ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses several ways in which the Internet, both as a communication medium between geographically dispersed strangers and as a technological fantasy, used to maintain the propriety of the hospitality relationship, to manage the anxieties inherent in moments of hospitality and to police the boundaries of the hospitable traveller-host community. It examines the way hospitality is understood as a reciprocal arrangement between hosts and guests. Like Kant, whose notions of hospitality Derrida explicitly critiques, these hospitality websites emphasize hospitality as a reciprocal exchange. The chapter considers how the reputation systems on these websites act as a kind of surveillance mechanism that monitors this reciprocity between hosts and guests, but that also secures the face-to-face meeting between strangers and controls the boundaries of the hospitality community. The hospitality websites govern interactions between strangers within an economy of hospitality that is negotiated in terms of reciprocity. The most extensive security system that these websites operate is the reputation system.
