PAROLA D AUTORE | T1 Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing Friction. An Ethnography of Global Connections, Princeton University Press, 2005, pp. 2-6 An Ethnography of Global Connection Nel brano l antropologa statunitense Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing mostra come ogni luogo del pianeta sia plasmato dall attrito o frizione (friction) tra diverse forze globali. In particolare, l autrice racconta la devastazione delle foreste pluviali del Borneo a partire da un intricata trama di relazioni e incontri inaspettati tra multinazionali del legname, governi corrotti, giovani ambientalisti e attivisti locali. Something shocking began to happen in Indonesia s rainforests during the last decades of the twentieth century. Species diversities that had taken millions of years to assemble were cleared, burned, and sacrificed to erosion. The speed of landscape transformation took observers by surprise. No gradual expansion of human populations, needs, or markets could possibly explain it [ ]. Corporate growth seemed [ ] chaotic, inefficient and violent in destroying its own resources. Stranger yet, it seemed that ordinary people even those dependent on the forest for their livelihood were joining distant corporations in creating uninhabitable landscapes. Within Indonesia, this ugly situation came to stand for the dangers of imperialism and the misdeeds of a corrupt regime. Opposition to state and corporate destruction of forestpeople s livelihoods became a key plank of the emergent democratic movement of the 1980s and 1990s. An innovative politics developed linking city and countryside, bringing activists, students, and villagers into conversation across differences in perspective and experience. [ ] None of these questions can be addressed without an appreciation of global connections. Indonesian forests were not destroyed for local needs; their products were taken for the world. Environmental activism flourished only through the instigation and support of a global movement. [ ] A villager shows a North Ameri- can miner some gold; a Japanese model of trade is adopted for plywood; students banned from politics take up hiking; a minister is inspired by a United Nations conference on the environment: these narrowly conceived situations lay down tracks for future global developments. [ ] To address these challenges, this book develops [ ] methods to study the productive friction of global connections. [ ] I stress the importance of cross-cultural and long-distance encounters in forming everything we know as culture [ ]. Cultures are continually co-produced in the interactions I call friction : the awkward, unequal, unstable, and creative qualities of interconnection across difference. [ ] Speaking of friction is a reminder of the importance of interaction in defining movement, cultural form, and agency. [ ] Friction is required to keep global power in motion. [ ] Roads are a good image for conceptualizing how friction works: Roads create pathways that make motion easier and more efficient, but in doing so they limit where we go. Rispondi 1. L eggi attentamente l esempio iniziale relativo alle foreste pluviali in Indonesia. Che cosa vuole suggerire l autrice con questo esempio? 2. P ensa a un evento o a un episodio del mondo contemporaneo e prova a raccontarlo sottolineando connessioni, incontri e frizioni , secondo il modello dell esempio iniziale. | unit 3 | Pensare la contemporaneit | 121
