Trickster hospitality: A Moroccan escalation act

ABSTRACT

Bringing into conversation classic themes of scalar play, risk, and ambiguity in the anthropology of hospitality with the focus on scalar movement and growth at the heart of the concept of ‘escalation’, this paper explores the social mechanics of a sudden change of scale, where the terms of (welcome or unwelcome) exchange are abruptly escalated with expected and unexpected consequences for all involved. Tracing how expectations of hospitality are niftily escalated by an uninvited guest in a Moroccan household, I focus on the conditions and consequences of the ‘change of change’ of escalations, where an abrupt change of scale can radically transform situations and events. Attending to the complex scalar work of a specific escalation act, I trace the constitutive ambiguity of hospitality and the conceptual openness it requires.

KEYWORDS:

• Hospitality
• refusal
• escalation
• scale

Acknowledgements

Thank you as always to the Allouche family for their hospitality, friendship, and intellectual generosity over the years. Thank you to Lars Højer for including me in the escalations circle and for his support throughout the process, to everyone at the 2017 Escalations Workshop in Copenhagen and the EASA2018 panel in Stockholm for their generous engagement with early versions of this article, and to Ghassan Hage, Ivan Rajković, Joel Robbins, and Mario Schmidt for the great feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 All names and some identifiable features have been changed.

2 E.g. Shryock (2004, 2008); Herzfeld (1987).

3 In Naven, Bateson (1936, 175) defines schismogenesis as ‘a process of differentiation in the norms of individual behaviour resulting from cumulative interaction between individuals.’