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Academic Paper
I wrote this paper for the intercultural communication course in the university. Please read it in order to get an idea of why the Hospitality Club is such a wonderful means of spreading peace. Please note that I have slightly edited the text before publishing it on the internet. (For more information about my studies, click on Business and about this specific course, click on Intercultural Communcation course.)
Helsinki School of Economics
Mikkeli Business Campus
BScBA 5A
Intercultural Communication
Tilman Bauer
August 2006
FINAL PAPER
The Hospitality Club - A Means of Peace Building
INTRODUCTION
Peace is a way of life: not really an objective. Something we cannot keep to ourselves; it is something we share. A fistful of beach sand when held tight slips thru our fingers. When we hold this sand with an open hand, we find we retain most of it with us.
As Caesar Appleton, an Indian member of the Hospitality Club, expresses very well in the forum, peace is not something that governments and other instances achieve (or not). Peace has to be driven by every individual. Peace can also be defined as the absence of war or stress, the presence of harmony, tranquility, and justice.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the fashion of the Hospitality Club being a device for peace building. First, the history of hospitality is briefly discussed. Second, the Hospitality Club is thoroughly introduced. After that, a theory is developed to explain how the Hospitality Club fosters intercultural understanding and peace.
THE HISTORY OF HOSPITALITY
Efforts to build up intercultural hospitality networks are not new to this decade. Ever since the foundation of Servas, intercultural understanding and multicultural hospitality between open-minded individuals have been promoted. Servas is an "international, non-governmental, interracial peace association" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servas_%28 organisation%29) established in 1949 by Bob Luitweiler. Other more or less successful attempts to foster understanding include hospitality exchange networks for bikers, for women, for hitchhikers, etc., i.e. organizations with a common denominator of a close connection to a certain group of people. The SIGHT (Service for Information, Guidance and Hospitality to Travelers) network of the Mensa organization ("the largest, oldest, and most well-known high IQ society in the world", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensa_International) inspired Veit Kühne, the coming initiator of the Hospitality Club, to establish a hospitality exchange program in 1997 for the AFS student exchange program members.
As has happened to many other former non-electronic undertakings, the ascent of the internet entailed drastically increased potentials. Going online usually enabled the omission of membership fees for hospitality networks. Communicating with as well as finding potential and existing members became significantly easier. Hospex, a network based in Poland, was the first one to pioneer the new technology, though it is not running anymore today.
THE HOSPITALITY CLUB
In July 2000, Veit Kühne, at the time a 22-years old student at Koblenz University in Germany, had the idea to build up a hospitality network in the internet open to everyone. Kühne could convince his circle of acquaintances of his idea and together they accomplished the first version of the site. He took the Hospitality Club project seriously and it became his passion. After the first two years, the Hospitality Club had 1350 members. In summer 2002, the site was completely redesigned in order to rise to the challenge of exponentially increasing number of members. Today there are already over 180.000 members (August 2006). Furthermore, Veit Kühne started a mission to hitchhike around the globe and to gain publicity and members for the club. The goal of his still continuing journey is to promote intercultural hospitality and to reach a modest one million members.
The Hospitality Club, a strictly noncommercial project, was founded with the objective in mind to enable face-to-face meetings of people from different cultures. The founders' dream is that intercultural exchange will lead step-by-step to a more peaceful world. "The club is supported by volunteers who believe in one idea: by bringing travelers in touch with people in the place they visit, and by giving "locals" a chance to meet people from other cultures we can increase intercultural understanding and strengthen the peace on our planet." (www.hospitalityclub.org)
Only natural and real persons can apply for a membership in the Hospitality Club. This is assured by requiring every applicant to include an existing home address and the real name in the signup process. The application is accepted by the voluntary administrators of the club. Once a person becomes a member, he or she shall create a profile, which will be visible to all the other members of the club but not to outsiders. However, one can choose whether the real name and the address are visible in the profile or not. The only obligatorily visible item is the nickname and the city where one lives. Nonetheless, a typical profile contains information such as the real name, the exact address, a telephone number, the birthday, a short description of the person, hobbies, interests, and whether accommodation is offered or not ("yes", "maybe", or "no"). [...] Public profiles (profiles of members that chose to have their profile to be visible to the public) can be seen also by nonmembers on this webpage: http://secure.hospitalityclub.org/hc/publicprofiles.php.
Members can look for other members by browsing to a specific country, region, and city and/or by doing an advanced search to find people with specific interests, language skills, occupation, etc. The site supports sending messages through a system, which does not reveal a member's e-mail address if he or she does not want to have it visible. This is one of the mechanisms of the club to prevent spam messages. The most important spam prevention feature, however, is the fact that a volunteer skims every message sent to a member and lets only decorous messages through. Thus, spam mails cannot be sent through the site, unless a member chooses to switch off manual spam checking to reduce the volunteers' workload.
The feature, which seeks to assure security when meeting a member face-to-face, is the possibility to write comments about a member. Every time when one meets a member, one should write feedback and a comment about the trustworthiness of the person. Thus, other members can check the reputation of a person beforehand: many positive comments suggest that there is a negligible risk to meet this person in terms of security.
The Hospitality Club attracts a variety of very different people from different cultures, origins, etc. Even so, a common characteristic to most members is the willingness to be hospitable and friendly towards strangers. People who are not fond of genuine kindness, who try to abuse the club in one way or another (for instance misinterpret the club as a dating service), and who send spam mails are quickly sorted out of the club.
The community of friendly people who like to travel prospers in many ways. The club does not only give its members the opportunity to seek free accommodation but, furthermore, fosters and encourages interaction with other members. The site forum is probably the most obvious means of communication. Thirty-nine categories are available to all members to discuss different topics, ask questions, make suggestions, and talk in general. The forum is, for instance, the place to introduce new members to the club, arrange small meetings or big events, look for travel companions, talk about different cultures, ask any kind of questions about traveling, discuss politics and news, and interact with other members in general.
Interaction with other members is also enhanced with the group feature. Members can join any of the 31 groups, for instance musicians, cyclists, pen pals, or vegetarians groups. Thus, one can easily find people with same interests. The groups that a member has joined appear also on the profile. Another feature of the site is the possibility to see the exact location of members on a map. The map uses Google API (Application Programming Interface) Technology. Thus, one can choose between map, satellite, or hybrid view, one can zoom in and zoom out, and the map is interactive. The map gives members the chance to plan their trip and to include aloof living people in the itinerary. This greatly fosters intercultural exchange as not only people from cities are visited.
Furthermore, features such as the chat, gallery, travel guide, and the option to see who has visited one's profile foster communication, interaction, friendship, and intercultural understanding. The latter being the most important, it will be examined and theorized further.
THEORY
In the following, I will develop a framework, which tries to theorize the Hospitality Club's means of international peace building. The theory consists of five statements: (1) Conflicts on the intercultural scene arise when there is no intercultural understanding. (2) Intercultural understanding requires intercultural communication competence. (3) Intercultural communication competence must be practiced. (4) The Hospitality Club fosters the practice of intercultural communication competence. (5) Thus, the Hospitality Club fosters peace building.
Conflicts on the intercultural scene arise when there is no intercultural understanding.
Stella Ting-Toomey defines conflict as "the perceived and/or actual incompatibility of values, expectations, processes, or outcomes between two or more parties from different cultures over substantive and/or relational issues" (S. Ting-Toomey, Managing Intercultural Conflicts Effectively, Intercultural Communication: A Reader, L. A. Samovar, R. E. Porter, E. R. McDaniel, 11th edition). Moreover, conflicts can also be seen as the absence of peace. These conflicts can cause misunderstandings and anger between individuals or even between peoples and governments.
In order to avoid conflicts and to foster peaceful coexistence between different people, individuals - acting on behalf of themselves or others - need intercultural understanding. For the purpose of this paper, I define intercultural understanding as the ability and willingness to forget ethnocentrism. Here ethnocentrism is not just a common and unfortunate characteristic of many people but also a lack of practice. One needs to practice the notion of not using one's own cultural perspective when communicating with others and of appreciating other cultures.
Intercultural understanding requires intercultural communication competence.
In order to be able to respect a culture and its representatives in a way that the respect is felt and noticed at the receiver's end, one must have the competence of intercultural communication. It is not enough to "communicate effectively" (Business Communication course at Helsinki School of Economics) because one needs to take into consideration the other person's culture. An example: Depending on the extent to which a culture is on the dimension of context (high vs. low), the communicator needs the competence to pay more or less attention to the way and manner of delivering the intended message. If a person does not have intercultural communication competence, he or she may unwillingly cause conflicts, even if he or she believes in the idea of respecting other cultures.
Intercultural communication competence must be practiced.
No person is perfect without practice. As stated earlier, it must be practiced not to judge others from one's own ethnocentric perspective. Only if we know how to communicate properly with people from different cultures, we are able to achieve mutual respect. This competence cannot be learned simply by studying a book in a classroom. It must be practiced "out there in the field" in real-life situations and encounters with people with different habits.
Attending intercultural communication courses gives a person the courage to leave his or her familiar communication environment and the knowledge of what to pay attention to when interacting with others. These courses surely are helpful. However, this is only the starting point, the first level on the way to become a successful intercultural communicator. Practicing the application of the acquired knowledge is only possible in real-life situations.
The Hospitality Club fosters the practice of intercultural communication competence.
The intention of the Hospitality Club is to bring people from different cultures together. Not only meeting with another person from another country but also the interaction by e-mails, forum posts, and other means greatly fosters the practice of intercultural communication competence. During every interaction, the communicator assesses - consciously or unconsciously - the way in which the other person receives and reacts to his or her message. As a result, knowledge is obtained how to communicate properly with others.
One could argue that the Hospitality Club fosters intercultural communication competence even more than other intercultural exchange programs. Due to the feature of writing comments after each encounter, every member is most probably keen on leaving a good impression. Thus, one is less likely to be egocentric, rude, or disrespectful. These are all traits of bad intercultural communication. Moreover, the fact that every member has joined the club voluntarily indicates the likelihood of one's willingness to improve the crucial intercultural communication skills.
Hospitality Club events, meetings, parties and camps - mostly attended by a wide variety of nationalities - demand a big share of the club's activities. Regular and irregular happenings are frequent in all parts of the world, in most countries, and in every place with active members. It needs to be emphasized that every happening, every activity - including the administration of the club and internet site - is organized by regular members who volunteer for the club's sake because they believe in the idea of practicing intercultural exchange.
Thus, the Hospitality Club fosters peace building.
A world full of people with intercultural understanding and communication competence would undoubtedly be much more peaceful than the present world. Today, many conflicts could be prevented if all politicians and rulers had learned some of the knowledge described earlier. The knowledge in question is obtained through open-minded, peaceful intercultural interaction.
One has to be realistic and state that the Hospitality Club is not a direct solution to all conflicts. Surely, there will always be anger and hatred in the world - with or without understanding. However, the Hospitality Club is a means of increasing the level of intercultural awareness and, thus, indirectly teaching people intercultural understanding. "One day everyone can go to a different country knowing that someone will receive him/her with open arms. People will travel in a different way, meet each other, and build intercultural understanding through personal contact. There will be many members in places like Israel and Palestine, Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Chechnya and Russia, Rwanda and East Timor who exchange hospitality with each other and in small steps the Hospitality Club will help to make peace a lasting vision for our wonderful planet." (http://www.hospitalityclub.org/hospitalityclub/about.htm)
CONCLUSION
In a world where the news is filled with conflicts, wars, and clashes between cultures, countries, and peoples, it is crucial to understand the means of peace building in order for a variety of cultures to coexist. The Hospitality Club is one of the means. It is a possibility for every individual with an internet connection to participate in a huge project of spreading the ideas of friendliness, intercultural understanding, and peace.
Many stories have been told where Hospitality Club members had extraordinary, fascinating, wonderful, and educative experiences with other members. An increasing number of people decide to adopt the lifestyle of spreading peace - and become members of the Hospitality Club. Without any doubt, the Hospitality Club enriches people's lives - and is worth joining!
Let us together reach the dream of a peaceful world.
SOURCES AND FOR FURTHER READING
Sorted alphabetically
- http://afs.hospitalityclub.org/
- http://ambassadors.hospitalityclub.org/
- http://bernd.wechner.info/Travel/Lists/HospitalityClubs.html
- http://eco.hospitalityclub.org/
- http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Hospitality_exchange_organisation_grows_to_100,000_members
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospitality_club
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospitality_services
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensa_International
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servas_%28organisation%29
- http://experiences.hospitalityclub.org/
- http://peace.hospitalityclub.org/
- http://rules.hospitalityclub.org/
- http://secure.hospitalityclub.org/hc/forum.php
- http://secure.hospitalityclub.org/hc/map.php
- http://secure.hospitalityclub.org/hc/publicprofiles.php
- http://secure.hospitalityclub.org/hc/stopspam.php
- http://servas.hospitalityclub.org/
- http://tour.hospitalityclub.org/tour4.htm
- http://www.bringing-people-together.net/
- http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0228/p20s01-wome.html
- http://www.google.com/apis/maps/
- http://www.hospitalityclub.org
- http://www.hospitalityclub.org/hospitalityclub/about.htm
- http://www.mensa.org.uk/mensa/internat.html#SIGHT
- http://www.mensa.org/
- http://www.servas.org
- http://www.veit.net/
- S. Ting-Toomey, Managing Intercultural Conflicts Effectively, Intercultural Communication: A Reader, L. A. Samovar, R. E. Porter, E. R. McDaniel, 11th edition
- Various discussions in the forum of the Hospitality Club
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