Video posted on YouTube by Jamil Mantey Ghani
There’s been a lot of controversy
surrounding Airbnb’s presence in Palestine. The company has listed properties
that are in Jewish settlements in Palestine and has described some properties
as located in Israel even though they are in Palestine. Tensions between protestors and Airbnb have been rising for a while. Earlier this year, The
Stolen Homes Coalition started a petition demanding that Airbnb leave
Palestine. Since then, the petition has garnered more than 150,00 signatures. In
contrast to the negative image Airbnb holds in some people’s minds, it describes itself as “a trusted community marketplace for people to list, discover, and
book unique accommodation around the world.” The language used in this mission
statement conveys the idea that Airnbnb is a safe space for strangers to
congregate and form a community, thereby dispelling the notion that strangers
are dangerous, and instead painting strangers as people who share your passion
for travel and will welcome you into their home. Airbnb actively seems to push the
view that the business ventures it takes are toward social change.
This
past weekend in Los Angeles, Airbnb hosted an event called Airbnb Open 2016: AFestival of Hosting Event. The website for the festival explains it as “a
community-powered festival of travel and hospitality that celebrates a city and
its neighborhood.” While Ashton Kutcher, an investor in the company, gave a
presentation, an activist from Code Pink marched on stage and held up a sign
that said, “AIRBNB out of settlements @codepink” in protest of the company’s
presence in Palestine. Kutcher didn’t kick her off stage or ignore her; he
addressed her grievance and put a positive spin on Airbnb’s mission. People Magazine reported that Kutcher said, “We can get to know each other intimately
and understand our collective narrative is a narrative for everyone, and that
we all can belong to in a world together without borders.” Kutcher also said
other positive things about the company and the intentions its founder.
Based on Kutcher’s response to the protestor, one
might speculate that the development strategies Airbnb uses to implement social
change are “changing attitudes and beliefs” and “corporate social
responsibility”. These strategies are discussed in the Oxfam report titled, How
Change Happens. When addressing changing attitudes and beliefs, the author
asserts, “It focuses on building personal relationships, mutual understanding,
and empathy as an approach to change…” (Kraznaric, 2007, p 44). At the moment
Kutcher faced confrontation, he didn’t retaliate with aggression, he seized the
moment to educate his audience that the goal of the company is to connect
people and sell the idea that the company is focused on what can benefit the
world, not just the company.
Whether the employees of Airbnb say it or not,
the company obviously wants financial gain or it would be a nonprofit. Furthermore
if social change had been a fundamental part of the company’s creation then maybe
its founders would have made it a social enterprise. At best, one can describe the
social awareness that Airbnb claims to have integrated into its business as
corporate social responsibility. In the Oxfam report, when the author talks
about Corporate Social Responsibility he asserts, “This is another reformist
approach to change based on operating within the existing capitalist economic
system. It may require working with progressive elites, a strategy appearing in
social-movement and civil-society theory” (Kraznaric, 2007, p 43). Although the
encounter between Ashton Kutcher and the protestor wasn’t planned, if one looks
at the encounter from a critical perspective they may see that Ashton Kutcher
being the one to deliver a positive message to the protestor and the rest of
the audience on behalf of Airbnb works to the company’s advantage and
disadvantage. Kutcher’s rebuttal shows that he shares the company’s values and gives
insight to people about what those values are. The aforementioned quote from
Kutcher hints at a reformist approach to change. It could even be speculated
that the underlying point of his words are that people, like the protestor, see
a division in the world, when all Airbnb wants to do is bring people together. While
some people in the audience may have listened more intently to a young movie
star like Kutcher, who could be consider a progressive elite, than the
protestor, other people might have been intrigued by the protestor, who is an unknown
person risking arrest to stand up to public figure.
Regardless
of Airbnb’s attempts to be socially responsible, it will have to use another
strategic approach like “Empowerment” to win over its critics. The most
relevant part of the “Empowerment” strategy is probably the “capabilities”
aspect of it. In the Oxfam report, the authors says, “This theory moves beyond
rational choice and self-interest assumptions of classical economics and
embraces sociological ideas such as that people value different things and wish
to pursue different goals.” When faced with confrontation, Kutcher redirected
the protester’s grievances about one issue, the rights of the Palestinians, to another
grievance that more people share, which is essentially world peace. From this
perspective, it is harder to address Airbnb’s intentions as wrong or their
impact on the world as bad.
The
protestor from Code Pink has her own agenda, which might be equally as noble or
even more, but it its harder to analyze her mission as one for the greater good
when the conflict is essentially between Israel and Palestine. There are people who support Israel and people who support Palestine as to who has the rights to
the land. It could be noted that social change, doesn’t come down to one
company, one person, or one non-profit. Social change happens when a majority
of society ultimately embraces that change, until this happens, how does the
society determine if the direction it is moving in is a positive one?
Reference:
Kraznaric, R. (2007). How Change Happens. OxFam GB. Available from Blackboard.
[Accessed 2016 November 21].
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