Mimesis in the airbnb: technologies of cosmopolitanism

Edoardo Moghetti [e-mail | Instagram]

CEO Brian Chesky claims that Airbnb is about belonging anywhere: being able to make home out of mere houses, by becoming part of a global community (2014). But what does that mean? How can it be reconciled with the fact that most middle-class tourists essentially aim to get away from home? What about the quest for local authenticity, implying a fascination with strangeness rather than familiarity? And yet, if such logic is flawed, how to explain Airbnb’s impressive success? I unpack these paradoxes using the theoretical lens of mimesis. Tapping into the fantasy of ‘living like a local’, Airbnb consumption plays out analogically: one can be ‘like’ someone else only on condition of remaining different. Thus, the Airbnb experience sets in motion a mimetic interaction, in which guests tend to take hosts’ perspective (and home) while also maintaining a certain distance, assuming in-between identities. In turn, I argue, mimetic engagement with ‘authentic’ localness can be seen as a Foucauldian technology of the self. By setting themselves apart both from tourists and locals, in fact, Airbnb users can craft and embody an ideal cosmopolitan self, aspiring to always ‘fit in’.

‘For so long, people thought Airbnb was about renting houses. But really, we’re about home. You see, a house is just a space, but a home is where you belong. And what makes this global community so special is that for the very first time, you can belong anywhere’ (Chesky, 2014, emphasis added).

This is how CEO Brian Chesky describes Airbnb’s brand identity. From an anthropological perspective, Chesky’s quote touches on notions of home, belonging and globality, through economy, to space and novelty. The most striking aspect, however, is the implicit admission of an overlap between the categories of house and home. Apparently, users ‘can’ turn mere ‘space’ into ‘home’ by engaging with a ‘global community’. Yet an ambiguity remains: this is ‘so special’ because ‘you can’, but still it is not a given.

This essay examines whether and how touristic consumption of Airbnb ‘homes’ can be considered a Foucauldian ‘technology of the self’ (Foucault, 1988). I demonstrate that the appropriation (via consumption) of Airbnb houses can be, for Western middle-class guests, a way of improving the self towards an ideal of cosmopolitanism, based on mimetic engagement with ‘authentic’ localness. I explore the value of authenticity to Airbnb tourists, as well as asking what it means to engage in a mimetic relationship with an Airbnb, halfway between familiarity and strangeness. Ultimately, I uncover how appropriating Airbnb homes can produce a cosmopolitan self.

First, I provide an overview of Airbnb’s placement within the hospitality sector, mentioning some of the issues inherent to its rhetoric. I then introduce key aspects of the modern Western conception of home, including a theory of domestic consumption, and present anthropological accounts of tourism, with a focus on the concepts of authenticity and cosmopolitanism. I use Foucault’s technologies of the self and plus a theory of mimesis as the main analytical frameworks to interpret my case study. In the following section, I suggest that authenticity is important to Airbnb guests and that it is uniquely featured in the practices of domestic appropriation. These are practices of re-socialisation (via consumption) of the domestic space, in which guests and hosts tend to mimetically take each other’s perspective, entering a state in-between identities. In this context, guests can feel and behave ‘like’ locals, while being neither tourists nor locals. In conclusion, I draw out how ideal cosmopolitan selves are shaped and embodied through the consumption of Airbnb.

Airbnb and the Peer-to-peer Economy

Conceived in 2007, when two university graduates advertised their San Francisco apartment as an ‘AirBed & Breakfast’ (Guttentag, 2015), Airbnb currently lists more than 7 million residential properties and on average serves over 2 million people each night (Airbnb, 2019). As such, it is a leading online hospitality network and a primary competitor of the hotel industry (Mody, Suess & Lehto, 2017), enabling the worldwide peer-to-peer exchange of accommodation (Oskam & Boswijk, 2016; Roelofsen, 2018). Such a rapid growth has been explained in terms of ‘disruptive innovation’ (Guttentag, 2015). That means, despite lacking in traditionally preferred features (e.g. service quality, brand reputation, security), Airbnb has been able to provide competitive prices and novel benefits (e.g. intimate relationships with hosts, perceived authenticity), thus transforming the hospitality market (ibid.:1196).

So-called ‘peer-to-peer’ economic interactions are relations of exchange between ordinary persons, as opposed to those between formal businesses and customers (ibid.:1194-1195). These inform the so-called ‘sharing economy’ (or ‘collaborative consumption’), including Airbnb, involving individuals renting access to their own ‘underused’ properties. Interestingly, traditional issues of the peer-to-peer model, such as the difficulty to attract customers and establish trust, were overcome thanks to Web 2.0 internet technologies (ibid.). Airbnb’s online platform, in fact, allows users to easily promote their content, and, through a public rating system, share information about each other, incentivising acceptable conduct.

Crucially, this hints at the social, digital and economic capital necessary to navigate the Airbnb community (Roelofsen, 2018), including access to the internet. As a result, Airbnb’s ‘globality’ is inevitably constrained by socioeconomic position, age and geography (Thoem, 2015:35). Even though this is beyond the scope of this essay, moreover, Airbnb can have controversial impacts on urban environments. If, as claimed by the platform, hosting can be empowering for households and communities (Oskam & Boswijk, 2016; Airbnb, 2020), it can also be a driver of gentrification (Thoem, 2015; Oskam & Boswijk, 2016), as landlords find it increasingly advantageous to prioritise tourists over locals (Wilkinson & Wilkinson, 2018:2).

Western Homes and Domestic Consumption

Expectations about Airbnb ‘homes’ are premised on discourses and practices of home in general. Since this essay focuses on Western tourists, I explore some of the salient aspects of Western homes, noting that individual experiences vary both between and within households (Madigan & Munro, 1996).

Since the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the nuclear family household, the prevailing trend in most Western societies is the configuration of the home as a mono-functional space, devoted to (private) residence and opposed to (public) workplace (Di Domenico & Lynch, 2007). Most literature, accordingly, has been devoted to values such as intimacy and safety, as associated with a rigid separation between inside and outside (Somerville, 1997:232; Madigan & Munro, 1996). More recently, however, boundaries between home and work have become increasingly blurred (Roelofsen, 2018:26-27), as clearly showed by commercial homes (Di Domenico & Lynch, 2007), and the publicization of domestic life has become a means for obtaining recognition of status and identity (Somerville, 1997:233).

The expression of identity is a central element of modern homes. For example, decoration and interior design has been described as the materialisation and presentation of narratives of household identity (Garvey, 2001). Homes become imbued with memories and a sense of attachment (Marcus, 1995), and are sites of dynamic self-expression (Garvery, 2001). All this is structured by notions of style and taste, simultaneously shaping and reaffirming class cultures (Bourdieu, cited in Madigan & Munro, 1996:42), linking individual interior choices with broader socioeconomic trends.

Another key concept is that of familiarity (Douglas, 1991; Madigan & Munro, 1996; Somerville, 1997:235). Familiarity implies a sense of stability, repetitiveness and control, for instance in discourses of home as a welcoming haven. In practice, familiarity involves social rhythms, rights and obligations, solidarity, and sensory embodiment (Douglas, 1991; Helliwell, 1996). In Marc Augé’s terms, it contributes to making home a ‘place’, characterised by shared unformulated know-how, as opposed to ‘non-places’, defined by depersonalised texts (e.g. prescriptive, prohibitive and informative instructions) (1992:96-101). Consistently, hotels have been described as the ‘mercenary, cold, luxurious counterpart against which the home is being measured’ (Douglas, 1991:300), while commercial homes occupy an ambiguous in-between position (Di Domenico & Lynch, 2007). Familiarity, moreover, is associated with Erving Goffman’s notion of ‘backstage’, metaphorically referring to regions in which the pressures of social life as theatrical performance are lower (Goffman, 1956).

Within industrial societies, finally, experiences of alienation are intrinsic to most houses, as dwellers are generally estranged from the (social) process of their production (Miller, 1988:353- 354). Consequently, in order to become ‘home’, a house has to be appropriated, in a process of re- socialisation via consumption. Through social activity, in fact, alienated products are partly turned into inalienable culture. This is consistent with conceptualisations of home as something that is not necessarily fixed in location, but made through mobile practice (Accarigi, 2017; Roelofsen, 2018).

Tourism, Authenticity, Cosmopolitanism

Tourism has been defined as a structured break from ordinary social life, in the form of a temporary leisure activity, implying distance from ‘home’ and aimed at experiencing change and self-renewal (ibid.:11; Smith, 1977:2). It has been argued, moreover, that it follows the basic structure of ritual practice - separation from ordinariness (travelling away from home), a temporary period of change within a non-ordinary place, and, finally, reintegration in ordinary social life (Graburn, 1983; Van Gennep, 1909). Importantly, tourism is normally defined in relation to ‘back home’, in turn making its destination ‘other’ and marginal (Cohen, 1979; Graburn, 1983:16).

Basic motivations can be summarised as getting ‘away from it all’ (MacCannell, 2013:xvi), including one’s workplace and housework (Graburn, 1983:11), and, more recently, social and environmental injustice (MacCannell, 2013:xvi). Modern industrial life, moreover, is pervaded with concerns for inauthenticity (MacCannell, 1973:30). Referring to Goffman’s work, MacCannell argued that the very belief in a frontstage-backstage opposition in sociality reflects popular associations of truth with intimacy, and concerns over their lack (ibid.:32-33). Unsurprisingly, many tourists precisely seek hidden ‘back’ regions, representing authentic localness.

The Western home is assimilated to an intimate, ‘backstage’ region deemed to be more authentic, and this is what many tourists seek. Accordingly, Airbnb’s ‘belong anywhere’ rhetoric has been argued to tap into a widespread fantasy of cosmopolitanism (i.e. “being at home in the world”) (Germann Molz, cited in Roelofsen, 2018:28). Cosmopolitanism, specifically, has been described as ‘an openness toward divergent cultural experiences’ (Hannerz, 2004:70), pursued as an ideal or even the ‘cure’ to parochialism and nationalism (van der Veer, 2002:165). Crucially, in this view, becoming familiar with difference involves the cultivation of a specific skill, founded on ‘a search for contrasts rather than uniformity’ (Hannerz, 2004:70).

Technologies of the Self and Mimesis

In order to shed light on the Airbnb experiences at the intersection of all these issues, I use two analytical frameworks, namely Michel Foucault’s ‘technologies of the self’ (1988) and ‘mimesis’, as defined by Rane Willerslev (2007).

Foucault’s premise is that the ways in which humans produce knowledge about themselves are linked to the techniques they use to understand themselves (Foucault, 1988:17-18). These techniques, in turn, constitute culturally structured ways of practically engaging with the world, including ‘technologies of the self’. These are technologies by means of which individuals, on their own or collaboratively, effect operations ‘on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being’, with the intent of transforming themselves towards a particular culturally situated ideal (ibid.). The rationale is the attainment of ‘a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality’ (ibid.). Even though technologies of the self are normally interwoven with other technologies, especially of domination, the focus is on individuals deliberately cultivating themselves.

In regards to the anthropological concept of mimesis, it is grounded in a phenomenological understanding of the human experience, which prioritises practical involvement with the world over the mental representations of it) (Willerslev, 2007:20). Specifically, mimesis is the mode of being-in-the-world linked to the faculty of imitation (ibid.:9). Imitation, of course, involves a play of resemblances. Nonetheless, it also requires the retention of difference between the counterparts, otherwise metamorphosis would be experienced (ibid.:10-11). Indeed, two things can be similar only as long as they are different. On one hand, thus, mimesis involves the representation of and sensuous engagement with the other. On the other hand, mimetic representations need be intentionally incomplete, and imitators must retain self-reflexive awareness of themselves as such (ibid.:12). The result is an ambiguous experience in-between identities, where one perceives oneself neither as ‘me’ nor as ‘not-me’, but rather ‘not not-me’ (ibid.). That means, one represents the other while also withholding oneself, in a doubling of perspectives.

To date, the few ethnographic studies dedicated to Airbnb and the commercial home have been framed in terms of performativity (Di Domenico & Lynch, 2007; Borm, 2017; Roelofsen, 2018; Wilkinson & Wilkinson, 2018). Mimesis, instead, helps to bring attention to the phenomenological dimension, accounting for what Airbnb does to tourists, beside what they enact. In addition, ‘technologies of the self’ enable an appreciation of how Airbnb tourism, as a structured way of engaging with the world to experience change, can be aimed at the construction and improvement of a certain self.

Airbnb and Authenticity

Airbnb homes provide consumers with a (valued) sense of authenticity. Indeed, this has been considered crucial to the brand’s success (Guttentag, 2015), and tourist guidebooks such as Lonely Planet precisely advertise it as allowing to live ‘as the locals do’ (St. Louis, cited in Guttentag, 2015:1197).

Comparisons of hotel and peer-to-peer accommodation reviews highlight that intimate interactions with locals are emphasised more than other attributes in the latter (Belarmino et al., 2019). Similarly, Airbnb’s value has been argued to be co-created through interactions between guests, hosts and local community, rather than being pre-existent (Johnson & Neuhofer, 2017). Embeddedness in ‘non-touristy’ neighbourhoods, access to first-hand information, uniqueness of domestic interiors and experience of the home, thus, are valued because they leave ‘a deeper impression of the community’ (Guttentag, 2015:1197; Paulauskaite, 2017:624-625). In this respect, it is fundamental to stress the importance of artefacts, deemed to reflect localness and produce a sense of familiarity (Paulauskaite, 2017:625). As Western guests bring with them Western expectations about familiarity and self-expression, it is unsurprising that photographs and decorations are especially valued (Di Domenico & Lynch, 2007:328).

Desires for authenticity are further confirmed by hosts deliberately staging it. ‘I like to show things and put things out that I like myself, but that I know people want to see’ stated a Scottish host (ibid:329-330). By presenting his stained-glass windows with Scottish themes and his paintings of the Highlands, he both revealed that his guests expect to find signs of a romanticised local culture and that he exploits this to gain recognition of his own identity (ibid.). In this case, authenticity clearly emerges from interaction between guests, hosts, location and artefacts. Interestingly, a study of Bulgarian Airbnb homes revealed that ‘original’ socialist furniture is sometimes displayed solely because of its value to guests, while hosts would rather get rid of it (Roelofsen, 2018:32-33). Therefore, authenticity is actively constructed by Airbnb hosts through interior decoration for the consumption of their guests.

That said, it is not just unique decorations and intimate interactions with hosts to make Airbnb homes feel like a ‘backstage’. Paradoxically, a fundamental role is played by the ambiguous negotiation of ‘back’ areas within the home itself, by means of bordering practices (ibid.:34-35). In fact, this suggests that guests’ presence is truly transgressing certain limits, imbuing space with a sense of authenticity and fascination (ibid.; Di Domenico & Lynch, 2007:330). Bordering takes place in several ways: introductory house tours establishing the meaning of different areas, day-to- day spatiotemporal patterns of presence, physical and sonic barriers (e.g. doors, television volume), visual codes (e.g. distribution of family photographs, hidden things) (Di Domenico & Lynch, 2007:330-331; Roelofsen, 2018:34-35; Wilkinson & Wilkinson, 2018:5-8). Some forms of bordering do not even require hosts to be at home during guests’ stay. Importantly, ‘authentic’ ambiguity of spaces and meanings constitutes a central difference with traditional tourist accommodations (Di Domenico & Lynch, 2007:330).

Imitating Localness

An often-underestimated aspect of the ‘live like a local’ logic is that it is framed as an analogy. It may seem obvious, but Lonely Planet does not suggest that Airbnb guests can ‘become’ local, not even temporarily. The main reason, I argue, is that guests tend to engage with localness mimetically, that is neither as ‘locals’ nor as ‘not-locals’, but in a sense ‘not not-locals’, in a doubling of perspectives (Willerslev, 2007:53). This is crucial to the process of domestic appropriation.

As we have seen, appropriation is the social process in which the commodified house is re- socialised into home, a ‘place’, defined by shared unformulated know-how. Artefacts, embodying localness from guests’ perspective, participate in the process, by sensorially and symbolically affecting the experience (Roelofsen, 2018:32-33). Inevitably, home is re-socialised and re-signified for hosts too (Borm, 2017; Wilkinson & Wilkinson, 2018; Roelofsen, 2018).

A central aspect of Airbnb appropriation, first, is guests’ common desire for first-hand learning (Johnson & Neuhofer, 2017:2368-2369). Even domestic duties like cooking and cleaning are often collaboratively performed with hosts, allowing guests to assume ‘the perceived role of a “local”’ (ibid.:2368). The very fact of cooking ‘local’ food in a ‘local’ home, indeed, is significant (ibid.). Similarly, intimate everyday interactions such as walking around in pyjamas or relaxing on a couch acquire new value (Roelofsen, 2018:33).

Beside sharing knowledge and intimacy, both parts tend to put social effort into making each other feel at home (ibid.:34). For example, they might engage in affective labour (e.g. continuously smiling). Also, hosts may try to erase their presence (ibid.:35; Wilkinson & Wilkinson, 2018:7), provide special niceties (Di Domenico & Lynch, 2007:333) and “get into the rhythm of the guests”, while guests may discipline their bodies to meet local standards (Roelofsen, 2018:34-35). On the other hand, hosts may try to make guests feel like ‘customers’, by temporarily removing traces of household individuality, establishing impersonal rules of behaviour and creating a standardised home (Borm, 2017:44), closer to hotel rooms. Guests, instead, may bring dissonant routines with them (Di Domenico & Lynch, 2007:332; Wilkinson & Wilkinson, 2018:9).

All these dynamics, nonetheless, tend to make ‘guest’ and ‘host’ blurred categories during the re-socialisation of Airbnb homes (Wilkinson & Wilkinson, 2018:7; Roelofsen, 2018). Home, in fact, tends to become a site of simultaneous belonging and non-belonging for both parts, feelings of privacy, freedom and familiarity being partly disrupted (Roelofsen, 2018). In turn, both tend to take each other’s perspective, in order to act on each other’s sense of homeliness while retaining self- reflexivity. That means, a mimetic interaction takes place, of which guests’ desire for learning is frequently a crucial element. This produces, in turn, a state in-between identities, in which guests can live ‘like’ locals without ‘being’ so. Interestingly, it also echoes Benjamin’s notion of authenticity as engagement with an aura at once distant and near (Rickly-Boyd, 2012).

Airbnb and Cosmopolitanism

If tourism, as a ritual, is aimed at experiencing change and self-renewal, how are authenticity and mimesis relevant? What does it mean to one’s sense of self to become ‘not not- local’? I employ ‘technologies of the self’ to suggest that Airbnb experiences can be directed towards self-improvement, focusing on the widespread middle-class ideal of cosmopolitanism (Roelofsen, 2018:30).

Several authors have suggested that the search for authenticity has implications for the self. For example, it has been argued that seeking experiences outside the traditional tourism market is associated with identity construction (Dredge & Gyimóthy, 2015:294). Tourism, in general, has been linked to class-related social aspirations (Graburn, 1983:29), and defined as a “way of positioning oneself in the world” (Haldrup, cited in Roelofsen, 2018:27). Self-declared ‘travellers’, for instance, pursue what they consider a morally superior alternative to mass tourism in an attempt to avoid its negative effects (Paulauskaite et al., 2017). In addition, they reject traditional comforts for the sake of authenticity and personal achievement (ibid.:188) and differentiate themselves from ordinary tourists in terms of cultural sensitiveness (ibid.:192). “I see the distinction as this”, stated one, “I try to conform to the culture, rather than trying to make the culture conform to me” (ibid.)

This example shows how mimetic engagement with ‘authentic’ localness is premised on culturally structured ways of acquiring knowledge about oneself. Accordingly, specific operations are performed to attain a sense of achievement and a morally superior state. Something similar, indeed, can be argued for Airbnb guests. Referring to a stay in Brooklyn, one wrote: ‘“It will be a shock if you’re coming from a quiet suburb (like me), but I adjusted quickly”’ (Törnberg, 2019:8). This experience is narrated as an encounter with a (shocking) difference, to which the guest successfully adjusted, showing the ability to (mimetically) “fit in” (ibid.). Indeed, Airbnb narratives commonly emphasize successful interactions with locals as signs of competence, which has even been done by auto-ethnographers (Di Domenico & Lynch, 2007:332; Roelofsen, 2018:34). Anthony Giddens ascribed this ability to the ideo-typical “cosmopolitan person” (Giddens, cited in Törnberg, 2019:9). Drawing strength from being at home in different contexts, a “cosmopolitan person” engages with diversity to reflexively construct an ideal self-identity, distancing itself from those lacking this capacity (ibid.).

Importantly, phenomenological approaches reveal that cosmopolitanism is not just a matter of appearance or fantasy (Germann Molz, 2006); as we have seen, Airbnb guests make their very bodies fit into localness. According to Germann Molz, cosmopolitan bodies embody global mobility, tolerance and openness to difference (ibid.:5), by equally refusing equivalence with tourists and locals (ibid.:14). Instead, they aim at an ideal transportable look, which, together with specific “habits of thought and feeling” (Robbins, cited in Germann Molz, 2006:3), allows to always ‘fit’. Such an engagement is clearly mimetic, and effects what we might now call ‘technologies of cosmopolitanism’. Technologies of the self and of domination are usually intertwined. In the case of Airbnb, indeed, further attention should be dedicated to the role of the rating system in incentivising ‘fitting’ by rewarding and disciplining users (Roelofsen, 2018:31).

Conclusion

Ambiguity is a central feature of Airbnb accommodations. From a Western perspective, they crosscut the domains of home and house, private and public, identity and difference, familiarity and strangeness. They are embedded in tourist rituals, structured by concerns with authenticity, and yet they are characterised as ‘other’. Indeed, ambiguity is what differentiates Airbnb from traditional tourist accommodations. Unclear internal boundaries bear the fascination of a hidden truth; mimetic negotiation of norms of behaviour blurs the difference between guests and hosts, customers and business.

When Chesky suggested that Airbnb homes, without their global network, would be nothing but houses, he was inviting guests to self-reflexively engage with them, to mimetically open up while remaining aware of their own position in the global community. Thus, in spite of how closely they might resemble each other, guests and hosts tend to remain as distant as self-aware imitators. Guests, indeed, can live ‘like’ locals only as long as localness remains something ‘other’. We have seen that this is based on culturally meaningful ways of knowing, positioning and shaping oneself, both enacting and embodying the cosmopolitan ideal of ‘fitting’. Thus, located at the interface of globality and localness, modernity and tradition, Airbnb simultaneously challenges these dichotomies and makes them tangible.

Limitations of the present study, nonetheless, demand further research. Even though acknowledging that the guest-host binarism and the importance of authenticity have been contested (Cohen & Cohen, 2012), I engaged with them because they resonate with the vernacular logics of our case study. However, current theories of tourism as mobility, performativity and networked action might provide further insights on cosmopolitanism and the role of the built environment (ibid.). In addition, the experience of hosting, upon which I have merely touched, has been linked with cosmopolitan aspirations too (Sans & Quaglieri, 2016:220; Ladegaard, 2018), which is highly relevant to a thorough understanding of Airbnb. Other ideal ways of ‘fitting’, different from cosmopolitanism, and non-Western approaches to Airbnb, are also crucial matters. All these questions would benefit from comparative studies of different peer-to-peer accommodation platforms, such as the free-of-charge CouchSurfing.

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