main points
- tsing begins the chapter by briefly glossing the "great
acceleration" framework, suggests that j-curves should be understood
through the "political economic" conditions that create them (data
regimes lol)
- wastlanding and securitization
- the upshot: tsing believes both sides of the cold war, and the
states that have inherited that history, were/are united in pursuit of
"the good life" via consumption
- her examples: growth of security state in us and brazil, fertilizers
and bombs, herbicides and agent orange, the green revolution
- underlying arg: domestic consumption and the idealized lifestyle of
the consumer is downstream of military tech
discussion questions
- what, for tsing, is the significance of military technology to the
creation of the "great acceleration"? does she have an account of the
origins of the MIC itself?
- tsing describes the two aglorithms being imported/forcibly instated
on the third world? who and what are the agents of this diffusion?
- how else might we articulate the "good life"? does tsing
convincingly demonstrate that the good life is not good?
- what is the relevance of tsings argument for area studies? are we
complicit in the two algorithms? how do we avoid reproducing their
assumptions?