Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes how offers of food and drinks are performed in Toraja. By bringing within a single analytic field the exchange of words and things, it argues that the expression and concealment of desires within host-guest interactions is key to the reproduction of the local political economy.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyzes how offers of food and drinks are conversationally managed within Toraja domestic spaces. I draw on my participation in the everyday life of a Toraja household and I argue that in order to understand the interplay of intimacy and hierarchy that characterizes human sociality in this rural area of Indonesia we need to analyze commensality practices and everyday visiting. Throughout one year of continuous fieldwork, I gradually transitioned from being a guest of my hosts to being the host of my hosts' guests. Through this process, I became aware of how specific ways of exchanging words and things within host-guest interactions encoded fundamental social and moral principles. I describe how, in Toraja, relations of social subordination and reciprocity were mediated through stylized speech acts characterized by a prevalence of short commands and abrupt directives, or even by the silent giving of "food things". I argue that these instances of "hard speech" or "almost no speech" stemmed from a social concern for the explicit expression and recognition of preferences, needs, and desires. These patterns for the linguistic and semiotic encoding of volition played a key role within the local gastro-politics (Appadurai 1981). The practice of compensating the extraction of unremunerated labor through "generous free" meals has been long described as deeply ingrained in the "subsistence ethics" of Southeast Asian agrarian societies (Scott 1976). My analysis suggests that this large-scale "moral economy" depends on careful conversational negotiations aimed at mitigating the expression of mutual dependence and individual desires.