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Senses, Sociality and Salons: Medicinal Hospitality in a Chinese Hair-Dresser's Salon

McDonald, T; (2016) Senses, Sociality and Salons: Medicinal Hospitality in a Chinese Hair-Dresser's Salon. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology , 81 (2) pp. 189-213. 10.1080/00141844.2014.912247. Green open access

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Abstract

Recent calls for a revitalisation of the study of hospitality as central to anthropological theory have focussed on the material, affective, moral and cosmological aspects of hospitality. This paper argues that any such theory of hospitality should also afford consideration of how hosting practices can also be a form of medicinal experience, showing how in a Chinese hair salon these experiences ricochet into ideas of well-being by drawing on discourses and practices that are grounded in Traditional Chinese Medicine. This paper argues for an understanding of the dispersed and diffused nature of Chinese medicinal practices and concepts throughout society, while still taking into account the specificities and logics of the Chinese medical tradition. The concept of ?medicinal hospitality? helps to understand the social nature of these ostensibly medical treatments, and how they use the creation of distinct sensory experiences which are shared between groups of customers to generate social relations.

Type: Article
Title: Senses, Sociality and Salons: Medicinal Hospitality in a Chinese Hair-Dresser's Salon
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1080/00141844.2014.912247
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2014.912247
Language: English
Additional information: © 2014 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The moral rights of the named author(s) have been asserted. Permission is granted subject to the terms of the License under which the work was published. Please check the License conditions for the work which you wish to reuse. Full and appropriate attribution must be given. This permission does not cover any third party copyrighted material which may appear in the work requested.
UCL classification: UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > VP: International
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1430492
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