Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, 2005, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection.
Wadley, Reed L.
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, 2005, Friction: An Ethnography of Global
Connection. Princeton, N J: Princeton University Press, 321 pp.
Friction is at once an exploration of big ideas (such as
connectivity and the portability of universalisms) and a narrative of
environmental disaster in Indonesia (particularly South Kalimantan)
immediately before and after the fall of Suharto in 1998. Centered on
"friction"--"the awkward, unequal, unstable, and creative
qualities of interconnection across difference" (p. 4), Tsing
examines the intersection of universals (broadly conceived as
prosperity, knowledge, and freedom), globalization, and natural and
human-made environments. Although self-styled as an ethnography,
Tsing's account actually derives from snippets of short-term
fieldwork, other sorts of encounters (such as attending a meeting on
global environmental change), and news reports, "formed in discrete
patches" (p. x). Anyone thus expecting something along the lines of
a classic ethnography focused on the details of local-level social life
will be greatly disappointed, but that is not the aim of this study:
Those local-level details are obviously important here, as Tsing makes
clear, but must be "stretched" (p. 271) in order to pursue
larger issues of connectivity and the "friction"
produced--those "zones of awkward engagement" (p. xi).
Besides, Tsing herself admits that her own academic schedule and life
circumstances did not permit the kind of long-term fieldwork doctoral
students are freer to conduct (p. x, 273 n. 1). This would seem to
better justify the methodological emphasis on "ethnographic
fragments," rather than as some profound theoretical breakthrough
(p. 271).
In the first section of the book, on "prosperity," Tsing
considers the wide disparities produced by economic development,
ironically billed in nationalist discourse as the route to prosperity.
She focuses on the expansion of capitalist frontiers with a particular
eye on the development of road networks in South Kalimantan into the
Meratus Mountains and the subsequent influx of legal and illegal
extractive timber operations and labor migrants. (One thing that struck
me in this section was the singular lack of maps throughout the book,
which would be a real problem for those unfamiliar with the contours of
Kalimantan.) She touches on the rank corruption surrounding logging and
plantation development, the haze during 1997's El Nino, the
Maduran-Dayak violence of the late 1990s, and coal extraction (a highly
understudied subject despite its historical importance following the
arrival of Dutch steamers in the mid-1800s). She also addresses the
complex issue of scale in description and analysis, something
geographers and geographically minded anthropologists have been dealing
with for decades. Her primary attention here is on the bizarre story of
Bre-X mining company and the interconnections among nation-making
projects, corruption, and foreign investment (which she dubs
"franchise cronyism"). Her aim "is to show the
heterogeneity of capitalism at every moment in time" (p. 76) and
across spatial scales.
"Knowledge" is the theme of the second section, this time
under the premise that "[t]he play among multiple, contested
universals" produce one type of friction, upon which both
"knowledge of the globe" and "globally traveling
knowledge" are dependent (p. 87). Tsing again covers a wide range
of topics, including the Asia-Africa Conference of 1955, hosted by
Indonesia, that highlighted the "global dream space" of
science, modernization, and political sovereignty; the order-producing
classification of nature inherent in European scientific ideology; the
culturally specific claims about universals seen in John Muir's
environmental philosophy; the global-scale models in early climate
change research; the International Tropical Timber Organization's
futile attempts at sustainable forest management; indigenous ecological
knowledge; and occasionally contradictory but collaborative
relationships within environmental campaigns. A special focus of this
section is on the melding of moral/ethical piety, social justice, and
environmentalism in Indonesia, a combination that grew in strength in
the 1990s even before the fall of Suharto. Here she examines the
cosmopolitan claims of largely young, urban, educated Indonesian
"nature lovers" and how circulating knowledge becomes
localized. Though Tsing spends a good deal of time on this topic, her
treatment exposes the fundamental flaw in such "ethnography of
discrete patches:" It can be highly superficial and prone to miss
some essential factors, particularly revolving around a deeper
examination of social relationships. Such "ethnography"
generates an anthropological impressionism aimed at evoking feeling over
content, "meaning" over social contextualization.
That being said, Tsing's description of the intricate and
complex Meratus Dayak swidden system in Chapter 5--appropriately titled
"A History of Weediness"--is very nice, and she notes how the
highly social nature of its landscape has been misread continually by
developers and policy planners (p. 193). Those of us who have worked in
and researched similar systems will see many parallels here but will
also come away absolutely dumbfounded by her blanket and unsupportable
assertion that "[r]egrowing secondary forests ... have never
garnered sympathetic attention among either scholars or policy
makers" (p. 189). Nowhere does she cite the many scientists, even
anthropologists, who have for decades studied swidden systems and their
fallow forests--sympathetically. Her sole reference to such (in another
chapter) is to Conklin's Hanunoo Agriculture.
The third section concerns "freedom" and builds on the
contrast between the repression of Suharto's regime and the rampant
near-anarchy of the reform period immediately after Suharto's fall
from power. Tsing deals with Indonesian nationalism promoted through the
environmental movement, its use of the Suharto-era courts, and the
growth of "indigenous rights" campaigns and its problematic
translation within Indonesia. Movement and mobility, of people and
ideas, is especially emphasized throughout this section, and Tsing
explores how stories travel and translate across the globe, such as the
allegorical use of Chico Mendes (the Brazilian labor rights activist)
and Chipko (the environmental movement of Indian villagers to protect
trees from being logged) by Indonesian environmentalists. From this, she
moves on to critiquing the capitalist/acquisitionist strategy of the
Nature Conservancy and the largely successful collaborations surrounding
efforts to protect forest in the Meratus Mountains during the late
1980s, despite fundamental differences in actual aims and perspectives.
Despite the interesting stories she weaves together on topics of
considerable environmental and social significance, Tsing's
motivation to be "a hair in the flour" (p. 206)--that is, to
"speak truth to power" or to be a fly in the ointment--is
unfortunately and severely undermined by her own writing style (which
has nonetheless become clearer and considerably less dense than in her
first book, In the Realm of the Diamond Queen). Coming from the
humanities end of the American anthropological continuum, her
"evocation" and clever literary turns-of-phrase will simply
put off most of those who need to read of these things--foresters,
ecologists, policy-makers, and the like. (I would argue that the usual
culprit of postmodernism is not the main issue here.) The scholars
chosen by the publisher to write back cover blurbs--Goenawan Mohamad (an
Indonesian literary figure), Mary Steedly, and Ann Laura Stoler (both
American anthropologists largely on the same end of the continuum as
Tsing)--underscore the intended audience: one that does not need such
hairs in its flour, is already converted to such lines of argument, and
is quite comfortable with Tsing's writing style.
My prediction for this book is that it will become, like Diamond
Queen, widely cited (if not thoroughly read) within particular brands of
cultural anthropology and environmental studies that emphasize political
things (e.g., political ecology). There has already been a special
session at the American Anthropological Association (AAA) devoted to it.
Over the next few years, like James Scott's "resistance"
and "legibility," it will launch a spate of writing using
"friction" and her other neologisms; one will not be able to
attend the annual meeting of the AAA without bumping into numerous
presentations about it. But will it become the hair in the flour that it
should be? I fear not (Reed L. Wadley, Department of Anthropology,
University of Missouri-Columbia, USA).