Welcoming Dangerous Benefactors
Year: 2019
Type: article
Abstract: Chinese festival ritual offers an extreme case of hospitality to outsider benefactors, to gods. They are invited outsiders. Their host is a territorial community of households represented by their divinely selected master of the god’s incense burner. Mediation to communicate with and separate from powerful guests is a courting of great power and avoiding its danger. Their welcome poses the danger of offence. To these points I add other sides and counterparts to rites of hospitality, such as rites of charitable feeding. I begin by arguing that the dangers of hospitality suggested by others in this volume are applicable in this case. Finally, I suggest how the terms in which I analyse these Chinese rites are applicable to other orders of hospitality.
Source: L Homme
DOI: 10.4000/lhomme.35561
Author: Stephan Feuchtwang
Institution: London School of Economics and Political Science
Language: Italian
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W2990624081