Homology
According to Clarke (1975),
“styles must hold the “objective possibility” of reflecting the social world from which they are sprung”
In this blog post I try to establish a homology between the vulnerable position that Couchsurfing (or CS) host potentially can find themselves in when hosting a guest, subcultural objects in the CS community (e.g. CS request, profile) and the practices and attitudes that host have towards the mentioned subcultural objects. As CS is not a typical subculture like the Teddy Boys or Mods, I will be hard-pressed to use the exact same concept that Clarke used for style. Instead, I will look at style as the practices, attitudes and meanings that CS hosts attached to objects like CS request and profiles, and from there create a homological link to the social positions that CS host find themselves in. The source will mainly be from the blogs of experienced Couchsurfers who have written about their experience with hosting.
At the most fundamental level, CS is a host opening his house to a guest(s) that he, usually, does not know personally. The host stands to gain from the CS experience in the sense that interaction with someone new and exciting might be a temporary welcomed change. On the other hand, the guest benefits by having somewhere to stay and a more local perspective of the place. Ideally, for both parties CS should be more of a social experience that both find enriching and enjoyable. By agreeing to be a potential host the host is making himself vulnerable in their own home and it is to some extent an intrusion into his privacy.
“Often they were chating between each other in their native language and acted as they were closing under their own thing, like two oysters sharing a shell. And I was definitely outside…The fact is that some of these persons barely spoke at me during the 2 or 3 days of their stay. I’m telling you, it’s awkward, not to say [quite] rude…..Whatever it is, it’s extremely annoying. I’m pretty much done with the embarrassing moments of silence. I’m putting an end to it
”
This vulnerability is evident in the extract above when the blogger comments about his annoyance at a couple who does not interact with him and thus creating an atmosphere of awkwardness in his own home where he feels he is an ‘outsider’.
“Because the whole thing relies on reciprocity I tend do discard requests from members who are not available for hosting, unless a solid and clear explanation about the status is available in the profile.”
There are two main objects that help a host decide if he wants to host a guest or not: the profile and the CS request. Basically a profile tells prospective hosts about the sufer. It serves as a tool for the host to judge whether or not he wants to take in a guest. Typical aspects that hosts look out for are if their prospective guest have any common interests and/or if there are any past references. A CS request is what the guest has to write to convince the host. The guest is expected to have read his prospective host’s profile and to see if he can connect socially to said host. Although both objects help a host decides whether or not to host a surfer, they mainly do so more symbolically than functionally because the profiles and CS request can easily be altered to suit the host, all the guest has to do is to read the profile of the host and write accordingly. Some hosts recognise that the CS request and profile are very limited as instruments for determining the ‘right’ guest.
And don’t worry: I’m well aware that one is free to write all kind of bullshit about himself, but, please, let me live in an illusion that I can extract the juice out of someone writings and use it as precious information.
Not to mention while trying to find sieve out something genuine in the profiles and CS requests of potential guest, some hosts actually have the somewhat strange idea of a ‘perfect couchsurfing request’. Which is a little bit ironic considering that they are fully well aware that “one is free to write all [kinds] of bullshit about himself’.
I like to read a nice Couch request. I don’t make it priority number one, but it really helps, even if my brains say “it doesn’t matter”. Some hosts are crazy about nice and personalized requests.
Thus, I argue that these two objects while playing a limited functional role in identifying the ‘right’ guests are actually largely symbolic, and is more like an illusion that help CS hosts to deal with the potential vulnerability and awkwardness that he himself might experience in his own home when thinking about hosting a potential CSer. Functionally, the CS request is supposed to help host decide on a guest based on the character or suitability of the guest, yet recognizes that ‘it doesn’t matter’ and instead uses more emotional language such as ‘liking’ to read a nice Couch request. Therefore I suggest that there is a homological relationship between a CS host’s position of vulnerability, CS request and Profile pages as illusory subcultural objects of suitability evaluation and the host more symbolic treatment of said cultural object as a way of dealing with his position of vulnerability.
Source:
http://couchsurfingtheworld.wordpress.com/halfway-to-a-positive-answer/
Kouchcultur 
You’re right to point out that practice is just as important as objects when studying style; a lot of people focus on objects out of habit.
You’ve got some pretty interesting points about style, but it would be nice to read more about the SHARED styles that are expected. So the couple not conforming to a particular way of being in somebody’s home; you say a little about it, but not much because you skip off to a different example. Because of the various examples, you also don’t deal in depth with the literature. Clarke is only one source of understanding subcultural style; spend the time investigating other theories/concepts/studies….