Collaborative Damage is an experimental ethnography of Chinese globalization that compares data from two frontlines of China's global intervention—sub-Saharan Africa and Inner/Central Asia. Based on their fieldwork on Chinese infrastructure and resource-extraction projects in Mozambique and Mongolia, Mikkel Bunkenborg, Morten Nielsen, and Morten Axel Pedersen provide new empirical insights into neocolonialism and Sinophobia in the Global South.

The core argument in Collaborative Damage is that the different participants studied in the globalization processes—local workers and cadres; Chinese managers and entrepreneurs; and the authors themselves, three Danish anthropologists—are intimately linked in paradoxical partnerships of mutual incomprehension. The authors call this "collaborative damage," which crucially refers not only to the misunderstandings and conflicts they observed in the field, but also to their own failure to agree about how to interpret the data. Via in-depth case studies and tragicomical tales of friendship, antagonism, irresolvable differences, and carefully maintained indifferences across disparate Sino-local worlds in Africa and Asia, Collaborative Damage tells a wide-ranging story of Chinese globalization in the twenty-first century.

Mikkel Bunkenborg is Associate Professor of China Studies at the University of Copenhagen.

Morten Nielsen is Research Professor at the National Museum of Denmark and Director of the Research Center for Social Urban Modeling. He is coeditor of The Composition of Anthropology.

Morten Axel Pedersen is Professor of Social Anthropology and Director of the Copenhagen Center for Social Data Science at the University of Copenhagen. He is the author of Not Quite Shamans.

Collaborative damage is a cracking book. In all its confusion and contrast, it may be much closer to the truth about the twenty-first-century Chinese empire than more disciplined mono-chromatic narratives.

Collaborative Damage provides a distinctive approach both to the study of a controversial global phenome- non and to the practice of ethnographic writing.

The book aptly captures the social dynamics characteristic of Chinese investment and the inherent contradictions of transnational capitalism.In short, this book contributes a reflexive, insightful and gripping account of the practices and effects of Chinese extraversion.

Miriam Driessen:

Engaging, candid, and at times amusing, Collaborative Damage makes an insightful as well as a delightful read.

Manduhai Buyandelger, MIT, author of Tragic Spirits:

Collaborative Damage is collaborative anthropology at its best! While bridging Mongolia, China, and Mozambique, three Danish anthropologists persevere through 'partnerships of mutual incomprehension.' They unfold an innovative methodology and a candid and inspiring ethnography of globalization. A must read.

Jason Sumich, University of Essex, author of The Middle Class in Mozambique:

Collaborative Damage is fascinating. Blending ethnography, methodology and theory, it analyzes the rise of the Peoples Republic of China as a global, imperial power by taking a hard look at infrastructural and resource extraction projects in Mongolia and Mozambique.

John Osburg, University of Rochester, author of Anxious Wealth:

Engaging and insightful, Collaborative Damage sheds light on seemingly familiar encounters—between workers and bosses, foreigners and locals—that resist politically simplistic readings and track the unintended consequences of Chinese global expansion.