Main content

Couchsurfing - Trauma Advocacy

Laurie Taylor looks at new research that finds that increased mobility and social networking allow us to plan encounters and trips with strangers. Also, trauma advocacy in Croatia.

Ever in need of a new way to travel? 'Couchsurfing', in the form of online social networking, allows users to travel with and stay at the homes of fellow users. It's just one example of how the internet aids face to face intimacy - sometimes amongst strangers. Paula Bialski talks to Laurie Taylor about her book 'Becoming Intimately Mobile' . Based on five years of ethnographic research amongst coach surfers and online hitchhiking website users, it documents new forms of human hospitality and connection. Also, trauma advocates in Croatia. Vanessa Pupavac and Ben Shephard reflect on the growth of compensation schemes for victims of civil war.

Producer:Jayne Egerton.

Download

Available now

28 minutes

Last on

Mon 12 Nov 201200:15
BBC Radio 4

More episodes

Previous

The UK strip and lap-dancing industry; blue jeans

Next

Decline of the weekend; British riots of 2011

See all episodes from Thinking Allowed

Clip

Paula Bialski

Post Doctoral Researcher, the Centre for Urban Culture, Haffen City University, Hamburg

Find out more about Paula Bialski

Becoming Intimately Mobile (Warsaw Studies in Culture and Society - Volume 2) Publisher: Peter Lang GmbH

ISBN-10: 3631630700

ISBN-13: 978-3631630709

Couch Surfing

CouchSurfing Guide

Dr Vanessa Pupavac

Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Nottingham

Find out more about Vanessa Pupavac

Abstract:Trauma Advocacy, Veteran Politics, and the Croatian Therapeutic State

Mladen Pupavac, Vanessa Pupavac

doi: 10.1177/0304375412450844

Alternatives: Global, Local, Political August 2012 vol. 37 no. 3 199-213

Ben Shephard

Military and medical historian, writer and broadcaster

Find out more about Ben Shephard

A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists in the Twentieth Century

Publisher: Harvard University Press

ISBN-10: 0674011198

ISBN-13: 978-0674011199

The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War

Publisher: Anchor; Reprint edition

ISBN-10: 1400033500

ISBN-13: 978-1400033508

Thinking Allowed Archives

Explore past episodes as Laurie Taylor explores how society works and discusses current ideas on how we live today.

Sex and Death
Politics and Economics
Work and Play
Men and Women
Crime and Deviancy
Race and Class
Culture and Belief

Broadcasts

  • Wed 7 Nov 201216:00
    BBC Radio 4
  • Mon 12 Nov 201200:15
    BBC Radio 4

Explore further with The Open University

Explore further with The Open University

BBC Thinking Allowed is produced in partnership with The Open University

Download this programme

Download this programme

Subscribe to this programme or download individual episodes.

Podcast