Friction - by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Co-Winner of the Senior Book Prize, American Ethnological Society
What the struggle over the Indonesian rainforests can teach us about the social frictions that shape the world around us

Rubbing two sticks together produces heat and light while one stick alone is just a stick. It is the friction that produces movement, action, and effect. Anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing challenges the widespread view that globalization invariably signifies a clash of cultures, developing friction as a metaphor for the diverse and conflicting social interactions that make up our contemporary world. Focusing on the social drama of the Indonesian rainforests in the 1980s and 1990s, she shows how a host of competing interests--from environmentalists and North American investors to advocates for Brazilian rubber tappers, international funding agencies, and village elders--are drawn into unpredictable, messy misunderstandings, but misunderstandings that sometimes work out. Now with a new preface by the author, Friction provides an invaluable portfolio of methods for the study of global interconnections.

Review Quotes

"Friction is an original, nuanced, and elegant work of ethnography and a significant contribution to the areas of globalization; environment and natural resource wars; the politics of indigenous peoples, NGOs, and development; and the sociology of expert versus local knowledge."---Michael Goldman, American Journal of Sociology

"By providing generous anecdotes and personal reflections amidst more complex, insightful political commentary and social theory, [Tsing] achieves a writing style that is both pleasurable and informative."---Laura L. B. Graham, Environment and Planning

About the Author

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing is professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her books include The Mushroom at the End of the World and In the Realm of the Diamond Queen (both Princeton).