Couchsurfing Cosmopolitanisms ― Can Tourism Make a Better World?

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 Scheou, Jun-E Tan, Paula Bialski and Nelson Graburn

David Picard (PhD) is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Anthropology at the New University of Lisbon, Portugal. His research in La Runion and Madagascar has been focused on tourism development, environmental policy, NGOs, divination, healing and witchcraft, and hospitality. Sonja Buchberger lectures at the Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne (EHL) and the School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, where she is currently completing her doctorate. Working in Tunisia and Morocco, she focuses her research on the tourism/hospitality nexus, the politics of new travel and intimacy in the Maghreb.