9.5 CONCLUSION

We live in inhospitable times, with Europe becoming more closed than ever to ‘strangers' and those in need. It therefore seems an appropriate moment to reflect on the deep, and often dark, history of hospitality, to expose the normative assumptions and institutional processes that generate asymmetrical relationships and to consider the ways in which multiple inclusions can generate multiple exclusions.

This chapter does not intend to offer an exhaustive overview or comprehen­sive genealogy of the concept of hospitality in the Western tradition, but to offer a thin slice from the sixteenth century to highlight the tensions and contradictions that have characterised the history of this concept. Hospitality is also an interesting test case for signposting future directions in global intellec­tual history since it is, by its definition, a dynamic concept: multidimensional, contextually contingent, and providing a framework for physical movement between places and metaphysical movement between positions of power. As such, it tests the boundaries of contextual determinism, translation, and the politics of knowledge, going beyond discourses of hybridity to bring into focus the continuous dynamics of movement and power. As globalisation discourses continue to monopolise public and academic debates, the history of hospitality offers a resource for analysing the ways in which transcultural interactions have been managed and how global communities have been imagined, and to reflect upon how unequal distributions have been legitimated and become normative.