The liminal gaze: Chinese restaurant workers gazing upon Chinese tourists dining in London’s Chinatown

Abstract

By examining the host gaze in a third space, this article proposes "liminal gaze" as a concept to study service encounter in light of liminality and cultural hybridity. The dynamics of gaze is examined through the lens of cultural distance with London's Chinatown as the study area. Gaze in tourism has mainly been studied in relation to two distant cultures gazing upon each other. The study tries to understand what happens to the gaze when two cultures, which are neither distant or proximate nor identical but in-between here and there, gaze upon each other. The focus is on Chinese immigrant workers (the guesthosters) gazing upon Chinese tourists dining in Chinatown. Chinatown represents a third space where natives, tourists, and guesthosters meet, gaze, and perform. The gaze of the Chinese guesthosters upon their Chinese guests is negative despite their cultural similarity/ proximity and norms of behavior rooted in Confucian belief. This finding challenges the postulate of cultural distance. The five themes which strongly emerged from the interviews as gaze moderators, including the perceived "boorish" dining behavior of the guests, power distance, acculturation and hybridization, and the perception of the authenticity of the food served, are explained.

Exploring the hospitality-tourism nexus: Directions and questions for past and future research

“…Human encounters, including their dynamics, intentionality and their outcomes, have often been placed at the centre of conceptualisations of hospitality (Bethmann, 2017). In the past, discussions of hospitality, including in the context of tourism interactions, regularly invoked notions of ‘host’ and ‘guest’, implying interpersonal relationships (Lynch et al, 2011; Moufakkir, 2019; Nelson and Matthews, 2018). However, this has been critiqued partly because it risks essentialising multidimensional and shifting roles or relations, but also because hospitality does not always involve human actors (cf.…”

“…However, this has been critiqued partly because it risks essentialising multidimensional and shifting roles or relations, but also because hospitality does not always involve human actors (cf. Lugosi, 2014;Moufakkir, 2019;Sherlock, 2001).…”

Trajectories of embodiment inTourist Studies

“…One of the most prominent contributions is Haldrup and Larsen’s (2003) work on the family gaze, which highlights the extent to which tourist photography engages significant others and is part of what we might call the family theatre that enables people to enact and produce a sense of intimacy and togetherness. Relationality, performativity and power are further explored through work on tourists gazing at each other (Holloway et al, 2011), locals gazing at tourists (Chan, 2006), migrant workers gazing at migrant tourists (Moufakkir, 2019) and the enactment of the gaze in non-western contexts (Zara, 2015). This trajectory of work not only engages with the embodied and multi-sensuous nature of gazing, but also the complex social relations and fluid power geometries constituting these numerous performances of gazing.…”

Two-way street: How smartphones and the social web impact the traveller’s liminal gaze

“…Recently, the term “liminal gaze” has been used when two related cultures gaze upon each other, for example, Chinese restaurant workers and Chinese tourists in London’s Chinatown (Moufakkir, 2017). Moufakkir uses “liminality” as it is conceived by Turner—as a space between spaces, neither here nor there (Duffy, 2017; Moufakkir, 2017)—or as a third space of cultural hybridity (Bhabha, 1994) where two states meet.…”

“…Recently, the term “liminal gaze” has been used when two related cultures gaze upon each other, for example, Chinese restaurant workers and Chinese tourists in London’s Chinatown (Moufakkir, 2017). Moufakkir uses “liminality” as it is conceived by Turner—as a space between spaces, neither here nor there (Duffy, 2017; Moufakkir, 2017)—or as a third space of cultural hybridity (Bhabha, 1994) where two states meet. This paper builds on this, moving liminality from being a space of stasis to one of choice, having the potential to be either here or there, or of being “Janus-faced,” as the Roman god of doorways who stood at thresholds ( limina ) gazing into both directions at once.…”