Histories, Meanings and Representations of the Modern Hotel (Tourism and Cultural Change): 52

This book surveys current writing on the history of the modern hotel, focusing on three areas of vibrant and timely scholarly enquiry: the uniqueness of the American hotel, the contested status of the colonial and postcolonial hotel, and the hotel's embroilment in violent conflict. It examines the hotel as an institution that incubates innovation, enables commercial relations on a variety of scales, and supplies an arena for negotiating relations of political, cultural, and economic power. The volume presents a number of case studies, including the hotel in wartime and as a terrorist target, and critically engages with innovative scholarship that explores the relationship of the hotel to wider narratives of Western modernity. It is aimed at tourism studies scholars, as well as history and critical and applied tourism studies students, at undergraduate and graduate levels. Review Simply a must for anyone interested in hotels, Kevin James's engaging historiography of scholarship on the topic is both exemplary in form and extremely valuable for its comprehensiveness. As a result, this book stands as an important and delightful contribution to the unique interdisciplinary dialogue that hotels continue to generate. --Robert A. Davidson, University of Toronto, Canada This informative and thought-provoking book is a reminder of the important place occupied by hotels in the history of tourism and how they are a theatre for and window onto wider economic, sociocultural and political processes. The author writes in an accessible and engaging style, providing valuable insights and fascinating stories. The volume should stimulate much-needed further enquiry into the meanings and roles of hotels, past and present. --Joan C. Henderson, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore About the Author Kevin J. James is a Professor of History at the University of Guelph, Canada. He is the Deputy Editor and Reviews Editor for the Journal of Tourism History and co-editor of the forthcoming The Oxford Handbook of the History of Tourism. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Histories, Meanings and Representations of the Modern Hotel By Kevin J. James Channel View Publications Copyright © 2018 Kevin J. James All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-84541-659-1 Contents List of Figures, vii, Acknowledgements, xiii, 1 Introduction, 1, 2 Hotel History: Interpretations and Approaches, 23, 3 The American Hotel, 58, 4 The Colonial Hotel, 79, 5 The Wartime Hotel, 102, 6 Conclusion, 127, References, 131, Index, 143, CHAPTER 1 Introduction This book surveys key themes in the historiography of the urban, Western hotel. Its focus is the current state of the field of hotel history – examining scholarship that largely treats the hotel within realms, such as Europe and America, and within frameworks, such as colonialism and globalisation, that are associated with advanced capitalism, Western political hegemony and cultural and economic modernity. Scholars over many generations have tended to regard the hotel as a pre-eminently modern institution. It incubates innovation and incorporates and exports cutting-edge technology. It fosters styles of sociability integral to highly networked, urban and advanced industrial societies, enables intensive commercial relations on a variety of scales and supplies an arena for negotiating relations of political, cultural and economic power. In manifesting 'mobile' modernity, it undermines traditional systems of social management. It has become enfolded with a number of broader historical narratives, including three which are the focus of this book: (1) America's status as an innovator in technologies and services; (2) patterns of European colonialism and decolonisation; and (3) contours of violent conflict, especially against the backdrop of late 20th-century American hegemony and Europe's imperial retreat. These themes lie at the heart of this analysis of the hotel, incl