Work for food and accommodation: Negotiating socio-economic relationships in non-commercial work-exchange encounters

Abstract

The concept of ‘work for food and accommodation’ is part of a significant social trend in contemporary societies, of the slow food, sustainability and back-to-the-land movement. It is an alternative form of travelling and hospitality as much as it is part of an alternative economy that deliberately avoids encounters governed by the logics of the market, where people seek alternative ways of engaging with, and relating to, others. Taking the international World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) movement as my empirical context, I investigate the nature of hospitality in the work-exchange relationship by analysing how participants negotiate their social and economic relationships through food and reciprocity. Based on ethnographic research, this article discusses power and boundaries, social control, inclusion and exclusion, and exchange and reciprocity between hosts and helpers, demonstrating how the host–guest dichotomy dissolves when the boundaries between production and consumption become blurred. I argue that food and beverage, hospitality and mutual help play a significant role in establishing, negotiating and nurturing these exchange relationships between barter and gift exchange. There is a dearth of research on work-exchange that this article addresses. Drawing on insights from ethnographic and other social science research alongside theoretical discussions of hospitality ‘as a way of relating’, the article aims to contribute new ways of understanding and theorizing the work-exchange encounter.

Tourism and ‘dirt’: A case study of WWOOF farms in New Zealand

“…However, some researchers, for example, Mowforth and Munt (2009), critique volunteer tourism for its inability to achieve "equal relationships" (Sin, 2010, p. 991) between hosts and guests. However, in their study on organic farm volunteering, Miller and Mair (2015a) Despite many of the benefits of host-guest relations in WWOOFing mentioned in previous studies (Hallmann & Zehrer, 2016;Kosnik, 2014;Lans, 2016;McIntosh, 2009;Mostafanezhad et al, 2014;Mostafanezhad et al, 2015;Ord, 2010;Terry, 2014), a certain degree of imbalance in the WWOOFing experience is evident. For example, evidence was found to show that WWOOF farmers bear the noneconomic costs of WWOOFing such as lack of privacy and 'emotional labour' involved in hosting WWOOFers (Mostafanezhad et al, 2014).…”

“…Interestingly, the increased scholarly interest in the WWOOFing phenomenon has coincided with the growth of the network, the popularity of the organic movement, as well as the growing concern around environmental issues and food trends on the global scale (Choo & Jamal, 2009;Deville & Wearing, 2013;Deville et al, 2016a;Kosnik, 2014;Lans, 2016;McIntosh & Bonnemann, 2006;Yamamoto & Engelsted, 2014).…”

WWOOFers in Norway – who are they?

“…The academic research on WWOOFing is still in its infancy, fragmented, dominated by "grey literature", and a few published scientific articles and studies (Miller & Mair, 2014;. Several approaches have been used, such as triangulation (Deville et al, 2016a(Deville et al, , 2016bMcIntosh & Bonnemann, 2006;Yamamoto & Engelsted, 2014) and inductive and grounded theory approaches (Deville et al, 2016a(Deville et al, , 2016bKosnik, 2014;Mostafanezhad, 2016). Studies of WWOOF hosts have been published by McIntosh and Campbell (2001), Yamamoto and Engelsted (2014), Kosnik (2014), Mostafanezhad (2016), Terry (2014), and Deville et al (2016aDeville et al ( , 2016b.…”

“…Miller and Mair (2014) applied a more positive approach, as they saw organic volunteering as a form of decommodified tourism that leads to positive attitudes and which can influence the WWOOFers so that they, for instance can become more active citizens or political activists in the future. Kosnik (2014) analysed the nature of the alternative hospitality encounters of "work for food and accommodation". The study brought new insights into the host-guest relationship by illustrating the immersion of the guests into the domesticsocial as well as economicunit of the host household, and how the sharing of accommodation, food, and drink, among other substances, is an essential part of negotiating a complex socio-economic relationship between hosts and guests.…”

“…Most of the volunteer tourism occurs in Asia, Africa, and Latin America (Knollenberg et al, 2014;Mintel, 2014) while WWOOFing stands out by occurring in developed countries and across the northern hemisphere. Extant research on WWOOFing have been conducted in New Zealand (Kosnik, 2014;McIntosh & Bonnemann, 2006;McIntosh & Campbell, 2001), Australia (Deville et al, 2016a(Deville et al, , 2016b, Argentina (Miller & Mair, 2014;, Hawaii (Mostafanezhad, 2016), South Korea (Choo & Jamal, 2009), U.S.A. (Maycock, 2008;Terry, 2014;Yamamoto & Engelsted, 2014), Canada (Lans, 2016), and Japan (Burns & Kondo, 2015). However, to the best of our knowledge, there is only one peer-reviewed research article published on WWOOFers in a European context (Kosnik, 2014); it deals with Austria and relies on qualitative approaches.…”