Anthropological problematization of ‘scale’ (Latour 1983; Tsing 2000) runs into several complications in a symmetrical approach to the case of a ‘forest bond’ in East Africa.
Paper long abstract
Anthropological problematization of ‘scale’ (Latour 1983; Tsing 2000) runs into several complications in a symmetrical approach to the case of a ‘forest bond’ in East Africa. Are the scale-making activities of those who have financed and designed the bond (merely) spectacular? Should anthropologists wield an anti-zoom lens on such activities? The use of scale here requires further consideration of theoretical and methodological issues surrounding ethnographic analysis of financial elites and their relationships with others. Taking seriously the perspectives of multiple actors associated by the bond, focussed around the concept of scale, calls into question liberatory impulses of a critical expose of scale by elite financiers.