Centering encounter as the main focus of the article, the authors examine how encounter is the very means by which categories such as transnational capitalism, space/place, and human-nonhuman relations emerge and exist. In this article, the term encounter refers to “everyday engagements across difference.” Ethnographies of encounter, then, focus on the cross-cultural, relational, and uneven dynamics of these processes and exchanges. Encounter is a way of thinking about the ways the “cultural” is made and remade everyday, moving away from earlier conceptualizations of culture as static and bounded. Ultimately, encounters highlight “how meanings, identities, objects, and subjectivities emerge through unequal relationships involving people and things that may at first glance be understood as distinct” (364). Similar to the work PECE does, and to what we’re doing in our VtP collaboration, the authors in this text argue encounter is a way of thinking through a shared set of questions that across different fields and even subdisciplines (365). This is similar to how we are attempting to theorize space/place, toxicity, etc.
