The host-guest metaphor grants hosts moral authority to set rules for guests.

Evidence

The host/guest metaphor is a pernicious one, as Gullestad and others, including myself, have noted: ‘A host has the right to control the resources of the home, to decide on the rules of the visit, and, accordingly, to “put the foot down” when the guests do not conform. A guest, on his side has to be grateful for the hospitality received by not provoking the host by calling attention to his own difference from the host.’ Gullestad reminds us that when white Norwegians are constituted as hosts and Muslims as guests, the latter permanently extrinsic to the nation and foreign, a moral community is created. Hosts have the moral right to call the shots, an assumption pervading government policies and laws on forced marriages. They have, in other words, a moral basis to instruct and to determine the conditions of daily life, while guests are always in the position of respecting the morality of the household. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 283

Categorization

• XREF: The host/guest moral hierarchy parallels the master/host logic in hospitality theory (Derrida) and connects to the reader’s prior work on how power naturalizes itself through social roles.