AO: Tsing describes a two model binary that distinguishes the kinds of collaborations amongst anthropologists: “big science” model and intimate authorship arrangements. She notes that under “big science” model, collaboration is both a means and a goal. Through collaboration, differences among researchers can be absorbed into the whole; ideally, the research object that emerges should have the multidimen- sionality of the collaborators’ separate forms of expertise without taking up the jarring gaps across them that might interrupt its object status. On the other hand, the other model is of intimate co-authorship which requires a labor of emotional intimacy, entailing close hours and long years of negotiation and great care over procedural matters where no a priori standards set the frame.
AO: Tsing uses the following binaries to describe the Matsutake Group’s work: between humans - non-humans, between making knowledge and social practice, and both within and beyond the academy (383).
AO: Leverages STS discourse about the interplay of situated and traveling forms of knowledge and value.
AO: Authors are worried about how the prevalent model splits research contribution into fractions such that every collaborator dilutes the pool and they are interested in changing institutional structures such that acknowledges that every contributor reformulates the research, adding exponentially to its contribution (380).
AO: This 2009 co-authored article offers a “research in progress” report by the different authors seeking to bring about conversation about how social cultural anthropology (dis)incentivizes collaboration. The analysts are especially strong in their nano and meta analyses, highlighting how their notion of collaboration differs from other works they have reviewed (they hold that collaboration should enable multivocality as a productive outcome of collaborations with each other whereas most other works aims towards consensus. However, notably, while they are very reflective on their research processes and experiments, they do not mention the data and technical infrastructures that undergird their collaboration.
AO: After reading Griffin and Hayler (2018) (after this paper), I also noted that despite the collective's egalitarian intentions, Anna Tsing seems to have become more well-known for the group’s work, raising questions about the evenness in distribution of the group's collaborative efforts. Griffin and Hayler note that collaborators within an endeavor can become marginalized through the denigration of certain kinds of expertise, since “power structures both within and beyond the immediate interactions can lead to the work of one or more collaborators being reduced or going uncredited, and to the detriment of their institutional and subject standing” (15). This is an important nuance and distinct from the point that many have made about the institutional disincentives to collaborate (which favor individual publications and outputs), highlighting the differential stakes and gains from a collaborative formation.