Working definition. Xenophilia is an affection for otherness that approaches difference as a source of relationship and learning rather than immediate threat.
Inherited meaning
The word joins the stranger with friendship or love. It stands opposite xenophobia, yet admiration alone is not innocent: fascination can exoticise people and consume difference without accepting any obligation to them.
Meaning in the imagination economy
The imagination economy needs an appetite for what datasets, disciplines, and dominant cultures do not already make familiar. Mature xenophilia is not collecting novelty. It lets an encounter challenge the standards by which novelty is judged and allows the host to be changed by what enters.
What changes in practice
Seek unfamiliar work without stripping it from its context. Replace extraction with hospitality and reciprocity. Notice when curiosity becomes consumption, and let people represent their own worlds.