ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a social anthropological view of hospitality. An opening section briefly considers the purpose and social function of hospitality and then offers some comparative historical and ethnographic material on the subject. Some preliminary comments are made about the social, ritual and cognitive structures within which acts of hospitality are carried out. A second section considers the importance to the practice of hospitality of food. This is illustrated and developed mainly from one ethnographic example, and the chapter ends by returning to more general themes of hospitality's structural organization.
