AnSo Colloquium:

Please note that Dr. Anna Tsing's talk on Thursday, February 23, has been changed to 12:30 pm and will be held in AnSo 207.

Dr. Anna Tsing (Professor, Anthropology, University of California)

"Contingent Commodities:  Making Forest Labor in South Kalimantan, Indonesia, and the U.S. Pacific Northwest"

February 23 (Thursday) 12:30 pm - 2:00 pm, AnSo 207

How are people and nature made into labor and resources? This puzzle forces us beyond myths of market forces to the concrete histories through which commodities are formed. Forest labor is a particular challenge because it is  not obvious that people will want to work in the forest. Contingent histories become visible here; romance and violence loom as large as supply and demand. This talk compares two wildly different situations in which forest labor must be mobilized.

The nascent logging industry of the 1970s in South Kalimantan, Indonesia, tried to create a disciplined labor force from forest dwellers used to making their own livings without management. In the account of one logging company, management efforts required a faux-colonial performance of instruction. In contrast, contemporary U.S. Pacific Northwest forest labor escapes more disciplined forms into the heady entrepreneurship of "wild" Gold Rush stories. The two situations have a common anchor in the heterogeneous management possibilities of Japan-centered globalization; they show us the diverse terrain of culture and coercion that is becoming central to supply-chain capitalism in the twenty-first century.