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Accepted Paper:

Making guests: the transformative substances of hospitality in Manggarai, eastern Indonesia  
Catherine Allerton (London School of Economics)

Paper short abstract:

Why should formal meals be held in exchange for the ‘empty sweat’ of wage labourers? Why do women speak of being ‘made into guests’ at alliance events? Why are eggs offered as ‘palm wine’ for spirits, when eating food cooked by a spirit would kill you? This paper describes the paradoxical practices, substances and emotions of hospitality in Manggarai.

Paper long abstract:

In Manggarai, eastern Indonesia, the everyday sharing of foodstuffs between kin and neighbours is on a continuum with acts of hospitality that constitute a partial payment to wage labourers, the formal reception of affines at alliance events, and the feeding of ancestors and other spirits at rituals. In all these instances, the temporary formalisation of relationships is effected through the provision of substances such as palm wine, betel nut and meat, as well as the speaking of words that render such substances efficacious. In this paper, I consider hospitality practices that self-consciously 'make guests' (pandé meka) and that thereby enable the transaction of money, women and spiritual protection. I focus on three key performances of hospitality - payments for work, alliance events and ancestral rituals - and argue that these all involve the temporary activation of specific relationships through the provision of palm wine, betel nut and cooked food. I describe how such performance events are surrounded by passionate and mixed emotions: laughter, ribaldry, fear, embarrassment, contempt and worry. I suggest that these intense emotions - such as the extreme offence taken by the most minor lapse of perfect hospitality - can be partly explained by the ambivalence felt in Manggarai towards waged work, the problematic necessity of acquiring affines, and the anxiety surrounding connections with an unseen realm.

Panel P34
The ambiguous objects of hospitality: material ethics, houses and dangerous guests
  Session 1