Negotiating Hospitality ― Ethics of Tourism Development in the Nicaraguan Highlands

How do hosts and guests welcome each other in responsible tourism encounters? This book addresses the question in a longitudinal ethnographic study on tourism development in the coffee-cultivating communities in Nicaragua. The research follows the trail of development practitioners and researchers who travel with a desire to help, teach and study the local hosts. On a broader level, it is a journey exploring why these guests, as tourists proper, expect unconditional hospitality in their encounters with rural communities. The theoretical approach bases itself on the ethical subjectivity as responsibility and receptivity towards ‘the other’. The ideas put forward in the book suggest that hospitality, responsibility and participation all require a readiness to interrupt one’s own ways of doing, knowing and being.

This book provides a conceptual tool to facilitate reflection on alternative ways of doing togetherness between ourselves and will be of interest to students and researchers of Hospitality, Tourism, Development Studies, Cultural Studies and Anthropology.

Emily Hockert is a post-doctoral fellow at the Linnaeus University in Kalmar, Sweden. She is the co-writer of Disruptive Tourism and Its Untidy Guests and her research focuses on ethics, hospitality and care in tourism settings.