Comments on: Summer Reading Circle VI: Friction http://savageminds.org/2006/07/10/summer-reading-circle-vi-friction/ Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog Thu, 24 May 2012 01:47:51 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog » Reading circle: let’s do Friction http://savageminds.org/2006/07/10/summer-reading-circle-vi-friction/comment-page-1/#comment-45215 Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog » Reading circle: let’s do Friction Fri, 29 Dec 2006 22:50:53 +0000 http://savageminds.org/2006/07/10/summer-reading-circle-vi-friction/#comment-45215 [...] Summer Reading Circle VI: Friction [...] [...] Summer Reading Circle VI: Friction [...]

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]]> By: Kerim http://savageminds.org/2006/07/10/summer-reading-circle-vi-friction/comment-page-1/#comment-12636 Kerim Tue, 11 Jul 2006 13:07:41 +0000 http://savageminds.org/2006/07/10/summer-reading-circle-vi-friction/#comment-12636 Well, I finally finished the book, and since comments go on the most recent post, I'll put mine here. Much of this book is about discourse. How do various groups talk about nature? Even sections that are supposedly about activism or political economy essentially reduce those phenomenon to discourse. Only in Chapter 5 are we treated to an account of lived nature which can be held up against these discourses. That is why I liked Chatper 5 so much - and yet I found it odd that Tsing felt it necessary to apologize for this chapter, and even cajole us into reading it carefully. In fact, this was the chapter were I was least inclined to skim! Tsing seems to have a strange view of her audience. It reminds me of something I read by Stephen King, who commented that people love reading about "work." They love knowing all the details about how people work, no matter how boring. Yet Tsing seems to feel that such workman like details put off readers who are presumably enthralled with her rhetorical flourishes. My experience was quite the opposite. Discourse is also very closely bound up with what Tsing ends up meaning by "scale." At times I was quite intrigued by how she traces particular discourses as they flow from one local context to another via the global. But I was simultaneously frustrated by her refusal to engage in any kind of comparative endeavor which would shed light on how differently these discourses function in different contexts. To put it in Foucauldian terms: I don't just want genealogy, I also want archaeology! There is a rich complexity in the discourses of religion, politics, and science - but these are glossed as glibly as movie reviews in TV guide. I don't expect Tsing to offer us a theory of state power which could offer a comparative basis for understanding how various discourses function at each "scale" - or even in different locations at the same scale. However, I do wish she had given us a richer interpretive account of how these discourses function. "Dark Rays" offers a model of what such an archaeology might look like, but it is unfortunately the exception, rather than the rule, for how discourse is treated in this book. Well, I finally finished the book, and since comments go on the most recent post, I’ll put mine here.

Much of this book is about discourse. How do various groups talk about nature? Even sections that are supposedly about activism or political economy essentially reduce those phenomenon to discourse. Only in Chapter 5 are we treated to an account of lived nature which can be held up against these discourses. That is why I liked Chatper 5 so much – and yet I found it odd that Tsing felt it necessary to apologize for this chapter, and even cajole us into reading it carefully. In fact, this was the chapter were I was least inclined to skim!

Tsing seems to have a strange view of her audience. It reminds me of something I read by Stephen King, who commented that people love reading about “work.” They love knowing all the details about how people work, no matter how boring. Yet Tsing seems to feel that such workman like details put off readers who are presumably enthralled with her rhetorical flourishes. My experience was quite the opposite.

Discourse is also very closely bound up with what Tsing ends up meaning by “scale.” At times I was quite intrigued by how she traces particular discourses as they flow from one local context to another via the global. But I was simultaneously frustrated by her refusal to engage in any kind of comparative endeavor which would shed light on how differently these discourses function in different contexts. To put it in Foucauldian terms: I don’t just want genealogy, I also want archaeology!

There is a rich complexity in the discourses of religion, politics, and science – but these are glossed as glibly as movie reviews in TV guide. I don’t expect Tsing to offer us a theory of state power which could offer a comparative basis for understanding how various discourses function at each “scale” – or even in different locations at the same scale. However, I do wish she had given us a richer interpretive account of how these discourses function. “Dark Rays” offers a model of what such an archaeology might look like, but it is unfortunately the exception, rather than the rule, for how discourse is treated in this book.

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]]> By: John McCreery http://savageminds.org/2006/07/10/summer-reading-circle-vi-friction/comment-page-1/#comment-12463 John McCreery Tue, 11 Jul 2006 00:15:47 +0000 http://savageminds.org/2006/07/10/summer-reading-circle-vi-friction/#comment-12463 As someone who knows neither Indonesian nor Dayak but who knows Three Asian languages (Hokkien, Mandarin, Japanese) in which "earth" meaning soil and "Earth" meaning the planet are linked but distinct terms (each is a two-character compound and one character appears in both), I wonder about Tsing's leap from Uma Adang's "we must make a list of all the contents of this earth, this island Borneo" to..."moving back and forth between 'the island( and 'the earth'--the minutely local and the whole globe." To me,"this earth, this island Borneo" suggests "this soil, this island Borneo" and not "this planet, this island Borneo," which would mean that Tsing has misread her data or mistated her case using a pleasant sounding but misleading Shakespearian turn of phrase. As someone who knows neither Indonesian nor Dayak but who knows Three Asian languages (Hokkien, Mandarin, Japanese) in which “earth” meaning soil and “Earth” meaning the planet are linked but distinct terms (each is a two-character compound and one character appears in both), I wonder about Tsing’s leap from Uma Adang’s “we must make a list of all the contents of this earth, this island Borneo” to…”moving back and forth between ‘the island( and ‘the earth’–the minutely local and the whole globe.” To me,”this earth, this island Borneo” suggests “this soil, this island Borneo” and not “this planet, this island Borneo,” which would mean that Tsing has misread her data or mistated her case using a pleasant sounding but misleading Shakespearian turn of phrase.

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