“Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection”

By: Anna Tsing

Anna Tsing weaves a narrative about globalization, and the ways this concept shape and influence environment. Her main argument revolves around the idea that we do not have global environmental problems because you can’t have the global without the local. What seems like a semantic argument is actually an important distinction: though “global” may encompass an inherent local, the local is in fact the salient aspect. Tsing continues by describing how the different local communities overlap and create the larger “global” terminology that we are familiar with, yet we address and are affected in disproportionate ways by these local communities. The result of this overlap is described using the word “friction”. Tsing uses the metaphor of roads to compare how friction works by describing how they simultaneously facilitate motion and transformation, while inherently limiting variation from the predetermined path. Similarly, friction both restricts and facilitates interconnection in the global arena. I agree with Tsing in her interpretation of these frictional interactions as being “messy” and I think that becoming more comfortable to unpacking that messiness and discomfort is a key part of positive “glocal” interactions. Clashing cultures and the way different groups misunderstand the stories of the other can be significant factors in exacerbated environmental problems, and Tsing’s focus on local communities and the nature of frictional interactions is a strong starting model for addressing this issue.