Hosting the comfortably exotic: Cosmopolitan aspirations in the sharing economy

This article draws on interviews with 43 Airbnb hosts in Greater Boston to analyze how this novel economic arrangement brings people together across difference. The first central finding is that a majority of the participants express a keen interest in engaging with the Other, by hosting guests of foreign nationalities and cultures, but they also filter for familiar characteristics. This paradox is conceptualized as a preference for the...