Paper short abstract:

The paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a luxury restaurant in the Czech Republic. It suggests that luxury hospitality is characterized by two opposite discourses - economic exchange and gift exchange.

Paper long abstract:

In his Laws, Plato criticizes innkeepers for corrupting the natural laws of hospitality taught by Heaven by not treating their guests as friends but rather as captives who have to pay for what should have been given to them for free.

Although in the present-day Czech Republic hardly anyone is shocked by the fact that hospitality constitutes a separate industry and is governed by the laws of economy, there are strong concerns over the morality of the relations between service workers and customers. Whereas during socialism, interactions among people within the public sphere were limited to the necessary minimum and deprived of expressions of affection (Holý 1996), today customers are encouraged to demand personalized, friendly service, and service workers are expected to offer it.

The proposed paper draws upon my ethnographic research among service workers and customers in a luxury restaurant in Prague, Czech Republic and focuses on the contradictory nature of hospitality as business. I challenge the view that economic exchange and gift exchange represent two independent spheres and I show that with its attention to individuality, voluntariness and personalization, luxury service is characterized by symbolical gift exchange and denial of the economic, resulting in what I call the discrete economy.

In the paper, I pay particular attention to various meanings that workers in the restaurant apply to money, especially tips, and how by doing that, they cope with the inequalities that exist between them and their guests.