Politics over Hosting

Case Study of Feast in Hani, Yunnan, China.

Abstract

Introduction

This paper explores the contested yet inevitable entanglement between the local manner of guest catering and self-interest in the feasting of Hani mountain peasants in the southern area of Yunnan province, China. Particularly over the last 10 years, these people have spent enormous amounts of energy and time and have used valuable property, including livestock, to hold ritual feasts through which the host households have good opportunities to receive neighbors as guests. As both hosting ritual feasts and being a proper guest are referred to as a "man‘s business" and are a recognized way to maintain social relations, it seems there is a rational calculation of profits and losses or a mode of reciprocity underlying the welcoming practice. Analyzing the narratives and behavior of people who participate in the ritual feast in the Hani peasant village, the author attempts to clarify the politics of feasting and the local logic on which it depends. A feast is no other than a typical occasion of guest catering or welcoming others. However, previous classic anthropological arguments on feasting have paid more attention to the construction of social relations caused by property and prestige, as potlatches are understood from the viewpoint of gift exchanges (Mauss 2014), and Polynesian feasts are discussed in relation to chiefly redistribution (Sahlins 1984), rather than hospitality itself. On the other hand, the interdisciplinary argument on hospitality put forth by Jacques Derrida, who conceptualized ideal absolute hospitality as welcoming others without the expectation of any rewards (Derrida 1999), developed perspectives apart from this by focusing on reciprocity when considering the relationship between the self and the other. Accordingly, recent anthropological discussions tend to concern particular situations and feasible conditions surrounding the encounter of the host and the guest, not only the consequences (Candea and da Col 2012).

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