What exactly is hospitality and hospitality management? It seems odd that an industry that employs more people than any other in the world should be unsure of its own identity and academic credibility. After all, the hospitality trades are as old as commerce, migration and pilgrimage and the social history of hospitality is well documented. Although the practice of hospitality has deep roots, it is a relatively new academic discipline that has long been seeking to prove that it is much more than “just cooking”. The stated aim of this edited book is to:
… open up a number of debates between academics working in the field of hospitality management and academics from the wider social sciences.
As with any edited book, the topics reflect the research interests and specialisms of the contributors, but this is in keeping with the editors’ objectives of reflecting insights and provoking debate. Nevertheless, Conrad Lashley and Alison Morrison have included chapters from an impressive range of hospitality and social science contributors. Lashley sets the scene in the initial chapter by explaining the defintional obstacles that have prevented progress and suggesting that the nature of hospitality can be found in the social, private and commercial domains. The reader must wait until Chapter 8 for more detailed definitions of hospitality and hospitality management by Brotherton and Wood. There follow interesting chapters by Elizabeth Telfer, on the philosophy of hospitableness, and a social history of the hospitality trades from John K. Walton, that firmly root hospitality back to its moral and historic origins. Subsequent chapters consider such varied themes as television personality food programmes (Sandie Randall), managing hospitality operations (Andrew Lockwood and Peter Jones), social scientific ways of knowing hospitality (David Botterill) and humour in commercial hospitality settings (Stephen Ball and Keith Johnson). The final chapters address working in hospitality (Yvonne Guerrier and Amel Adib) and education for hospitality (David Airey and John Tribe).
This book goes a long way to achieving its stated aim of opening up the field of debate and establishing hospitality management as a legitimate social science in its own right. As Laurie Taylor states in the foreword:
This book amply demonstrates that the study of hospitality is as intellectually valid as any other area of human relations. It is also of the moment.
The book is as eclectic as the subject that it seeks to explore, and it contains glimmerings that there is newly‐discovered depth in hospitality management as a social science that is worth a fresh and more integrated research effort. Perhaps academics of the future will remark that a more mature and credible hospitality agenda began here.
