Challenges to Ethnographic Research  pt2          1800w

By carefully deconstructing universals like that of global environmentalism Tsing is balancing her authority and her carefully (de)constructed universals. This no doubt comes from the rich background literature she cites in the back of the book which includes ideas on universals from Hegel to Judith Butler. In her footnotes to her introduction Tsing (2005) states that: “One must learn to generalize from one instance to another, to see an underlying or emergent principle of commonality across apparent difference. The principle must tie both instances not just to each other but to a radically open field that could at least potentially cover all other instances” (2005:274 n. 8). Following this line of thought it is easy to see the appeal of universals, as they claim to encompass the particularities of life in all of their varieties. This technique has been used by many people with different goals including political activism, universals used for political activism are considered engaged universals. In footnote 14, Tsing discusses two similar perspectives of engaged universals, Judith Butler’s linguistic metaphor on universality which stresses the role of translation, and Ernesto Laclau’s discussion of the role of contingency in how universals can foster political activism and thus create social change(2005:274–275 n. 14). Both of these ideas need to be considered carefully in the methods of autoethnography, especially the role of contingency. Historically contingency helps the universal come to life across disparate particular realities, without it political activists cannot turn particular complaints into a community universal (Tsing 2005:275 n. 14). This is how Tsing’s book culminates, after laying out the history of, logging, resource exploitation, and corruption she recounts a meeting at which a group of activists who had drawn upon the recent history (that which was outlined by Tsing) to connect the issues of logging to issues of environmentalism and ultimately to the people of the Meratus Mountains. Despite speaking to a di