The return to hospitality

Candea, Matei; Col, Giovanni da

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9655.2012.01757.x

Cited by 188 publications

(103 citation statements)

References 62 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…7 Hocart (1952) and Sahlins (1985Sahlins ( , 2008 have brilliantly reasoned how the capacity to generate fortune and prosperity is one of the marks of sovereign power. Fortune and kingship come from the outside, the sovereign source of vitality being perceived as a sacred stranger, a god in disguise, or as a guest or beggar (see also Candea and da Col 2012). Among the many Dechen oral narratives, the most popular one is a moral exemplar about hospitality, fortune, and a lama stranger.…”

Section: Three-legged Subjectsmentioning

confidence: 96%

The Elementary Economies of Dechenwa Life: Fortune, Vitality, and the Mountain in Sino-Tibetan Borderlands

Col¹

2012

Social Analysis

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article presents some images and conceptual structures surrounding notions of fortune and luck among Dechen Tibetans in southwest China and reflects on the strategies for negotiating the integrity of persons and other 'social containers'. First, it analyzes the problem in separating the multifarious manifestations of fortune connected to the well-being and vitality of persons and households. Secondly, it examines the ethnographic concepts arising from the interface between fortune and sovereignty by illustrating the cosmological imagination surrounding contemporary state rituals focused on the cult of Mt. Khawa Karpo. Finally, musing on the relation between vitality, containership, and alterity, the article highlights how tracing the flows of fortune problematizes the divide between interiority and exteriority, or the question of where the outside and the inside of a being or a society begin.

show abstract

Section: Three-legged Subjectsmentioning

confidence: 96%

The Elementary Economies of Dechenwa Life: Fortune, Vitality, and the Mountain in Sino-Tibetan Borderlands

Col¹

2012

Social Analysis

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…As in the case of the Melanesian Big Man (Strathern 1991) or the Amazonian owner-master (Fausto 2008), rather than having 'representatives', God was constituted as a plural singularity, a dynamic image in permanent figure-ground reversal comprising majestas and praxis-sovereign unity and economic-pragmatic plurality-within itself. But, as often happens in the encounter with concepts developed by continental theorists, such as Derrida's 'hostipitality' (Candea and da Col 2012) or the recent fads musing on Freud's 'uncanny', anthropology should be wary of relinquishing its own distinctive tradition. A close examination of Agamben's works reveals his Parisian inspirations and a keen interest in French ethnology and ethno-history.…”

Section: Theologies Of Fortunementioning

confidence: 99%

“…As with the gift or hospitality (Candea and da Col 2012), luck and fortune appear to be tropes liable to affect all spheres of human sociality. In moral reflections, luck and fortune problematize notions of agency and responsibility; in political cosmologies, they intervene in the (dis)connections between will, action, and efficacy and confine the magnitude of human authority; in economic exchange, they single out the tensions between personal skills, choice, and notions of value, as in gift giving, where fortune and luck embed spiritual properties within material entities.…”

Section: The Omnipotence Of Luck and Chancementioning

confidence: 99%

Natural Philosophies of Fortune: Luck, Vitality, and Uncontrolled Relatedness

Col¹

2012

Social Analysis

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Despite the resurgence of interdisciplinary interest in concepts of fortune, luck, and chance, anthropology has failed to engage with the social imagination of these concepts and their incorporation into quotidian moralities and decisions. This essay, which introduces the first of two special issues on this topic, will first present different conceptions and uses of notions of luck and chance and their relation with moral ontologies and notions of skeptical efficacy. By focusing on the interface between cosmology, economics, and human relatedness-that is, cosmoeconomics-this introduction shall then highlight how idioms of luck and fortune foreground a social topology that explicates how innate conceptions of vitality and 'mystical' influence, deemed to be of uncertain and uncontrolled nature, are nonetheless able to connect humans and non-humans, organisms and material entities.

show abstract

“…As he points out, 'stagecraft is essential to the management of this situation' (ibid. ), thus referring to the where and the when of the encounters between strangers (see also Candea and Da Col 2012 Focusing on the practices of dining and hospitality as a form of re-scaling diplomatic encounters beyond the state-level, this paper is situated in a dervish lodge in a post-cosmopolitan town in post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina. It explores how the notion of sofra, which the dervishes associate with an elaborate etiquette of hospitality, dining and food sharing, is deployed as an idiom embodying both a site of everyday diplomacy in its spatio-material configurations, as well as a mode of 'being diplomatic'.…”

Section: Re-scaling Diplomatic Sitesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hospitality as Diplomacy in Post- Cosmopolitan Urban Spaces Dervish Lodges and Sofra-Diplomacy in Post-War Bosnia-Herzegovina

Henig¹

2016

The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

If the first step in developing an ethnography of everyday diplomacy requires re-scaling analytical focus on the forms of mediated exchange beyond the realm of the nation-state, this needs to be followed by an exploration of the 'sites' where everyday diplomacy actually takes place. One such 'site', which epitomizes the quintessence of diplomatic practice, is dining and commensality. By re-scaling this axiom beyond state-level diplomacy, I explore how the notion of sofra [table/dining etiquette] is deployed by a Muslim Dervish brotherhood in a post-cosmopolitan town in post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina. I suggest that the notion of sofra embodies both a mode of being diplomatic as well as a site of everyday diplomacy. The sofra thus enables the brotherhood to stage 'events of hospitality' to forge and mediate relationships between various 'others', locally and transnationally. interested in the other-worldly matters and Islamic healing and dreaming, he was told by his fellow villagers that he might witness some miracles in the lodge. The boy was warmly welcomed and taken to the room, with comfortable sofas covered by ram skins and embroiled pillows, where the sheikh usually received guests. The boy was immediately seated by one of the dervish disciples at the nearest corner of the sofa facing the sheikh, which is reserved for honoured guests. He was offered hot and cold drinks and a snack made of biscuits and fruits. The refreshments were served on the sofra 1 that had been spread between him and the sheikh. This gesture of hospitality, bringing the boy and the sheikh to the sofra, made the boy more relaxed. With increasing confidence he asked: 'Is it true that you can make the Qu'ran levitate when you are reciting from the book?'. The sheikh smiled, sipped from his glass of tea, encouraged the boy to eat something from the sofra and replied: 'Making the Qu'ran levitate? That's nothing. It's more comfortable to make my heavy body levitate over the Qu'ran when I am reciting from the book, don't you think so? Unfortunately, I am not in the mood today so you will need to come another time'. Everyone in the room apart from the boy, who was still hoping to see something miraculous, laughed. Then the sheikh started asking the boy questions about the village and a number of villagers whom he seemed to know.The boy, evidently perplexed by both the response as well as the sheikh's detailed knowledge of his own village and individual villagers, a kind of miracle [keramet] as well, answered all questions and left the lodge. To my knowledge he has never come back.Here I am less concerned about the details of the boy, as his story is not entirely unique in the social life in the lodge -on the contrary. Over the years of my fieldwork in the lodge I have become accustomed to such guests, diverse categories of individuals, coming from the town, surrounding villages and further afield. The questions they seek the sheikh to answer concern miraculous healing, and making and writing amulets [zapis]. Although the sheikh did not perform 3...

show abstract

The return to hospitality

Cited by 188 publications

References 62 publications

The Elementary Economies of Dechenwa Life: Fortune, Vitality, and the Mountain in Sino-Tibetan Borderlands

The Elementary Economies of Dechenwa Life: Fortune, Vitality, and the Mountain in Sino-Tibetan Borderlands

Natural Philosophies of Fortune: Luck, Vitality, and Uncontrolled Relatedness

Hospitality as Diplomacy in Post- Cosmopolitan Urban Spaces Dervish Lodges and Sofra-Diplomacy in Post-War Bosnia-Herzegovina

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About