institutionalization can be aligned to the transition between Middle Agesand Renaissance(Ivan Illich, The Rivers North of the Future).

The Bible and Middle Eastern conceptions of hospitality

In Middle Eastern Culture, it was considered a cultural norm to take care of the strangers and aliens living among you. These norms are reflected in many Biblical commands and examples, for instance: [1]

Cultural value or norm

Hospitality as a cultural norm or value is established sociological phenomenon that people study and write papers about (see references).

References

• reference 1
• reference 2de:Gastfreundschaft

nl:Gastvrijheid

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospitality Wikipedia article Hospitality.