humphrey.2012.hospitality and tone

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Hospitality and tone: holding

patterns for strangeness in

rural Mongolia

Caroline Humphrey University of Cambridge

In rural Mongolia, hospitality without expectation of a return is a prime ethical and practical virtue,

but it is always performed rather than merely spontaneous. Oral maxims of hospitality designate the

acts to be performed, lending them a crafted, aesthetic quality and forming a holding pattern that

mediates the mutual vulnerability of the host and guest. It is argued that this situation can be

analysed through the concept of tone, a cultural artefacts organizing affect. The production of

affective reassurance the ideal of hospitality is, however, often shot through with disturbing

emotions and negative forms of distancing.

Most writing on hospitality is concerned with the intersection of political and ethicalmatters questionsof therightsof strangers,generosity,thresholds,status,authority,andmutual respect. One way or another it deals with the double-bind of hospitality, bestknown in Derridas argument that thelaw of hospitalityis universal and is culture itselfandnotsimplyoneethicamongothers(: ),andyetthatabsolutehospitalityisbothinconceivable and incomprehensible(: ). This problematic had been perceivedearlier by Pitt-Rivers (), and was further developed by anthropologists who drewattention to specific ethics of generosity that work compulsively, as it were, againstpolitical calculation(Dresch ; Shryock).Such issues cannot be ignored,but thispaperisconcernedalsowiththe howof theethicsof hospitality,their interpersonaleffects.Encounters of hostsand guests have tobe conductedin somecharacteristicway,a mannerof the people,place, and time. It will be argued that such interactions should be seen notsimplyas theoutcomeof theunmediatedvolitionof thepeoplewho seethemselvesas hostor guest: that is, as a reaction to, or decision about, ethical precepts in given politicalcircumstances. Rather, the enactment of hospitality creates its own intervening zone ofcraft,evident in a depersonalized repertoire of things that are done, which detaches actsfrom actors and speeches from speakers, and focuses attention on these artful thingsthemselves (offerings to, gestures towards, mutual stances, verbal expressions, properlydirectedglances,etc.).Borrowingfromliterarystudies,Iproposesuchenactmentscanbeprofitably analysed by using the concept of tone.

Using this idea does not mean retreating from universality, because it is difficult toconceive of any community that does not employ some hospitality repertoire having its

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Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.),S-S Royal Anthropological Institute 2012

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own tone, yet it recognizes that what that tone might be like in one cultural setting letus say, grave, or warmly effusive, or aggressive would be different from another. Tone,being intrinsically relational, is a productive idea that immediately involves the affect ofhospitality encounters, and leads to further interesting questions of modulations oftone, and, to continue the musical analogy, of wrong notes or altogether jarring chords.

Tone, as analysed in Sianne NgaisUgly feelings (: ), is inherently public. Itrefers to a literary or cultural artefacts organizing affect, its general disposition ororientation towards its audience and the world. The tone of an artefact obviouslycannot be reduced to the representation of feeling withinthe artwork, or to the emo-tional response that such a representation solicits. Transferred to the hospitalityencounter, this would be to take a standard expression like I am so glad to see you atface value, as actually a manifestation of gladness and as evoking corresponding feel-ings in the addressee. Nevertheless, as Ngai argues, the fact that a feeling is fake orartfully produced does not mean that affect is absent, and she gives as an example a

confidence-mans story about a stock-market panic that, contrived as it is, can generatepublic repercussions identical to those of a genuine panic (:). Tone refers to theslippery zone between fake and real feelings (: ).

Let me explain why I think this has relevance for hospitality. Mongolian society issurely among several where not only is hospitality an undisputed moral good but theproper ways of treating strangers and guests are elaborated into rules or maxims(yos).1 Travelling in Mongolia in the s, I found it was assumed that people wouldknow theseyos, and that anyone not observing them would be despised and stigma-tized. The character of yos is in fact less that of an external ruling than that of aninternalized norm but they are not taken for granted to the extent that lack ofknowledge, mistakes, or manipulations are inconceivable. Once my Mongolianteacher, unsolicited, sat down and recounted to me one hundred rules for the host and

guest, which he explained were not at all his invention but belonged to the store ofshared and highly valued culture that should be handed down within families (Hum-phrey). My teachers desire to have these maxims written down and thus storedsuggests that theseyosbelonged to a nomadic way of life that was already (in the s)known to be under threat. But a central point of this paper is that, because they areyos,these didactic norms of hospitality, almost all of which are in fact still alive and well inrural areas, have an object quality, and their enactment becomes the performance ofthat very rule-like custom, thus coming to stand like other aesthetic products that canproject feelings, be appreciated, felt, reacted to, and so forth. If tone concerns thebearing or attitude towards the world of cultural objects, we can ask what is the tone ofthis conglomeration of prescribed actions in the Mongolian countryside what is thegeneral feel to this rigmarole of actions that hosts and guests have to take up; is itintimate, frigid, placid, or quite what?

This is a question about tone that is about affect, if we agree that affect (in contrastwith emotion) concerns feelings that are not highly goal-directed, are intentionallyweak, and not contained by an individual identity (Massumi : ). All Mongolianhosts and guests are supposed to perform the appropriate gestures, and the action ofperforming them in a way that counts as correct exists objectively as something at onelevel divorced from practical, subjective, goal-direction intentions, not unlike the casewith ritualization (Humphrey & Laidlaw). But Ngai points out that there is moreto tone than the relatively unformed, floating feeling generated by a register of actions.She is interested in the way the concept enables theoscillationfrom one pole, affect, to

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Caroline HumphreyS64



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the other, emotion, which is distinguished from affect by its belonging to an individualsubject, by the existence of relatively unambiguous concepts of emotions, and by itscloser link with purposive action. Tone is a concept constructed around the veryproblematic that the emotion/affect distinction was intended to dissolve (: ).This oscillation is just where the idea of tone becomes interesting for hospitality. For, ofcourse, the people carrying out the prescribed actions are also subjects who can injecttheir own emotion into them, or modulate them which is all the more evident whenthere is a canon of hospitality gestures. So in respect of hospitality I am suggesting thattone has a double articulation, and that any given encounter may veer between anexpected, undifferentiated, perhaps almost unnoticed affect, and the sharper feelingscreated by unexpected, personally directed inflections.

The argument I shall try to elaborate does not concern the banal fact that people donot follow maxims to the letter, but maintains that having such norms enables thecreation of a certain kind of sociality and affect that otherwise would not exist, and that

this has a generative quality, such that anything that subsequently happens does so onthe basis of an initial setting of feelings. This means that while the inevitable impro-visations, deviations, personal emotions, and so forth, that break in cannot be knownin advance, the changeable tones that shoot through the subsequent trajectories ofhospitality encounters are modulations: that is, they are experienced in relation to whathas gone before. Now the situation is that the guest (jochin) is defined as a stranger tothe household,2 bringing the extraneous, for good or ill, into the relatively stable andpredictable realm of the host. The yos appear as if designed to corral the stranger,controlling what he brings in or takes out, and forestalling any act that might occasionan escalation of interactions beyond their own remit (cf. Pitt-Riverss laying in abey-ance of strangeness,:-). Ideally, the guest is kept in a holding pattern, held ata certain distance while he circles in, through the home, and out again, while his impact

is depersonalized till it becomes an abstract energy like a gust of wind. But things rarelyhappen this way, as we shall see.

The affect of the protocol of hospitality

Imagine you are in a small felt yurt (ger) in the grasslands, with no other dwellingsnearby, in a great bare expanse, out of which anyone might ride up to your door. Youmust be hospitable to this person without expecting a return. The Mongolian maximsof hospitality are predicated on the idea of the household as the basic social unit (thereis no other word for host than master of the household [geriin ejen] which can beinterpreted at different scales, from the domestic to the court of a political leader) andon the setting of the herding camp, the necessity for nomadic movement that makeseach stopping-place home, the tendency towards dispersal away from other herders,the need for extended networks and distance settings, and the absence of immediatehelp.3 Any stranger could represent danger, but also access to vital information (news/rumours, excitement, warnings, etc.). Simukov, the Russian geographer who spentmany years in Mongolia in the s, wrote that so necessary is the presumption ofhospitality for the ordinary business of life, such as taking refuge from storms, visitingdistant relatives, taking something to sell at a far-off market, and so forth, that a personcould travel the length of this vast country with no more than a knowledge of thelanguage and customs and a tobacco pouch, knowing he will be given food and shelterthe whole way (:-). This is probably true, and generalized hospitality withoutexpectation of an immediate return (or any return) is certainly the norm.

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Ho s p it a lit y a nd t o ne S65



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The catch is Simukovs knowledge of customs. The first of these is that a person whoarrives has to make it apparent that he is a guest long before he reaches the door thisis an essential part of theyosof the visitor. The existence of these preparatory prescrip-tions make it apparent that Mongolian hospitality is not universal but conditional andrelational, coming into operation along with the perception of signs from the strangerthat he is at least not an enemy or some other undesired category of person. How,however, does the traveller make it clear that he is a guest? A brief look at the initialstages of the yos will begin to clarify the affective quality of the hospitality of thesteppes. The wordhgmeans tone in the sense of a note in tune,4 and Mongol parentswill instruct their children before visiting other people, Take account of their tone(hgi-ni jee). Although this is not quite the same idea of tone as I have been using, itconveys the awareness of the other that is intrinsic to guest-host relations.

The person arriving, if on horseback, should call out loudly from a distance andbefore dismounting, Mind the dog! even if no dog is visible, thus making sure that the

inhabitants of thegerare not taken unawares. At this, the wife or children will come outand hold the dog for dogs are trained to attack strangers. The guest should avoidstepping over any working tool, such as a lasso or tethering rope, outside theger, so asnot to pollute it.Approaching the door, if no one has yet come out, he should stop a fewsteps away and clear his throat to warn of his presence; he should not knock on thedoor, which is thought rude and aggressive. He must leave his gun, whip, or otherweapons outside. As for his knife used for eating, this should be worn hanging from hisbelt, and the guest should not touch it with his hand. As a sign of respect to his hostsand his own dignity, he should button up his clothing, pull down his sleeves and cuffs,and keep on his hat.5

Stepping into the yurt, the guest should use his right foot and avoid treading on thethreshold. He should greet his host only when inside it is regarded as unpropitious to

greet anyone across the threshold. Meanwhile, as the guest steps in, whatever the hostis thinking, saying, or reading at that instant assumes particular importance as a sign oromen. If a child is coming in and trips on the threshold, this is a good sign and peoplesay, We have a gain; but if a young person trips on the way out, that is regarded as badluck and the child will be required to come back inside and place a piece of dried dungfuel on the fire.

After entering, the guest must sit according to his status in the place indicated andnot change seats or move around. He must avoid touching the fuel box and must alsonever hold on to the roof-poles, because this is what a woman does when she is givingbirth. Sitting down, the guest must adopt a polite posture all possible sitting positionsare named and categorized according to their suitability for people of different age, sex,and rank. The guest must particularly avoid sitting cross-legged with the outer footpointing to the family shrine; this would be highly disrespectful, almost like a kick inthe direction of the sacred items. He must also avoid stepping over and thus pollutingany domestic object, large or small, such as scissors, a hammer, or the fire-tongs. As thehosts wife prepares tea, the guest should offer his snuff-bottle to the host, receiving inturn the snuff-bottle of the host. This decorous ritual is obligatory even if one does nottake snuff.

When the host offers tea, it should be circling in the bowl clockwise. The guestshould receive the bowl with his right hand placed underneath, never on top, and thefingers of the right hand should be spaced evenly apart. After two or three sips, the guestputs the bowl down and the host offers a plate with food. The guest should receive the

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plate with both hands, slightly raising it as a sign of thanks. If he does not wish to eat,he touches the plate with his fingertips, both hands placed palm upwards, and bowsslightly in thanks. When taking food, the guest should first take a morsel and put it inhis mouth, chewing in an obvious way to make it look like a large chunk. No word isuttered during this whole sequence: expressions of offering and gratitude are appro-priate only when the thing received is not to be expected. The movements of the eyesare very important, and it is a sign of respect to move the eyes very softly and avoiddirect eye contact. Talking commences with a series of standardized questions, such asthe now old-fashioned, What is there that is strange and beautiful what is the news?The reply to this, whatever the situation, is Nothing at all fair and peaceful (seeLattimore:). How is spring pasturing going? Answer: Spring is going well. Are

you living well? We are living well, and so forth.6 The protocol of hospitality dullsverbal communication. Indeed, the sixty-third precept of my teacher states: one shouldnot talk while eating or drinking, one should never gesticulate or make rapid move-

ments of the arms or legs, and all speech should be quiet. An older person mayadmonish a younger one, A bad persons noise is great; a donkeys groin is great.When leaving, the guest should not retrace his steps,but circle round theger, pausing

to pay respects to the gods on the altar, while old people in the hosts family give a turnto their prayer-mills, the idea being that a meritorious deed before someone goes outprevents loss.

Theabove preceptsare translatedmoreor less literallyfrom some of themaxims of myteacher (Humphrey), but I have quoted enough to be able to begin to characterizethe affectof the exemplaryhost-guest encounter. In a waytheremight seem to be nothingespecially new about this kind of endeavour in anthropology, if we remember Batesonsdescription of ethosin New Guinea ( []), or, closer still, Geertzs analysis of theaffective toneof Balinese life (: -). These, however, are attempts to characterize

an entire culture, whereas what I have in mind is a limited assemblage of carefullydemonstrative actions that exists in a world of other kinds of action that are nothing likethem,beingdirect,unmediated,haphazard,andvolitional.Sowhatdothemaximstellus?First, hospitality is enacted almost entirely by quiet, minute, and stately gestures, not bywords, and these add up (it seems to me) to the craft of allaying suspicion; avoidance ofgivingthetiniestoffence;self-control;andself-deprecationalongwithconsciousrespect-fulness to the other; in sum to dampening or pausing whatever other intentions,suspicions, narratives, or emotions that might be present, and creating a (precariously)assembled sequence that conveys the affect of measuredreassurance.

We can see this affect to be conveyed by each gesture as well as by the totality of thesequence. How does it happen? Tomkins describes affect as an amplifier, as that whichmagnifies awareness and intensifies the effect of operations associated with otherbiological subsystems (motor, perceptual, cognitive, etc.) by co-assembling with theseother vital mechanisms (: ). The point I would like to hold on to from Tomkinsis the idea that affect is what makes things matter to us (we are forced to be concerned,: ).

The work of Brian Massumi indicates why affect is particularly pertinent to perfor-mances that minimize function, language, and narrative like the Mongolian hospi-tality gestures. If Tomkins emphasizes the combinational flexibility between thestimulus and the co-assembled affect, Massumi, using a different vocabulary, arguesthat the strength or duration of an images affect is not logically connected to thecontent in any straightforward way ... The event of image reception is multi-levelled, or

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at least bi-level. There is an immediate bifurcation in response into two seeminglyautonomous systems. That of signifying order and conscious emotions works in par-allel to that of intensity (affect), and the latter operates with a different connectivity tocontent, being immediately embodied and most directly manifested in the skin, at thesurface of the body, at its interface with things (Massumi : -). Affect

is outside expectation and adaptation, as disconnected from meaningful sequencing, from narration,

as it is from vital function. It is narratively de-localized, spreading over the general body surface, like

a lateral backwash from the function-meaning interloops travelling the vertical path between head

and heart.

Language, though head-strong, is not simply in opposition to intensity [affect]. It would seem to

function differently in relation to it [... and] interferes with the images effect. Intensity would seem

to be associated with nonlinear processes: resonation and feedback, which momentarily suspend the

linear progress of the narrative from past to future. Intensity is ... like a temporal sink, a hole in time,

as we conceive of it and narrativize it (Massumi: -).

If this is right, the elimination of both narrative and emotional language from thehospitality scene would serve to foreground the untrammelled qualities of affect itsimmediate and bodily nature and its suspension of action-reaction circuits and lineartemporality. I would see the maxims of hospitality, which are of course separate fromhospitality itself, as working to designate acts. Each action of the host or guest thusbecomes recognizable as a discrete image that bears in parallel its downplayed content(e.g. offering a drink) and its amplified affect, which is the feeling of its propriety, themutually needed reassurance that harm, insult, bad news, and so forth, are out of theframe. And the enjoyment of this feeling would last, even if more or less subcon-sciously, into the taking of a corresponding action, which would be similarly reassuringto the guest, and so onwards through the sequence.

The maxims suggest that the guest ideally circles in and goes away again entirelyencased in the same serene formality. In practice, however, the initial restrained dis-passion comes to incorporate other moods, when further stages of hospitality ensue drinking alcohol, making toasts, and singing songs. Each of these introduces new tones,and furthermore they are likely to generate unpredictably personal emotions. Toastsare often conventional, but can sharpen into sarcastic remarks; songs, as I mentionlater, make lateral, often highly wrought links to emotions felt in everyday life, outsidethe frame of hospitality. Both of these are almost invariably accompanied by drinkingalcohol. This has an etiquette all of its own, whose affect when formally performedtends to ferment into a heavy, status-ridden, and impersonal jollity. But in the way ofthings, plentiful alcohol can easily dissolve the self-control on which hospitalitydepends, and uninhibited lapses reveal the constructed quality of the reassurance so

artfully fostered. As Ngai writes about tone, such feelings slip in and out of subjectiveboundaries, at times becoming transformed into psychic property, but at other timeseluding containment (:). Before discussing this, however, it is necessary first tolook briefly at the nature of the boundaries set up to conduct hospitality itself, thenecessarily shiftable frames that accommodate diverse guests with diverse hosts.

Adjusting the frame

The public nature of these encounters helps explain why the courteous balm ofhospitality may remain vaguely circulating without ever becoming the directly feltemotion of a single person. The host-guest code of my teacher, like indeed some of the

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theoretical literature on hospitality, is an idealized schema that conjures up the imageof two people interacting; it is only models who meet, the host and the guest, andwhat makes this possible is the public arena that sets up these roles by constitutive rules.It would not be inconceivable, I suppose, for two real people, a traveller and someonesitting at home, to enact the entire hospitality scenario, but this would be a perfor-mance as if to an invisible audience. The fact is that in Mongolia guests are oftenmultiple, and thegerthey enter almost never has just one person sitting in it, but is apeopled space: here there will be a careworn spouse, perhaps a silent grandparent, somecurious children, a hired herder, maybe some relatives or neighbours, or a lingeringprevious guest. All these people make a tiny public, and they set up a frame for thehospitality encounter. Days may go by and no one comes near, but as soon as a rider isespied in the far distance, say twenty minutes away, the alarm will go up, Someone iscoming! The inhabitants will rush to tidy theger, with people sitting in the right places.The far-off traveller(s) may never arrive. But if they do, their every movement is

watched, and this invigilation (almost always) ensures that incomers act as guests.7

In a hierarchical, patriarchal society, the most volatile dynamic concerns who thevisitor is and how many are in his party in relation to the household that does thehosting for in an encampment (hot ail) there are often severalgers, one of which willbe the appropriate one for the approaching party. Owen Lattimore, who travelledextensively in Inner Mongolia in the s and s, a time of banditry, poverty,war-lord armies, and desperate refugees from the revolution in (Outer) Mongolia,describes how, nearing a camp, he and his companions would make sure to pausemotionless on the horizon, so that the watchers below would know that he was notbehaving furtively, not skulking or enfilading, as would be the movement of ill-doers(: ). When approaching the great encampment of the Prince of West Sunid,Lattimore, who was travelling with only four mangy camels and one man, was advised

by his Mongol companion-servant Arash to exercise great care:

Arash perceived, much more acutely, that even if I were an American who wanted to travel like a

Mongol and not bother anybody, still I was an American and must in some way put myself on record,

in case there were some proprieties which the Mongols might feel they ought to observe. How to do

this was a problem. If I had driven up in a motor-car or marched up with an expedition everything

would have been simple. Either of these kinds of approach creates their own hubbub. There is no

puzzle about how to behave ... The word goes up from low to high: A foreigner. Who is going to take

him on? Each man whom the word reaches then has to do his own guessing. Is this foreigner too

important for him to handle? Should he be passed higher up? What if he is passed on and then turns

out to be someone unimportant who should have been handled down below? And so on (:).

That hospitality takes place within a regional public of people highly conscious ofstatus and suffused with political, moral, and magical rumours also explains theequivocal treatment of thebadarchin. This is a wandering Buddhist lama seeking alms(badar, from Sanskritpatra), though the word is now also used for all kinds of loneromance of the road travellers. When lamas went out onbadarfrom Mergen Monas-tery in Inner Mongolia (China) in the s, seeking alms to finance the constructionof a huge statue, a project generally approved by the neighbouring herders, the monkswere welcomed hospitably almost everywhere and loaded with gifts of sheep, butter,money, and so forth. But they were officially approved alms-seekers and the first anyonehad seen for decades. Traditionally, however, that is, in Mongolian folk stories, thebadarchin is a trickster-like figure hovering between holiness and indigent nuisance,

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whose arrival often initiates a shifting of the hospitality frame. In one such story, abadarchin is approaching a herding camp when the great black guard dog (whichhappens to be sacred,setertei, having been dedicated to a god) leaps out and attackshim. Thebadarchinarmed with two sticks beats it off till it howls. Entering the ger, thebadarchinfinds a huge and dignified lay nun (shavganch) lying on the bed. Getting up,she yells, Hey, badarchi, who allowed you to beat my black dog consecrated toMahakala? It wanted to bite the yellow tonsured monk consecrated to Shagzhatv,who I am, that is why I beat it. The lay nun had nothing to reply to these words, and shehad to accept the wandering lama as a guest (Gochoo : ). In this story, all threeprotagonists the dog, the lama, and the nun are religiously consecrated, and it isrecognition of thebadarchins superior holy status that forces the nun to extend theframe of hospitality to him.

Thebadarchin could (you never know) be someone whose visit would presage awonderful miracle, or conversely be someone masking his possession of vindictive

curses (haraal) that might be surreptitiously passed into the household and then causehavoc, sickness, and deaths (Bawden :-). In Mongol accounts, thebadarchinisan archetypal representation of the wandering stranger, the guest without a home,possibly a welcome musician, or a smart talker, or a scrounger, likely somehow to be indisguise, and dangerous to boot. The danger of the guest, as I now show from somecontemporary ethnography, is not confined to stories.

Danger and distancing

It will have been noticed that I have written of the visitor as he, and there is a reasonfor this. In present-day rural Mongolia, and the same has been true historically (Kozlov []: -), with the exception of the high socialist period of the late s to

early

s, women normally stay near theger, while it is men who go out for distantherding and visiting.

As men from other ails (camps) frequented our gerduring the day, I began to realize what mensherding entailed. Animals generally know where they are going, and so do the men: in the latter case

often to agerfor the first drink. After having some homebrewed vodka, they continue a little furtherbefore stopping at the next. As the men circulated between thegersin the valley, they allowed me aview into these visiting practices; not by taking me with them, but rather by having me host those who

came to ourgerfor a drink (High : ).

Such guests expect to be received with unremitting hospitality, while the male host maywell be absent, all of which severely taxes the women, who have to sustain the generosity

for as long as the guest chooses to stay. I was told of devices, well known to everyone inthe vicinity, such as a small side tent in which a household head may hide, pretendingto be away. But in Mette Highs ethnography, such ruses do not deter the most persis-tent visitors, who may well be half-drunk when they arrive. The daughter of a pros-perous family said,

Now they know they can getarhi(alcohol, especially vodka) from here. But its hard for mum with allthese drunken people. They make her tired, so after serving them once, shell leave thegerand waitoutside. If she stays inside theyll just ask her for morearhi. Dad insists that she gives because we havemany animals and people know that ... so if we dont give, people will get upset and talk badly about

us. We have to give (High : ).

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However, in Mongolia, being hospitable is less explicitly associated with honour (orits equivalent) than in Mediterranean societies; nor are there myths of extreme genero-sity as inSwat,such as givingaway everything,children andwomen (Lindholm:).It is associated with Buddhist merit-making and acquisitions or losses of an occult, notmaterial, nature. While a mean, inhospitable person certainly is the butt of criticism, hefearsmostofallsomethingunknowableanddreadthatseepsoutoftheseveryaccusations.Gossipcan coagulatefrom idle talk (demiiyarih) into actively harming (hortoi) words,orindeed intohel am(lit. tongue mouth) that directly causes occult misfortune. Speech ingeneral carries the transformative potential for causing calamities; helam is, if anything,thesorceryof everyday life (Hjer:).Thisis why theproductionof reassuring tonein hospitality must exclude any direct talk and proffer instead formalized and deperson-alized genres. Furthermore, it is not just that anyone in these encounters is vulnerable astheobject of theharmfullanguageof neighbours,but also that eithera host or a guest maybe construed as the generator of secret, sorcery-like talk. This suspicion, I suggest,

following Hjer (: ), is far more serious, as it designates that person as a radicallymysterious, deeplyunknowable, malign other. Such a reputation may stalk a personlongbefore any given appearance as a host or guest, but it is also true that the hospitalityencounteris a main scenario forsuch thoughts to arise,as I describe later. In other words,beneath the precarious distancing set up by the performance of formal hospitality, thereis unspoken piercing suspicion, and with it the emotion of fear.

The delicate balance of host-guest relations, when successfully performed in the toneof reassurance, produces a certain kind of positive distance among the actors. Thepositive here is the disinterest that is, equanimity achieved by relegating directlycommunicated excitements, oddities, raw intentions, or inauspicious occult matters toa zone outside the hospitality frame. If the guest is welcome, there then ensues the nextphase of offering toasts and singing songs, a warmer atmosphere, when the guest can

reciprocate the host by means of the charm, the wit, the nostalgia of his benedictions orsongs, all this being a kind of affective amplification, that which is proper to theaesthetic relation. People can seem closer, they can even feel closer but they are alwaysalso distanced insofar as the feeling is projected onto and produced by the beauty of thesong, which is a pre-formedobject, distinct both from the listener and from the personsinging it. The necessary existence of this positive distance for the creation of theappropriate tone is seen by the fact that the whole scenario may subside into affectivedeficit (Ngai:) and trickle away into ugliness: the song can be half-hearted, thesinger humiliated by being unable to remember it properly, the audience not disinter-ested but uninterested, laughing and chatting about something else. Alternatively, astouchingly demonstrated in the ethnography of Laurent Legrain (), the song,which is not only performed during hospitality but also sung privately and practised asa yearning link between oneself and a loved absent person, can catch the hearts ofpeople in the assembled company. Perhaps the thwarted action of the hospitality corralmust always propel the event in some direction or another, unless the guest goes awayvery soon indeed. A more extended hospitality must always veer between somethingthat is experienced, but not felt, and its own product, its double, a real emotion.

Hospitality properly begun thus can prosper, or it can wither away. But it can also getoff to a wrong start, when the maxims are breached (ignored, exaggerated, violated,etc.), and this immediately reveals their crafted character. Exposed, the protocols aretoo shaky to blot out the underlying hostility. Then an amplification of negativedistance ensues a process of making the guest not just a stranger but fundamentally

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alien that is still registered as affect, such as a shared feeling of menace or dismay, butincreasingly shot through with individual counter-emotions. I have called thesecounter because they come into being not as a felt double of the courtesies, but as asharply felt reaction to their breach.

The guest arrives already as other, in the sense of coming from outside, but thehospitality sequence can transmute undifferentiated externality into essential differ-ence: that is, as someone categoricallynot like the hosts. This can be done in variousidioms. Once in rural Urad in Inner Mongolia a guest arrived unannounced at thedwelling of a prominent man. He suddenly drove his car right up to the hosts dwelling,leaped out, and marched in with a loud greeting to another guest present (myself),without acknowledging the host with duly respectful demeanour. Further, he laterinvited me to go out with him to have a meal, thus ignoring the to-be-expectedhospitality of the master of the place. This transgressive behaviour could perhaps beexplained by the disturbance of the normal hospitality frame, occasioned both by the

presence of a foreigner (those Europeans with their casual ways) and by the fact thatthe hosts own social status was ambivalent.8 But whatever the cause, the transgressionhad the following consequences. When we after all were offered a meal by the host, theusual formal toasts with alcohol were pressed in extra-quick succession. Toasts in thisregion are usually directed to someone: the flowery words mean that person has todrink in this case, the rash guest. Everyone present felt the menace as the usualplatitudes turned into sharply turned couplets about the guests ethnicity (he was anAlasha Mongol) and soon became open,drunken insults about the execrable essentialnature of people from Alasha. In this public, consisting of some twenty people, includ-ing Buddhist lamas,the guest could do nothing but smile and drink, grimace and drink,finally returning the toasts with an offer to prostrate humbly before the host. Angrily,the host declared, no, he would prostrate to the guest. No, that is impossible, I must

bow to you. No, I offer to bow to you. With fury, No, I insist ...... This schismogeneticimpasse foundered in implacable stares, and the guest stumbled out. Once outside hewas fair game. Soon we found out that the host had sent his men to beat up the guest.

Ethnic essentialism is an effectiveform of alienationin Mongoliatoo,but ethnographysuggests that the imputation of some kind of occult power is just as prevalent in turningguests (or hosts: Hjer:) into alien beings. High writes that drunken guestsmight talk about matters that are considered highly inappropriate, suddenly mentiondeceased people, wolves, hunters who have not observed taboos, and so forth. Theyshouldnt talk like that, its bad. Maybe some bad things will happen to ourail, maybe awolf will come the next night, maybe someone will fall ill. A drunken mans talk can bedangerous(ayultai),saidoneman.Peoplewhoreally like todrinkareseenas notlike otherpeople; their status is not just a behavioural proclivity, and someone who has never beenseen drunk may be rumoured to be an arhichin(alcoholic) carrying the potential ofrevealing his true nature. This idea of hidden natures means that a family can never becertain what kind of guest they are hosting.Such people have a chtgr(evil soul) insidethem, said one person.That is why they are so dangerous for us. If we dont show themhospitalityandgivethemsomethingtodrink,youneverknowwhattheymightdo(High: ). Achtgris the unsatisfied, offended soul of someone who died a bad death(suicide, wrongly executed, died too young, etc.).

[H]erders contemplate the peculiar intentionality behind dangerous speech. Given the risks involved

in uninhibited speech, the speaker cannot be like all other drinkers. The motivation and willingness

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to invite harm are placed beyond local sociality and identified with spiritual forces that direct the

drinker as a mere bodily vessel. The transgressive behaviour ofarhichins, asserting selfish autonomyand ignorance of other existences, is not a product of greedy humans but rather of malevolent

invisibles (High : ).

In Highs ethnography, the host couple continue to go on giving to the insatiabledrinkers. Even when the husband fell ill of advanced liver disease and could drink nolonger, his wife kept up the show: as she became increasingly intoxicated, he grew moreagitated, angrily scolding his younger sons and physically punishing his contractlabourer. As he looked on morosely, the wife, to Highs surprise,seemed to enjoy thesevisits that appeared to become her new grounds for asserting status. She took muchpride in her ability to provide an amicable and joyous atmosphere that was inviting tovisitors despite the condition of her husband (: ). This crafted joyous atmo-sphere is just what I have been referring to as tone being the affect of an intense,idealized sociality that, as High comments, explains the presence of ghosts, for the

chtgrstrongly miss it in their longing to take part in the life of living people (:). Meanwhile, as High noted, there is also a quite common phenomenon of fakedrinking (hudlaa sogtuu), whereby guests pretend to be uncontrollably drunk. Theherders explained this as a way guests can surreptitiously keep ears open for the badwords the hosts might be muttering about them behind their backs, thinking they aretoo far gone to pay attention. High, however, observes that in the precarious situationof present-day Mongolia, where the steppes are roamed by alien predatory gold miners,anyoneis already a target of suspicion, and thus the fake drinking becomes a moral act:[I]t is only by pretending to be drunk like a herder that fears are suppressed and theguest emerges as anything but a stranger (High : -).

Conclusion

This article has suggested that analyses of hospitality should attend not only to con-ceptualizations and moral principles but also to the feelings generated by encounters.I have suggested that feelings may be difficult to define, but they are not impossible todescribe, because they are quite precisely attached to objects. The objects here are thecontent of the code of hospitality (respectful gestures, standardized speech, etc.) and itsramifying various developments, such as increasing frigidity towards the guest, oralternatively the warmth of song, or drunkenness.

Hospitality in Mongolia is inherently unstable, involving an opening of the I to theother, an alternating asymmetry in which either the host or the guest may become thehostage of the other. Its occult danger parallels the spatial and material vulnerability ofthe home, unmediated by anything except the protector-predator dog. Successful hos-pitality performance must create a holding pattern of typical acts that overrides theseconditions. Achieving measured co-ordination between such limited yet relationallyshifting elements has an effect and conveys affect. I have suggested that the initial stagesof hospitality create the tone of reassurance largely by eliminating all jarring intru-sions of actual passion, anger, poverty, disaster, and misery, not to speak of the actualtrouble and cost to the hosts. Here I should clarify one point. The participants inhospitality are detached in two related senses. They are dissociated from everyday illsand joys, at least while doing nothing other than enacting the code of hospitality,but they are also detached in the sense that the aesthetic relation to the hospitalityperformance itself creates distance. Even an act as simple as a host or guest sitting downin thegeris object-like and relational in a way that is produced by this detachment, and

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would not be true of sitting (sprawling, plumping down, etc.) at ordinary times. Inother words, we are dealing with an affective engagement (let us say with the aestheticsof propriety) that itself prompts distancing. Ngai has a telling observation when sheobserves that the affective distance which the aesthetic relation requires can itself onlybe reproduced affectively the more usual notion is detachmentfromfeeling; here wehave the idea of detachmentbyfeeling (: ).

Yet although, as this argument would suggest, a type of detachment is manifested incertain affects, that is not all there is to hospitality, nor indeed to the idea of tone.Subjectively felt emotions may colonize these concocted feelings, pushing, for example,serenity into shared joyousness or escalating anger. Since such personal emotions arenot always shared, they may come to be completely at odds with the affect of hospitabledrinking that provokes them, as was illustrated by the morose husband suppressing hisresentment while his wife cheerily hosted the boozy guests. As numerous writers haveemphasized, hospitality is bound to create such conjunctions of feelings. This is why

tone is such an apt concept in this context, since it addresses the murky elisions betweenthe semblance of feeling through the use of performed techniques and the ways inwhich such craftings are actually felt, as well as the changes in mood brought about byemotional interventions.

NOTES

1 Yosis the term for all normative customs in many different contexts, not the name for hospitality normsin particular.

2 Treating formally as a guest someone who feels he or she belongs to the household is experienced as a

hurtful insult.Jochirhoh, to behave as a guest, also means to stand on ceremony.3 This set of assumptions indicates that the norms of hospitality apply throughout society and are not

predicated on an aristocratic ideal. (For comparison with hospitality norms and class/wealth in Pakistan and

Afghanistan, see Lindholm ; Marsden .)4

Hgis also the word for a female animal coming into season, thus conveying a sense not only of rightnessbut also of receptiveness.

5 The host assumes responsibility for the guest. A member of the household should lift open the felt door

for the guest and should ask the children to tether the guests horse in such a way that it can graze. The host

is responsible also for the guests horse, and if by chance a wolf attacks it during the night, the host should

offer another good horse, saying euphemistically, The mountain god took your horse.6 The formal seasonal questions that I observed in the s and s are still standard today in rural

central Mongolia (High : ).7 I am grateful to Grgory Delaplace for this vignette from his fieldwork in Far West Mongolia.8 The host was at the same time a high lama and a state official, a dual persona that made it difficult to

decide how to behave towards him.

REFERENCES

Bateson, G. [].Naven. Stanford: University Press.Bawden, C.R. .Tales of an old lama(trans. with notes C.R. Bawden). Tring: The Institute of Buddhist

Studies.

Derrida, J. . Hostipitality. InActs of religion (trans. G. Anidjar), -. New York: Routledge. .On cosmopolitanism and forgiveness(trans. M. Dooley & R. Kearney). New York: Routledge.Dresch, P. . Mutual deception: totality, exchange, and Islam in the Middle East. In Marcel Mauss: a

centenary tribute(eds) W. James & N.J. Allen, -. New York: Berghahn.Geertz, C. .The interpretation of culture. New York: Basic Books.Gochoo, C. Le badarchi mongol (trans. S. Dars). tudes Mongoles, Cahier , -.High, M. . Dangerous fortunes: wealth and patriarchy in the Mongolian informal mining economy.

Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge.

Hjer, L. . Dangerous communications: enmity, suspense and integration in postsocialist Northern

Mongolia. Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge.

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Humphrey, C.. The host and the guest: one hundred rules of good behaviour in rural Mongolia.Journalof the Anglo-Mongolian Society, -.

J. Laidlaw .The archetypal actions of ritual. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Kozlov, P.K. []. Mongoliya i Kam: trekhletnee puteshestvie po Mongolii i Tibetu (- gg.)(Second edition). Moscow: Ogiz.Lattimore, O. .Mongol journeys. London: The Travel Book Club.Legrain, L.. Transmettre lamour du chant? Cris,eloquence et complaints dans une famille ordinaire de

Mongolie rurale.Terrain , -.Lindholm, C. .Generosity and jealousy: the Swat Pukhtun of Northern Pakistan. New York: Columbia

University Press.

Marsden, M. .Living Islam. Cambridge: University Press.Massumi, B. . The autonomy of affect.Cultural Critique , -..Parables for the virtual: movement, affect, sensation. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Ngai, S. .Ugly feelings. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Pitt-Rivers, J. . The stranger, the guest and the hostile host: introduction to the study of the laws of

hospitality. In Contributions to Mediterranean sociology: Mediterranean rural communities and social change(ed.) J.G. Peristiany, -. Paris: Mouton.

Shyrock, A. . Thinking about hospitality, with Derrida, Kant and the Balga Bedouin. Anthropos ,-.

Simukov, A.D..Trudy o Mongolii i dlya Mongolii, vol (eds) Y. Konagaya, S. Bayaraa & I. Lhagvasren.(Senri Ethnological Reports ). Osaka: State Museum of Ethnology.

Tomkins, S. .Exploring affect: the selected writings of Silvan S. Tomkins . Cambridge: University Press.

Caroline Humphrey has worked in Russia, Mongolia, Nepal, India, and Inner Mongolia (China). She is

Director of the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit at the University of Cambridge.

Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane,

Cambridge CB RF, UK. [email protected]

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