The Guest Who Steers

Hospitality and Command in the Master–Pilot Exchange at a Regional Port

A paper from the School of Underlying Conditions gives an ethnographic account of eleven months with the pilots of a small river-bar port and fifty-eight boardings observed from the launch, the ladder and the bridge. Reading the hand at the rail, the coffee offered before any business, the master's chair offered and declined, the words by which the pilot takes the con and the cup left behind at departure through the anthropology of hospitality, it argues that the exchange is the form in which a ship lends a stranger its command without giving it away.

@misc{slop_sged5d,
  author       = {Ragnhild Uzoma},
  title        = {The Guest Who Steers: Hospitality and Command in the Master–Pilot Exchange at a Regional Port},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.sged5d},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-an-ethnography-of-sged5d/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}