More than putting on a performance in commercial homes: merging family practices and critical hospitality studies

Abstract

Critical hospitality studies and family studies have shown a developing theoretical convergence predicated by the ‘social turn’ in the study of hospitality. Recent hospitality research on ‘Commercial Homes’ has drawn strongly on Goffman's concept of performance to examine both guest and host behaviours. In contrast, this article introduces the family studies concept of ‘displaying families’. This concept emphasises the family practices of host families as well as the commercial practices privileged in studies of hospitality. It also widens the often individualised focus on the (adult) host(s) to one that incorporates the host family. Drawing on empirical evidence, it appears that, for the hosts, displaying families in Commercial Homes is a complex and, apparently paradoxical, mix of presentation and reticence – the family has to be highly visible but not publicly privileged over guests. The inclusion of the concept of display will serve to illuminate further the arenas where family, commercial and hospitality practices intersect.

Keywords:

• family
• commercial homes
• performance
• displaying families
• theory

Notes on contributor

Julie Seymour is Senior Lecturer in Medical Sociology at the Hull York Medical School, UK, having previously been in the Department of Social Sciences, University of Hull. She has a long-term interest in family practices and dynamics and has applied this to domestic labour, chronic illness, commercial homes and children's emotional labour. She is now looking at family practices in the area of disability, health and body donation.

Notes

1. While some of the hotels, pubs and boarding houses may be bigger than Lynch's (2005) consideration of homes where the hospitality revenue is secondary, these establishments have in common the fact that they are places where the home element is significant. Drawing on Di Domenico and Lynch (2007), these establishments can be labelled Commercial Homes since they are places where the home space has a dual purpose, it is not only domestic but also commercial. Focusing on these establishments provides an investigative lens to study hospitality which occurs alongside the ‘doing’ of family.

2. The interviews were funded by the Millennium Commission as part of the Looking Back, Looking Forward project carried out by the North Yorkshire Museums Department. I am grateful to the project's organiser, Karen Snowden, the interviewers and particularly the interviewees who allowed secondary analysis.

3. This element of the research on ‘Selling the Family? Imagery and Reality in Family-Owned Hospitality Establishments’ was funded by the University of Hull, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Strategic Research Support Fund.