Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
Biographic Data
| ID | 96174 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing |
| GIVEN NAMES | Anna Lowenhaupt |
| FAMILY NAME | Tsing |
| SIGNATURE | TSING A L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Santa Cruz |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0411-959X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 89 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4050 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 85 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1983 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 25 |
Anna Tsing
Ruined Landscapes, Sweaty Bodies
This photo essay examines the ecological, social, and existential transformations wrought by sand mining in Sorong, Papua, where the relentless demand for concrete has reshaped both landscapes and human lives. Sand mining, driven by the forces of industrialisation and colonial legacy, fuels the growth of cities built on ecological ruin. Through the intertwined stories of settler miners and indigenous Papuans, the essay reveals how mining reduces …
Possession/Dispossession
Property (in its currently most powerful form) is made through the violence of dispossession. Property-making requires the transformation of landscape; prior residents, both human and nonhuman, are no longer welcome. This process is particularly clear in 'frontiers', that is, places where property is in formation through the displacement of Indigenous peoples and ecologies. This article takes up wetland drainage and mining for concrete aggregate …
Friction
Attunement
To nurture and protect even small fragments of liveability, we must get to know the lives of others, human and nonhuman. The Anthropocene collates projects of erasure, and we forget that we need companions. What might it take to bring us back into remembrance? I use the word ‘attunement’ in this essay to refer to attempts to get to know, through alignment, how others express themselves in the world. I'm particularly interested in forms of alignme…
Invasion Blowback and Other Tales of the Anthropocene
How shall we tell stories of the nonhuman living beings that join us humans in making the Anthropocene? Such beings are not just tools of human manipulation; they make their own histories. In this discussion of the articles of this Special Issue, Recalling Species Invasion, the features that make good Anthropocene storytelling come into view. The protagonists are humble, inconspicuous being, but each is reachable through vernacular human observat…
Réponse commune des autrices de Gens
1. Quelle a été l’impulsion initiale à la rédaction du Manifeste Gens ? Pourriez-vous nous dire ce qui vous a attirées dans le format « manifeste » ? Gens est né d’un constat que nous partagions toutes : il existait un nombre important de travaux théoriques en anthropologie sur le capitalisme n’étant pas reconnus ou cités en tant que tels. Au lieu de cela, les apports anthropologiques sur le capitalisme se cantonnaient au statut d’exemples ou d’i…
Gens
Ce manifeste féministe propose une nouvelle approche pour étudier le capitalisme en se concentrant sur la notion de « gens ». Les auteures, Laura Bear, Karen Ho, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing et Sylvia Yanagisako, argumentent que l'analyse traditionnelle du capitalisme, souvent axée sur les structures et les systèmes, néglige les relations interpersonnelles et les dynamiques de pouvoir qui façonnent les expériences vécues. Elles introduisent le concept d…
In the Realm of the Diamond Queen
History as grounds for interdisciplinarity
International audience
Vers une théorie de la non-scalabilité
Peut-on changer d'échelle sans changer de nature ? Sans doute quantité de phénomènes sont altérés quand on étend leur domaine d'exercice : il y a plus qu'une différence de taille entre un jardin de quelques mètres carrés et un alignement de serres sur plusieurs hectares. La modernité coloniale s'est distinguée par cette sorte de foi en la « scalabilité » de la production. Son modèle est la plantation esclavagiste : un système fondé sur l'exploita…
O antropoceno mais que humano
Este ensaio expõe alguns dos insights sobre o Antropoceno que obtive no projeto Atlas Feral, um trabalho colaborativo que agrega mais de uma centena de cientistas, acadêmicos, artistas e escritores, de origens variadas, que trazem narrativas baseadas em suas experiências mais íntimas com a terra antropogênica. O Atlas Feral conta as aventuras dos colaboradores não-humanos do Antropoceno. Nossos sujeitos são seres vivos e não-vivos que, ao se emar…
Indigenous Voice
The global indigenous movement is alive with promising contradictions. This chapter examines the task of laying out a historically concrete history of divergent indigeneities. In Indonesia, the phrase used as an equivalent for “indigenous peoples” is masyarakat adat. However, the effective translation of the transnational indigenous movement goes beyond the problem of words. The meaning of the phrase “indigenous peoples,” in its local translation…
Sztuki uważności
Aktualnie prowadzi transdyscyplinarny program bada nad antropocenem
Feral Atlas
Feral Atlas invites you to explore the ecological worlds created when nonhuman entities become tangled up with human infrastructure projects. Seventy-nine field reports from scientists, humanists, and artists show you how to recognize â feralâ ecologies, that is, ecologies that have been encouraged by human-built infrastructures, but which have developed and spread beyond human control
On Nonscalability
Because computers zoom across magnifications, it is easy to conclude that both knowledge and things exist by nature in precision-nested scales. The technical term is “scalable,” the ability to expand without distorting the framework. But it takes hard work to make knowledge and things scalable, and this article shows that ignoring nonscalable effects is a bad idea. People stumbled on scalable projects through the same historical contingencies tha…
Patchy Anthropocene
The Anthropocene deserves spatial as well as temporal analysis. "Patchy Anthropocene" is a conceptual tool for noticing landscape structure, with special attention to what we call "modular simplifications" and "feral proliferations." This introduction suggests guidelines for thinking structurally about more-than-human social relations; "structure" here emerges from phenomenological attunements to specific multispecies histories, rather than being…
“Riding the Horse of Gaps”
horse of gaps, friend
A multispecies ontological turn
This is a “peacemaking” chapter at the confrontational edges of ontological and multispecies anthropologies, respectively. Rather than fight out (or make high theory from) the differences between these approaches, the chapter shows how it is possible to use both together. Annemarie Mol’s practice-based ontologies are a particular aid in this. For this purpose, however, practitioners must open themselves to multiple, cosmopolitan ontologies among …
Using Natural History in the Study of Industrial Ruins
As industrial processes leave much of the planet in ruins, novel encounters are emerging. To study weedy succession in a former brown coal mining area in Denmark, as part of the Aarhus University Research on the Anthropocene (AURA) project, the authors undertake field observations over time and propose renewed attention to natural history. In this paper, the authors follow mycorrhizal fungi and trees as a conjuncture of natural and social histori…
Feral Dynamics of Post-Industrial Ruin
How Things Hold
This article experiments with combining three concepts— coordination, assemblage, diagram—to make vivid the composition of a satoyama forest in central Japan. The forest comes to life as a more-than-human assemblage that emerges through coordinations established by evolutionary and historical accommodations to life cycles, seasonal rhythms, and activity patterns. These coordinations are expressed through a diagram of intersecting temporalities of…
Getting by in terrifying times
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Paisagens Arruinadas (e a delicada arte de coletar cogumelos)
Neste artigo as trajetórias conjuntas de seres humanos, paisagens impactadas por distintas atividades antrópicas e cogumelos propõem um debate sobre a relação humana com o espaço "natural". Em quatro exemplos oriundos do hemisfério norte, tendo como principal vetor relacional a coleta econômica de mastutake, cogumelos silvestres que não podem ser cultivados, questionam e colocam em perspectiva os conceitos cartesianos tradicionais de natureza e c…
Résurgence holocénique contre plantation anthropocénique
La « soutenabilité » est le rêve de transmettre une terre habitable aux générations futures, humaines et non-humaines. Cet article soutient qu'une soutenabilité digne de ce nom exige la résurgence d'un modèle multi-espèces, en résistance aux tendances de la colonisation capitaliste qui transforme tout en plantations de monoculture. Pour affronter les défis de l'Anthropocène, nous devons faire davantage attention aux socialités qui se trament entr…
The Mushroom at the End of the World
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing's "The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins" explores the surprising resilience of life in the face of capitalist destruction. Focusing on the matsutake mushroom, a prized delicacy that thrives in disturbed landscapes, Tsing traces its global commodity chain from Oregon's clear-cut forests to Tokyo's upscale restaurants. Through this lens, she examines the precarious livelihoods of…
The Global Situation
Friction
A wheel turns because of its encounter with the surface of the road; spinning in the air it goes nowhere. Rubbing two sticks together produces heat and light; one stick alone is just a stick. In both cases, it is friction that produces movement, action, effect. Challenging the widespread view that globalization invariably signifies a "clash" of cultures, anthropologist Anna Tsing here develops friction in its place as a metaphor for the diverse a…
Unruly Edges
Human nature is an interspecies relationship. In this essay, Haraway's concept of companion species takes us beyond familiar companions to the rich ecological diversity without which humans cannot survive. Following fungi, we forage in the last ten thousand years of human disturbance history with feminist multispecies company. Cereals domesticate humans. Plantations give us the subspecies we call race. The home cordons off inter- and intra-specie…
Supply Chains and the Human Condition
This article theorizes supply chain capitalism as a model for understanding both the continent-crossing scale and the constitutive diversity of contemporary global capitalism. In contrast with theories of growing capitalist homogeneity, the analysis points to the structural role of difference in the mobilization of capital, labor, and resources. Here labor mobilization in supply chains is the focus, as it depends on the performance of gender, eth…
Anthropologists Are Talking - About the Anthropocene
Love it or hate it, the Anthropocene is emerging as an inescapable word for (and of) the current moment. Popularized by Eugene Stoermer and Paul Crutzen, Anthropocene names an age in which human in
Inside the Economy of Appearances
Research Article| January 01 2000 Inside the Economy of Appearances Anna Tsing Anna Tsing Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Public Culture (2000) 12 (1): 115–144. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-12-1-115 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Anna Tsing; Inside the Economy of Appearances. Public Culture 1 January 2000; 12 (1): 115–144. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-12-1-115 Downl…
Patchy Anthropocene
The Anthropocene deserves spatial as well as temporal analysis. "Patchy Anthropocene" is a conceptual tool for noticing landscape structure, with special attention to what we call "modular simplifications" and "feral proliferations." This introduction suggests guidelines for thinking structurally about more-than-human social relations; "structure" here emerges from phenomenological attunements to specific multispecies histories, rather than being…
Representing communities
Recent years have witnessed the emergence of a loosely woven transnational movement, based particularly on advocacy by nongovernmental organizations working with local groups and communities, on the one hand, and national and transnational organizations, on the other, to build and extend new versions of environmental and social advocacy that link social justice and environmental management agendas. One of the most significant developments has bee…
Sorting out commodities
Far from being a self-enclosed system, capitalism is unable to create most of the skills, relations, and resources it needs to function. Capitalist accumulation depends on converting stuff created in varied ways, including photosynthesis and animal metabolism, into capitalist commodities. Capitalist commodities thus come into value by using-and obviating-non-capitalist social relations, human and non-human. How is this done? This article shows th…
Dialectical Anthropology
This article explores the relationship between labor unions and labor precarity in Bangladesh's garment industry.After a string of high-profile factory disasters-including the 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory building-Bangladeshi labor unions have played a central role in new global initiatives to improve factory safety.These initiatives have provided an opportunity for unions to influence the governance of labor standards in a con…
The Intersections of Biological Diversity and Cultural Diversity
There is an emerging recognition that the diversity of life comprises both biological and cultural diversity.In the past, however, it has been common to make divisions between nature and culture, arising partly out of a desire to control nature.The range of interconnections between biological and cultural diversity are reflected in the growing variety of environmental sub-disciplines that have emerged.In this article, we present ideas from a numb…
A new form of collaboration in cultural anthropology
Experiments in collaboration open new investigative possibilities for cultural anthropologists. In this report, we use our research on matsutake mushrooms to show the promise of collaborative experiments for ethnographers of scale making, global connection, and human-nonhuman relations. Anna Tsing introduces. Mogu Mogu (Timothy Choy and Shiho Satsuka) argue that the mushroomic figure of mycorrhizal life illuminates workings of capital and power, …
From the Margins
Feral Atlas
Feral Atlas invites you to explore the ecological worlds created when nonhuman entities become tangled up with human infrastructure projects. Seventy-nine field reports from scientists, humanists, and artists show you how to recognize â feralâ ecologies, that is, ecologies that have been encouraged by human-built infrastructures, but which have developed and spread beyond human control
The Multispecies Salon
A new approach to writing culture has arrived: multispecies ethnography. Plants, animals, fungi, and microbes appear alongside humans in this singular book about natural and cultural history. Anthropologists have collaborated with artists and biological scientists to illuminate how diverse organisms are entangled in political, economic, and cultural systems. Contributions from influential writers and scholars, such as Dorion Sagan, Karen Barad, D…
Less Than One But More Than Many
How might one responsibly review a field just coming into being-such as that provoked by the term Anthropocene? In this article, we argue for two strategies. First, working from the premise that the Anthropocene field is best understood within its emergence, we review conferences rather than publications. In conference performances, we glimpse the themes and tensions of a field-to-come. Second, we interpret Anthropocene as a science-fiction conce…
Anthropologists Are Talking - About Capitalism, Ecology, and Apocalypse
Capitalist enterprise is transforming the world, reshaping the registers of what Felix Guattari (2000) has called the three ecologies: namely those of the environment, of social relations, and of h
Fantasizing the Feminine in Indonesia
And she the eldest daughter!... life could have been good, waiting for her turn to buy, for so many sarongs and headcloths woven with gold or silver thread and weighed on the scales, a man she liked; waiting to bear children, preferably female children!Listening to the roaring waters, the tall rustling trees, and half an hour after midnight the crackle of blazing torches, and the sound of men's voices coming through the dark, as they climbed down…
Strathern beyond the Human
How might Strathernian comparison extend anthropology beyond human exceptionalism? This essay explores how a fungal spore might guide attention to more-than-human nature. The exercise allows us to reflect on knowledge tools we use for understanding human as well as nonhuman social relations
Earth Stalked by Man
To take the concept of the Anthropocene seriously requires engagement with global history. But what 'global' shall this be? In honour of the work of Marilyn Strathern, this essay explores that planetary Anthropocene composed of fragments that do not fit together at all, and yet necessarily do. At the centre of my concerns are the awkward relations between what one might call 'machines of replication' - those simplified ecologies, such as plantati…
Schools of Thought
Schools of Thought brings together a cast of prominent scholars to assess, with unprecedented breadth and vigor, the intellectual revolution over the past quarter century in the social sciences. This collection of twenty essays stems from a 1997 conference that celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Institute for Advanced Study's School of Social Science. The authors, who represent a wide range of disciplines, are all associated with the …
In the Realm of the Diamond Queen
In this highly original and much-anticipated ethnography, Anna Tsing challenges not only anthropologists and feminists but all those who study culture to reconsider some of their dearest assumptions. By choosing to locate her study among Meratus Dayaks, a marginal and marginalized group in the deep rainforest of South Kalimantan, Indonesia, Tsing deliberately sets into motion the familiar and stubborn urban fantasies of self and other. Unusual en…
Margens Indomáveis
Neste artigo, Anna Tsing explora os cogumelos matsutake como "espécies companheiras", destacando sua capacidade de prosperar em paisagens perturbadas pela ação humana. Ela argumenta que a atenção aos matsutake e suas relações ecológicas oferece uma lente para compreender a colaboração multiespécie e a construção de mundos em ruínas. Ao traçar as jornadas transnacionais dos matsutake, desde as florestas do Oregon até os mercados japoneses, Tsing e…
Words in Motion
On the premise that words have the power to make worlds, each essay in this book follows a word as it travels around the globe and across time. Scholars from five disciplines address thirteen societies to highlight the social and political life of words in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. The approach is consciously experimental, in that rigorously tracking specific words in specific settings freq…
Feminism and Kinship Theory
Healing boundaries in south Kalimantan
The Woman in the Body
Uncertain Terms
Uncertain Terms
Journal Article Uncertain Terms: Negotiating Gender in American Culture. Ed. by Paye Ginsburg and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing. (Boston: Beacon, 1990. viii + 338 pp. Cloth, $24.95, ISBN 0-8070-4612-4. Paper, $16.00, ISBN 0-8070-7915-4.) Get access Kathy Peiss Kathy Peiss University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 80, Issue 2, September 1…
In the Realm of the Diamond Queen
In this highly original and much-anticipated ethnography, Anna Tsing challenges not only anthropologists and feminists but all those who study culture to reconsider some of their dearest assumptions. By choosing to locate her study among Meratus Dayaks, a marginal and marginalized group in the deep rainforest of South Kalimantan, Indonesia, Tsing deliberately sets into motion the familiar and stubborn urban fantasies of self and other. Unusual en…
In the Realm of the Diamond Queen
PrefaceOpening: In the Realm of the Diamond Queen3Pt. 1Politics of the Periphery391Marginal Fictions512Government Headhunters723Family Planning104Pt. 2A Science of Travel1214Leadership Landscapes1275Conditions of Living1546On the Boundary of the Skin178Pt. 3Riding the Horse of Gaps2077Alien Romance2138Riding, Writing2309The History of the World253Reprise285Notes303References Cited311Index335
From the Margins
From Allegories of Identity to Sites of Dialogue
Diaspora 4:2 1995 From Allegories of Identity to Sites of Dialogue Paulla Ebron Stanford University Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing University of California, Santa Cruz In the last decade, a set of impassioned debates on race and representation have made minority writing an important national political arena. At the heart of the issue is the right to speak and to be heard in US American politics: Whose voices will be counted as "the American public"? In th…
Rich Forests, Poor People
In the Realm of the Diamond Queen
Alien Romance
Fantasizing the Feminine in Indonesia
And she the eldest daughter!... life could have been good, waiting for her turn to buy, for so many sarongs and headcloths woven with gold or silver thread and weighed on the scales, a man she liked; waiting to bear children, preferably female children!Listening to the roaring waters, the tall rustling trees, and half an hour after midnight the crackle of blazing torches, and the sound of men's voices coming through the dark, as they climbed down…
Representing communities
Recent years have witnessed the emergence of a loosely woven transnational movement, based particularly on advocacy by nongovernmental organizations working with local groups and communities, on the one hand, and national and transnational organizations, on the other, to build and extend new versions of environmental and social advocacy that link social justice and environmental management agendas. One of the most significant developments has bee…
The Global Situation
Inside the Economy of Appearances
Research Article| January 01 2000 Inside the Economy of Appearances Anna Tsing Anna Tsing Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Public Culture (2000) 12 (1): 115–144. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-12-1-115 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Anna Tsing; Inside the Economy of Appearances. Public Culture 1 January 2000; 12 (1): 115–144. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-12-1-115 Downl…
Schools of Thought
Schools of Thought brings together a cast of prominent scholars to assess, with unprecedented breadth and vigor, the intellectual revolution over the past quarter century in the social sciences. This collection of twenty essays stems from a 1997 conference that celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Institute for Advanced Study's School of Social Science. The authors, who represent a wide range of disciplines, are all associated with the …
Nature in the Global South
It is late morning a century in the future.You are between flights and striding toward a grandly built edifice, the Museum of Human Welfare.The renowned museum, its wings forming a huge compass rose, sits on the site of a former prison in Port Blair, green capital of the Andaman Islands, a favorite stopover on the Kamchatka to Capetown shuttle.Unlike other museums, the Museum of Human Welfare displays no objects; instead, its halls are filled wit…
Cultivating the Wild
Nature in the Global South
Culture and the Question of Rights
Woodpecker's tap-tapOn the honey tree.I'm drunk with singing, But I shan't let go. Lower down the python's tailLet it to the ground Come down laughing ladiesAs we shower you with gold.-Meratus Dayak honey hunter's songIn the dark of night, in the forested Meratus Mountains of southeast Kalimantan, a young man crawls out along the branch of a tree known as ''Where He Fell'' to reach a honeycomb.Suspended high above the forest while excited men, wo…
Communities and Conservation
The distinguished environmentalists in this collection offer an in-depth analysis and call to advocacy for community-based natural resource management (CBNRM). Their overview of this transnational movement reveals important links between environmental management and social justice agendas for sustainable use of resources by local communities. In this volume, leaders who have been instrumental in creating and shaping CBNRM describe their model pro…
Friction
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…
Communities and conservation
1 Introduction 2 Part 1: Mobilizations and Models 3 A. Institutional Mandates 4 Chapter 1: Dances Around the Fire: Conservation Organizations and Community-Based Natural Resource Management 5 Chapter 2: Participatory Democracy in Natural Resource Management: A Columbus' Egg? 6 Chapter 3: Building Models of Community-Based Natural Resource Management: A Personal Narrative 7 B. Defining Community in National and Transnational Contexts 8 Chapter 4: …
Friction
A wheel turns because of its encounter with the surface of the road; spinning in the air it goes nowhere. Rubbing two sticks together produces heat and light; one stick alone is just a stick. In both cases, it is friction that produces movement, action, effect. Challenging the widespread view that globalization invariably signifies a "clash" of cultures, anthropologist Anna Tsing here develops friction in its place as a metaphor for the diverse a…
Sociology (41 works) · History (25 works) · Political science (25 works) · Philosophy (24 works) · Biology (23 works) · Art (22 works) · History (20 works) · Geography (19 works) · Archaeology (18 works) · Computer Science (18 works)