Working definition. Hospitality is the art of receiving difference while taking responsibility for the space of encounter.
Inherited meaning
Across cultures, hospitality regulates the threshold between host and stranger. It combines welcome with boundaries, generosity with obligation, and openness with the recognition that power is unevenly distributed between the one who controls a space and the one entering it.
Meaning in the imagination economy
Systems trained on existing patterns tend to make the unfamiliar legible by pulling it toward the familiar. Hospitality offers another design principle: create room for voices, aesthetics, and ways of knowing that do not immediately conform to the dominant model of value.
What changes in practice
Invite participation before categories are fixed. Explain the rules of the space, provide more than one way to contribute, and let newcomers alter the environment rather than merely enter it.