Friction

“Friction refuses the lie that global power operates as a well-oiled machine” (6)

Tsing proposes a more constructive model for looking at global connections, one that is based on the metaphor of friction. This flexible model is informed by the “contingency of encounters,” negotiations of difference, and a dialogue between the polarities of the particular/local and the universal. Her point that global capitalism is not an all encompassing determinant but rather “operates in friction” (12), is an important thing to think about when resisting the temptation to relegate oneself to the absolute power of capitalism.

Tsing attempts to ground her analysis of global connection “not in abstract principles of power and knowledge, but rather in concrete engagements” (267). She accomplishes this by using ethnographic narratives of environmentalist struggles and collaborations; her story of the Indonesian village of Manggur, where native inhabitants, nature lovers, and environmental activists were able to collaboratively and successfully stop corporate deforestation, even as the three groups had different understandings of the forest’s history and people – is one example. Rather than trying to piece the stories together to form or find a unified truth, Tsing juxtaposes them in order to illustrate the ways different agents’ understandings and motivations engaged productively to accomplish a common goal; in other words, unity of vision was not the force these groups needed to accomplish their goal, but rather the productive interaction of their incompatibilities (friction).

She also asks us to re-think the local and global not as separate entities, but as things that act upon each other. A more productive understanding of the “universal” is not as a “self-fulfilling abstract truth” that can never live up to its promises, but as an aspiration or “unfinished achievement” that can engage with the local and travel across difference in order to mobilize social change. She says: “Actually existing universalisms are hybrid, transient, and involved in constant reformulation through dialogue” (9). I thought her discussion of traveling stories – how activist allegories, specific in their cultural context and universal in their representations of global solidarity, are co-opted, modified, and translated (or even avoided) by different cultures – was a great example of this.

Tsing’s model for understanding global connections is not only more useful, but more hopeful as well; the contingency of encounters short circuits the absolute power of any dominant cultural force, an equally important analytical as well as inspirational tool for researchers, activists, and others interested in positive social/political change.

~ by glycerine517 on October 31, 2007.