Hospitality as a human phenomenon: host-guest relationships in a post-confict setting

This paper explores the relationships between the diaspora and the new hosts in the context of post-conflict settings conducted on the study in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The complexity of this particular relationship cannot be conceptualised through the commercial lens of the host-guest relationship due to the transformability of the roles of the hosts and the guests in this particular context. Host-guest relationship is a social phenomenon. The study therefore suggests conceptualising host-guest relationships through the hospitality social lens (Lashley, Lynch and Morrison, 2007) framework. Study adopts a critical theory perspective, which creates an emancipatory knowledge (Habermas, 1978), giving the voices to those themes and issues usually overlooked and marginalised. i.e. understanding the host-guest relationship as a social phenomenon, not only a commercial transaction. This study recovers some of those marginalised perspectives through the interviews conducted with tourism decision makers in Bosnia and Herzegovina and overt participant observations of the guided tours in which Bosnian diaspora took a part.