
Becoming Intimately Mobile
Paula Bialski(Author)
Peter Lang Verlag
1st Edition
Published on 9. March 2012
Book
Hardback
190 pages
978-3-631-63070-9 (ISBN)
Description
As more and more people become mobile to visit friends, family, and business colleagues using social networking websites, technologies in use today like Couchsurfing.com or online hitchhiking websites (OHWs) are allowing people to create new, planned encounters also between strangers. This book adds to the small body of work currently existing in the social sciences which describes ways in which the internet aids such face-to-face intimacy. Based on extensive research including 5 years of ethnography of couch surfers and OHW users and insights from over 3500 open-ended survey responses, this book explores the way meetings are initiated, relationships are strengthened or avoided, and the way hospitality and homemaking are negotiated. By explaining the process of becoming intimately mobile, this work creates an in-depth account of the relationships being created today as well as the problems that arise when defining friendship and closeness in a mobile world.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Berlin
Germany
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Edition type
New edition
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 153 mm
Thickness: 14 mm
Weight
368 gr
ISBN-13
978-3-631-63070-9 (9783631630709)
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Paula Bialski is a former lecturer in media and cultural studies at the Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities (SWPS). In 2011, she completed her doctoral dissertation at the Sociology Department at Lancaster University.
Content
Contents: Ethnography of couch surfers and online hitchhiking websites - Negotiating of hospitality and homemaking in a mobile world - Mobilities - Mobility - Sociality - Hospitality - Homemaking - Couch surfing - Online hitchhiking - Computer-mediated communication - Ethnography.