Waiting on a Friend: Hospitality and Gifts to the “Enemy” in the Daasanach

抄録

The Gift by Marcel Mauss showed that gift giving has multiple factors that seem to contradict each other. Freedom and obligation are constantly described as being two sides of the same coin in the book. This study focuses on the ambiguity and polysemy of hospitality and gifts that Mauss suggested. The Daasanach, who live in the border area of Ethiopia and Kenya, fight with their neighboring groups. Nevertheless, many Daasanach have friends who belong to these groups. When a violent conflict ends, members of the two groups voluntarily visit each other’s lands, interact peacefully, and form friendships. The friendships among them are neither formed as a result of acts of social obligation nor are relationships formed as a means for an individual to seek one’s own profit. They are relationships that are formed when two parties with different daily lives happen to encounter one another, with one party providing hospitality and/or gifts to another who cannot do anything but “wait.” In this paper, I will analyze the emerging process of friendship and emphasize the coincidental aspect of hospitality and gift giving.