Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection

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.