ABSTRACT
Hospitality is not a notion that is of obvious importance in a fi rst glance at international relations (IR) or international political theory and has never been a focus of foreign policy analysis (FPA). This is partly because it is a liminal concept, existing on the border between the ‘domestic’ and ‘international’ but disturbing the difference between the two. Yet, if we look more closely at the structure of IR theory, we can see that it is in fact fundamental.1 In his collection of essays, Inside/Outside, R. B. J. Walker looks at how IR theory came to be divided from political theory. In the ‘pre-modern’ period, he claims that the identity of Christian universalism in Europe predominated over the differences caused by state particularism. Sameness was given greater stress than difference. In the modern period, however, the opposite came to be the case as Christian identity gave way to state differences, ‘with difference here becoming a matter of absolute exclusions’.2 Universalism could, from then on, only be pursued within the state; the international arena was dominated by difference and particularlisms.
