Research, Rituals and Reciprocity: The Promises of Hospitality in Fieldwork

In this paper we draw on anthropological and linguistic research concerning Papua New Guinea (PNG), including the work of Alexandra Aikhenvald, to consider hospitality in fieldwork. We look at how fieldworkers and research participants construct and enact obligations and expectations that arise in the field. With reference to our own fieldwork experiences among the Kumula of the Western Province and the Penambi Wia of the Western Highlands Province, we explore promises as they are expressed especially in formal public definitions of hospitality performed in feasts and field schools and in small rituals of everyday hospitality that focus on dyadic relations between guest and host. We argue that the enactment of hospitality between researchers and their hosts creates expectations of continuing reciprocity in the transfer not only of knowledge but also other yet unknowable, hoped for, potentialities that a continuing social relationship might bring. The promise of hospitality involves an openness to the new, to the unexpected and to the other.

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The Art of Language

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978-90-04-51039-5

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