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Kantelingen #4
The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins
Matsutake is the most valuable mushroom in the world--and a weed that grows in human-disturbed forests across the northern hemisphere. Through its ability to nurture trees, matsutake helps forests to grow in daunting places. It is also an edible delicacy in Japan, where it sometimes commands astronomical prices. In all its contradictions, matsutake offers insights into areas far beyond just mushrooms and addresses a crucial question: what manages to live in the ruins we have made?
A tale of diversity within our damaged landscapes, The Mushroom at the End of the World follows one of the strangest commodity chains of our times to explore the unexpected corners of capitalism. Here, we witness the varied and peculiar worlds of matsutake commerce: the worlds of Japanese gourmets, capitalist traders, Hmong jungle fighters, industrial forests, Yi Chinese goat herders, Finnish nature guides, and more. These companions also lead us into fungal ecologies and forest histories to better understand the promise of cohabitation in a time of massive human destruction.
By investigating one of the world's most sought-after fungi, The Mushroom at the End of the World presents an original examination into the relation between capitalist destruction and collaborative survival within multispecies landscapes, the prerequisite for continuing life on earth.
A tale of diversity within our damaged landscapes, The Mushroom at the End of the World follows one of the strangest commodity chains of our times to explore the unexpected corners of capitalism. Here, we witness the varied and peculiar worlds of matsutake commerce: the worlds of Japanese gourmets, capitalist traders, Hmong jungle fighters, industrial forests, Yi Chinese goat herders, Finnish nature guides, and more. These companions also lead us into fungal ecologies and forest histories to better understand the promise of cohabitation in a time of massive human destruction.
By investigating one of the world's most sought-after fungi, The Mushroom at the End of the World presents an original examination into the relation between capitalist destruction and collaborative survival within multispecies landscapes, the prerequisite for continuing life on earth.
331 pages, Hardcover
First published September 29, 2015
About the author
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
21 books368 followersAnna Lowenhaupt Tsing is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an Out-of-the-Way Place and coeditor of Uncertain Terms: Negotiating Gender in American Culture.
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February 6, 2016
Coulda been great: it's an experiment that failed, or, maybe, never needed to be taken in the first place.
At its most fundamental, Tsing's book is an ethnography of those people involved in the trade of the matsutake mushroom. Valued in Japan, the mushroom has become scarce there; now there are attempts to bring it back to the archipelago at the same time it is being harvested in Finland, Russia, and the Pacific Northwest--where much of the book is centered--and where the work is done by an unexpected coterie of whiter American military vets and various refugees from South American countries.
For my money, the pure ethnographic parts are often the best part of the book. She anatomizes the social structure of Oregon collecting communities; she identifies what motivates the collectors--freedom, though this word means different things to different groups, largely dependent upon their culture's historical interaction with the Vietnam War. She looks at the Japanese importers, and how they sort the incoming mushrooms not only according to grade and place of origin, but also how they will fit into the complex gift-giving culture of their society. And she looks at the intermediaries, who anonymize the mushrooms, turning them from fetish to alienated project, before they are returned, again, to a gift economy.
Capitalism's presence haunts the narrative--and it, along with the subtitle, is what initially attracted me to the book, Tsing's narrative didn't offer me what I wanted, exactly, but it had its pleasures.
I was looking for a more considered, deeper, look at the various inherent fractures in world capitalism, and people and things that prosper there. I'm thinking of coyotes and ravens and people who parasitize on capitalism without becoming a part of it. Tsing stays focused on the mushroom; and her people are never outside of capitalism. They form a part of what she calls pericapitalism--but is still part of the system.
The book itself is fragmented, and divided into--for an academic book--short chapters that do not follow narratively. To review it, I'll reconstruct some of the story in a more logical sequence.
She argues that in the wake of World War II, Japan modernized by innovating in supply chains: the islands did not have enough resources, and so the Japanese learned how t extract resources from other countries via intermediaries, which, happily, left them free from any criticism: they had plausible deniability. This system allowed them to catch up to the US during the post-War period, and put a scare in the world's largest economy.
Until the U.S. learned the trick in the 1990s, and began creating its own supply chains, outsourcing work to other countries and other companies, washing its hand of having to deal with labor at all or create an educated labor force. This leads to extreme economic inequality in the States as well as precariousness: the "good job" that the Baby Boomers knew are increasingly rare. Meanwhile, the Japanese, having strip-mined their own country and much of Southeast Asia, settled into an extended depression followed by stagnation. In light of these events, Americans rewrote their own history, not as a borrowing of Japanese techniques but as the obvious evolution of capitalism.
The mushroom intersects in this story in two ways. First, it was initially the product of peasant forests in Japan: it requires a certain amount of disturbance, the harvesting of broadleaf trees that allow the growth of pines, with which it is symbiotic. But the Japanese stopped harvesting their own forests. Meanwhile, there were other patches across the world where previously industrialized forests were being given up, allowing for the growth of mushrooms. Oregon was one of those places. Tsing notes that environmentalists were blamed for the decline of the timber industry, but really it was the company's exporting the jobs. Now, the recuperating forests lead to mushrooms. (The story is slightly different in Finland.)
The pickers who work these patchy areas are exemplars of pericapitalism, making their way in a newly precarious world. Capitalism, Tsing notes, is always scanning the globe for new resources to exploit--to alienate from its place int he world and from the workers that help to create it: the neat and tidy structure that is capitalism has messy roots, just as the strong, tall pines grow from a network of roots and interdependent fungi.
All this is fine, good, interesting--fascinating, even--and could have been laid out in a standard monograph very well. Tsing wants to experiment. And I cannot blame her for that. Experimentation is good, especially in academic writing. And that accounts for one of the stars here.
But all the razzle-dazzzle bouncing back and forth amounts to . . . not much.
But worse still is her writing is not up to the burden she is placing on the structure. One imagines what a David Foster Wallace or Terry Tempest Williams could do with the same material, and this book just seems too pedantic, too academic, despite the structural changes. Princeton also does a nice job with the images, and Tsing adds--in the manner of her friend and colleague Donna Haraway--oblique captions, but the book is still not as beautiful as those put out by the University of Chicago Press. (Compare The Last Dinosaur Book, more than a decade older, and still light years ahead in design and structure.)
Tsing is working to make her prose supple, but it reads like an academic trying too hard. The metaphoric language piles up into an irresolvable jumble. From page 109: "Shouldn't [matsutake] offer only the view from a frog in a well? On the contrary: the modest success of the Oregon-to-Japan matsutake commodity chain is the tip of an iceberg, and following the iceberg to its underwater girth brings up forgotten stories that still grip the planet." From frogs in the well to stories gripping the planet view chains, icebergs, and the forgotten. Its hard to get a sense of ehat is meant here, even if all the words make sense.
There is also the horrible tendency of the book to keep interpreting itself. This tic is less easy to demonstrate through quotations, but Tsing recurs repeatedly to questioning what she herself means by a particular term as an excuse to go off on a tangent that is supposed to explain what comes next. For a book that is experimental and fragmented, this one is very afraid that the reader will not get the points.
All of which is a pity, because the points are good, worthy, and interesting. Tsing is very smart, and has done an amazing amount of research across a wide range of fields. For the reader willing to rebuild her narrative into something straightforward, it is enlightening. But it can be off-putting, show-offy for the sake of being on display.
A lot of this same material was covered, also in a somewhat unconventional structure, many years ago, in Evan Eisenberg's much neglected "Ecology of Eden." His "Earth Jazz" is very reminiscent of what Tsing writes.
At its most fundamental, Tsing's book is an ethnography of those people involved in the trade of the matsutake mushroom. Valued in Japan, the mushroom has become scarce there; now there are attempts to bring it back to the archipelago at the same time it is being harvested in Finland, Russia, and the Pacific Northwest--where much of the book is centered--and where the work is done by an unexpected coterie of whiter American military vets and various refugees from South American countries.
For my money, the pure ethnographic parts are often the best part of the book. She anatomizes the social structure of Oregon collecting communities; she identifies what motivates the collectors--freedom, though this word means different things to different groups, largely dependent upon their culture's historical interaction with the Vietnam War. She looks at the Japanese importers, and how they sort the incoming mushrooms not only according to grade and place of origin, but also how they will fit into the complex gift-giving culture of their society. And she looks at the intermediaries, who anonymize the mushrooms, turning them from fetish to alienated project, before they are returned, again, to a gift economy.
Capitalism's presence haunts the narrative--and it, along with the subtitle, is what initially attracted me to the book, Tsing's narrative didn't offer me what I wanted, exactly, but it had its pleasures.
I was looking for a more considered, deeper, look at the various inherent fractures in world capitalism, and people and things that prosper there. I'm thinking of coyotes and ravens and people who parasitize on capitalism without becoming a part of it. Tsing stays focused on the mushroom; and her people are never outside of capitalism. They form a part of what she calls pericapitalism--but is still part of the system.
The book itself is fragmented, and divided into--for an academic book--short chapters that do not follow narratively. To review it, I'll reconstruct some of the story in a more logical sequence.
She argues that in the wake of World War II, Japan modernized by innovating in supply chains: the islands did not have enough resources, and so the Japanese learned how t extract resources from other countries via intermediaries, which, happily, left them free from any criticism: they had plausible deniability. This system allowed them to catch up to the US during the post-War period, and put a scare in the world's largest economy.
Until the U.S. learned the trick in the 1990s, and began creating its own supply chains, outsourcing work to other countries and other companies, washing its hand of having to deal with labor at all or create an educated labor force. This leads to extreme economic inequality in the States as well as precariousness: the "good job" that the Baby Boomers knew are increasingly rare. Meanwhile, the Japanese, having strip-mined their own country and much of Southeast Asia, settled into an extended depression followed by stagnation. In light of these events, Americans rewrote their own history, not as a borrowing of Japanese techniques but as the obvious evolution of capitalism.
The mushroom intersects in this story in two ways. First, it was initially the product of peasant forests in Japan: it requires a certain amount of disturbance, the harvesting of broadleaf trees that allow the growth of pines, with which it is symbiotic. But the Japanese stopped harvesting their own forests. Meanwhile, there were other patches across the world where previously industrialized forests were being given up, allowing for the growth of mushrooms. Oregon was one of those places. Tsing notes that environmentalists were blamed for the decline of the timber industry, but really it was the company's exporting the jobs. Now, the recuperating forests lead to mushrooms. (The story is slightly different in Finland.)
The pickers who work these patchy areas are exemplars of pericapitalism, making their way in a newly precarious world. Capitalism, Tsing notes, is always scanning the globe for new resources to exploit--to alienate from its place int he world and from the workers that help to create it: the neat and tidy structure that is capitalism has messy roots, just as the strong, tall pines grow from a network of roots and interdependent fungi.
All this is fine, good, interesting--fascinating, even--and could have been laid out in a standard monograph very well. Tsing wants to experiment. And I cannot blame her for that. Experimentation is good, especially in academic writing. And that accounts for one of the stars here.
But all the razzle-dazzzle bouncing back and forth amounts to . . . not much.
But worse still is her writing is not up to the burden she is placing on the structure. One imagines what a David Foster Wallace or Terry Tempest Williams could do with the same material, and this book just seems too pedantic, too academic, despite the structural changes. Princeton also does a nice job with the images, and Tsing adds--in the manner of her friend and colleague Donna Haraway--oblique captions, but the book is still not as beautiful as those put out by the University of Chicago Press. (Compare The Last Dinosaur Book, more than a decade older, and still light years ahead in design and structure.)
Tsing is working to make her prose supple, but it reads like an academic trying too hard. The metaphoric language piles up into an irresolvable jumble. From page 109: "Shouldn't [matsutake] offer only the view from a frog in a well? On the contrary: the modest success of the Oregon-to-Japan matsutake commodity chain is the tip of an iceberg, and following the iceberg to its underwater girth brings up forgotten stories that still grip the planet." From frogs in the well to stories gripping the planet view chains, icebergs, and the forgotten. Its hard to get a sense of ehat is meant here, even if all the words make sense.
There is also the horrible tendency of the book to keep interpreting itself. This tic is less easy to demonstrate through quotations, but Tsing recurs repeatedly to questioning what she herself means by a particular term as an excuse to go off on a tangent that is supposed to explain what comes next. For a book that is experimental and fragmented, this one is very afraid that the reader will not get the points.
All of which is a pity, because the points are good, worthy, and interesting. Tsing is very smart, and has done an amazing amount of research across a wide range of fields. For the reader willing to rebuild her narrative into something straightforward, it is enlightening. But it can be off-putting, show-offy for the sake of being on display.
A lot of this same material was covered, also in a somewhat unconventional structure, many years ago, in Evan Eisenberg's much neglected "Ecology of Eden." His "Earth Jazz" is very reminiscent of what Tsing writes.
December 18, 2021
Do you ever have one of those evenings where you're listening in on a really erudite, engaging conversation? A conversation among smart people where everyone is totally into the subject, and in discussing it bring each other to all kinds of new insights and connections among widely disparate things?
Have you ever overhead that kind of conversation and thought to yourself, "Wow. That sounds like a really interesting set of people. Talking to each other in a really animated way about something that seems to matter a lot to them. And. I. Just. Can't. Be. Bothered. To. Care.?"
That's this book.
Now I loves me some anthropologists. And I loves me some mushrooms. And I loves me some books about all kinds of random crap. And lord knows I can totally get into the post-modern thing of using the subject of the work to shape the narrative form. So one would think that I would love a book by an anthropologist, about mushrooms, using something called "Actor Network Theory" (who knew there was a theory Bayliss Camp didn't always already know and have an opinion about?).
One would think so. And one would, sadly, be wrong.
Maybe it was the jump-cuts between subjects, leaving some chapters of only 2-3 pages in length. Maybe it was the strategic use of the subjunctive voice (maybe). Maybe it was the resolute refusal to make an argument straightforwardly, instead asking questions (defs among the top five of my narrative pet peeves), proffering possibilities (maybe matsutake can give us the answer to all of life's burning questions. Maybe. Or maybe it’s just a goddamn metaphor), suggesting alternatives (it's not capitalism, it's something else! It's a gift, and capitalism! At the same time! Like two sides of the same coin! Like the coin you use to buy the gift, to give your client, to protect your rent for the coming year, or maybe to extract the resource, but in any case to taste the freedom of the market, to....and...oh wait. What was the metaphor again? I forget), and always, always, hiding behind the attributions. Who said what, when? And where did that conversation occur? Whose perspective are we adopting? Are we in Yunnan? Or Finland? Or Japan? No, Oregon, definitely Oregon. Until the next chapter.
Christ it makes me tired just thinking about it. This would have been so much better as a a longish article just about the Open Ticket camp in Roseburg (or wherever), without the Icarian flights of fancy. Lay the spool of thread through the labyrinth to lead us to the dark heart of the decadent nostalgia of late capitalism. That's all we want. It's not pretty, and it's not delicious. But it is insightful. Maybe. If I could ever get a handle on why the hell I was supposed to care.
Have you ever overhead that kind of conversation and thought to yourself, "Wow. That sounds like a really interesting set of people. Talking to each other in a really animated way about something that seems to matter a lot to them. And. I. Just. Can't. Be. Bothered. To. Care.?"
That's this book.
Now I loves me some anthropologists. And I loves me some mushrooms. And I loves me some books about all kinds of random crap. And lord knows I can totally get into the post-modern thing of using the subject of the work to shape the narrative form. So one would think that I would love a book by an anthropologist, about mushrooms, using something called "Actor Network Theory" (who knew there was a theory Bayliss Camp didn't always already know and have an opinion about?).
One would think so. And one would, sadly, be wrong.
Maybe it was the jump-cuts between subjects, leaving some chapters of only 2-3 pages in length. Maybe it was the strategic use of the subjunctive voice (maybe). Maybe it was the resolute refusal to make an argument straightforwardly, instead asking questions (defs among the top five of my narrative pet peeves), proffering possibilities (maybe matsutake can give us the answer to all of life's burning questions. Maybe. Or maybe it’s just a goddamn metaphor), suggesting alternatives (it's not capitalism, it's something else! It's a gift, and capitalism! At the same time! Like two sides of the same coin! Like the coin you use to buy the gift, to give your client, to protect your rent for the coming year, or maybe to extract the resource, but in any case to taste the freedom of the market, to....and...oh wait. What was the metaphor again? I forget), and always, always, hiding behind the attributions. Who said what, when? And where did that conversation occur? Whose perspective are we adopting? Are we in Yunnan? Or Finland? Or Japan? No, Oregon, definitely Oregon. Until the next chapter.
Christ it makes me tired just thinking about it. This would have been so much better as a a longish article just about the Open Ticket camp in Roseburg (or wherever), without the Icarian flights of fancy. Lay the spool of thread through the labyrinth to lead us to the dark heart of the decadent nostalgia of late capitalism. That's all we want. It's not pretty, and it's not delicious. But it is insightful. Maybe. If I could ever get a handle on why the hell I was supposed to care.
August 22, 2021
This book is hot garbage. It’s one of the worst and most pointless books I’ve ever read.
Tsing, an anthropologist, has attempted to write about some ill-defined phase of post-capitalism while apparently knowing next to nothing about capitalism. “Salvage capitalism,” as she tries to use that term, turns out to be just . . . capitalism.
Again and again, Tsing writes tautologically about the most basic and banal capitalist subjects as if she is Captain Cook discovering Hawaii.
This book seems to be the result of someone functionally illiterate in economics who lives on a tenured state salary and has her assistants handle messy details like, say, buying tickets to Japan and China on Kayak. Tsing is blown away by the most basic market activities, like, for example, a market between pickers of mushrooms and mushroom buyers. These very basic forms of markets seem new and amazing to Tsing, who appears to have never participated in any kind of market. Want to blow Tsing’s mind? take her to the Chicago Commodities Exchange for fifteen minutes. Prices change quickly! People reach agreement on prices, for things, which are commodities!
After some desultory and fruitless attempts to explain what is meant by “salvage capitalism,” the book simply wanders off, into irrelevant and pointless digressions about trees, about Finnish forest management, about fungal DNA, about soil, and all sorts of other topics outside the realm of Tsing’s training or expertise, but about which she feels perfectly comfortable boring us, assuming we’ll find her random Wikipedia- and random lunch-meeting-powered musings delightful and charming. They’re not. They’re deadly boring and dispiriting as the reader becomes more and more despondent, hoping against hope that at some point Tsing will cut the muddle-headed bullshit and try to explain what her point is. (Spoiler: she doesn’t.)
And what is her point? Something about matsutake mushrooms, which are a popular luxury item in Japan and Korea, and which cannot be farm grown, but are picked in the wild in different places, usually in forests that have, at some point, been “disturbed” by human intervention. Something about “slowing down,” and “using our senses.” (Perhaps some Zen-manual writer had a service mark on “Mindfulness.”) Something about “precarity” now that “progress is over”; something about “assemblages,” which is apparently everything and nothing. Everything connects, guys!
The entire project is misbegotten. How is examining the picking economy for luxury mushrooms at all helpful in understanding “the possibility of life in capitalist ruins”? (Spoiler: it’s not.) If we’re going to discuss “salvage capitalism,” wouldn’t it make more sense to focus on, say, child laborers trying to extract metals and minerals from discarded cell phones and laptops?
The project seems to be about the promise of interdisciplinarity, but ends up being a great exhibit for the case that people should stay in their lanes. People with no training in and little understanding of economics should probably not presume to write a meandering, digressive, and self-indulgent mess that purports to describe a fundamental paradigm shift in an economic model. It doesn’t work. This book doesn’t work. The fact that it’s received so many accolades and glowing reviews is good evidence that there’s a lot of shoddy work being done in the social sciences and humanities, especially where work is not peer reviewed or held to any standards or real criticism, as appears to have been the case here.
Tsing, an anthropologist, has attempted to write about some ill-defined phase of post-capitalism while apparently knowing next to nothing about capitalism. “Salvage capitalism,” as she tries to use that term, turns out to be just . . . capitalism.
Again and again, Tsing writes tautologically about the most basic and banal capitalist subjects as if she is Captain Cook discovering Hawaii.
This book seems to be the result of someone functionally illiterate in economics who lives on a tenured state salary and has her assistants handle messy details like, say, buying tickets to Japan and China on Kayak. Tsing is blown away by the most basic market activities, like, for example, a market between pickers of mushrooms and mushroom buyers. These very basic forms of markets seem new and amazing to Tsing, who appears to have never participated in any kind of market. Want to blow Tsing’s mind? take her to the Chicago Commodities Exchange for fifteen minutes. Prices change quickly! People reach agreement on prices, for things, which are commodities!
After some desultory and fruitless attempts to explain what is meant by “salvage capitalism,” the book simply wanders off, into irrelevant and pointless digressions about trees, about Finnish forest management, about fungal DNA, about soil, and all sorts of other topics outside the realm of Tsing’s training or expertise, but about which she feels perfectly comfortable boring us, assuming we’ll find her random Wikipedia- and random lunch-meeting-powered musings delightful and charming. They’re not. They’re deadly boring and dispiriting as the reader becomes more and more despondent, hoping against hope that at some point Tsing will cut the muddle-headed bullshit and try to explain what her point is. (Spoiler: she doesn’t.)
And what is her point? Something about matsutake mushrooms, which are a popular luxury item in Japan and Korea, and which cannot be farm grown, but are picked in the wild in different places, usually in forests that have, at some point, been “disturbed” by human intervention. Something about “slowing down,” and “using our senses.” (Perhaps some Zen-manual writer had a service mark on “Mindfulness.”) Something about “precarity” now that “progress is over”; something about “assemblages,” which is apparently everything and nothing. Everything connects, guys!
The entire project is misbegotten. How is examining the picking economy for luxury mushrooms at all helpful in understanding “the possibility of life in capitalist ruins”? (Spoiler: it’s not.) If we’re going to discuss “salvage capitalism,” wouldn’t it make more sense to focus on, say, child laborers trying to extract metals and minerals from discarded cell phones and laptops?
The project seems to be about the promise of interdisciplinarity, but ends up being a great exhibit for the case that people should stay in their lanes. People with no training in and little understanding of economics should probably not presume to write a meandering, digressive, and self-indulgent mess that purports to describe a fundamental paradigm shift in an economic model. It doesn’t work. This book doesn’t work. The fact that it’s received so many accolades and glowing reviews is good evidence that there’s a lot of shoddy work being done in the social sciences and humanities, especially where work is not peer reviewed or held to any standards or real criticism, as appears to have been the case here.
November 9, 2022
Disappointingly light on the whole physical market or supply chain of the mushroom from the title, this is foremost a critique on capitalism that tries to weave too many disparate threads together with neologisms
I expected something akin to Elizabeth Kolbert her way of writing in Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future - non-fiction based on travel, observation of local phenomena, giving a voice to people, and finding a common theme and narrative from that.
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing however does something completely different in this book, which made me think a bit of the approach taken in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, but then less well rendered.
Introducing loosely defined concepts like contaminated diversity, pericapitalism and whole lectures on the importance of precarious survival, the factual parts of the book about the matsutake mushroom and people who operate in its harvest, trade or consumption are nearly completely obscured. At time the insights and parallels drawn are interesting enough, at other times they feel like the shallow, semi-intellectual observation you might hear from intelligent but overly pretentious people at a cocktail party.
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing is in general skeptical of the concept of progress, and manages to show that the rare mushroom of the title is not something that grows natural in abundance, but is dependent on humans. The mushroom only grew more prevalent due to the loss of broadleaf trees, and a rise in faster growing red pines in Tokugawa Japan, due to the economy of the country growing under the aegis of the Shogun.
The autumn aroma of the matsutake is much praised, called an olfactory mirror to sakura viewings in spring.
Unfortunately very little of the book is really about the mushroom of the title, a critique on capitalism might have been a better title, with the mushroom in small subtitle below it. I think some appreciation to the benefits of capitalism must be given, now one critiques Walmart (fairly) for pressuring suppliers but that we as consumers have more choice and better prices is something that needs to be acknowledged.
Southeast Asians picking Matsutake mushrooms in Oregon for Japanese clients is interesting, but none of them really gets a voice or face in the narrative The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins presents.
Price developments meanwhile are rather sketchy, between 2004 and 2008 apparently swinging between $2 and $60 per pound of mushrooms.
Mushroom picking as an alternative way of life, outside of wage work seems to me a rather romantic picture to sketch, I doubt that many of the mushroom pickers would not rather have been part of mainstream US economy if possible.
All kinds of side effects from human intervention are clear, as is the tragic of the commons, in the transformation of non-market, communal fungi to hot market assets.
Still the book is surprisingly light on the whole market and supply chain of the mushroom from the title as compared to a academic post-capitalism critique. Sure there are some chapters on the balance between fire and preservation and renewal, but the whole praise for non-scaleable as a characteristic, humans not able to replicate the growing conditions of the fungi, feels rather bolted on just to support the narrative the author tries to paint.
The proliferation of terms, like "Salvage capitalism" which is basically just capitalism, maybe excluding the most purpose led, values driven ESG focussed firms, but even that is doubtful, makes this book quite hard to get through. Also the praise sung for an auction, empowering the pluckers of mushrooms feels distinctly off, how is the mechanism any different from any market functioning?
Overall I am quite disappointed by this book; I learned little of the mushroom of the title, and the people involved in the harvest or buying hardly get a face compared to the concepts the author tries to push upon the reader.
I expected something akin to Elizabeth Kolbert her way of writing in Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future - non-fiction based on travel, observation of local phenomena, giving a voice to people, and finding a common theme and narrative from that.
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing however does something completely different in this book, which made me think a bit of the approach taken in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, but then less well rendered.
Introducing loosely defined concepts like contaminated diversity, pericapitalism and whole lectures on the importance of precarious survival, the factual parts of the book about the matsutake mushroom and people who operate in its harvest, trade or consumption are nearly completely obscured. At time the insights and parallels drawn are interesting enough, at other times they feel like the shallow, semi-intellectual observation you might hear from intelligent but overly pretentious people at a cocktail party.
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing is in general skeptical of the concept of progress, and manages to show that the rare mushroom of the title is not something that grows natural in abundance, but is dependent on humans. The mushroom only grew more prevalent due to the loss of broadleaf trees, and a rise in faster growing red pines in Tokugawa Japan, due to the economy of the country growing under the aegis of the Shogun.
The autumn aroma of the matsutake is much praised, called an olfactory mirror to sakura viewings in spring.
Unfortunately very little of the book is really about the mushroom of the title, a critique on capitalism might have been a better title, with the mushroom in small subtitle below it. I think some appreciation to the benefits of capitalism must be given, now one critiques Walmart (fairly) for pressuring suppliers but that we as consumers have more choice and better prices is something that needs to be acknowledged.
Southeast Asians picking Matsutake mushrooms in Oregon for Japanese clients is interesting, but none of them really gets a voice or face in the narrative The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins presents.
Price developments meanwhile are rather sketchy, between 2004 and 2008 apparently swinging between $2 and $60 per pound of mushrooms.
Mushroom picking as an alternative way of life, outside of wage work seems to me a rather romantic picture to sketch, I doubt that many of the mushroom pickers would not rather have been part of mainstream US economy if possible.
All kinds of side effects from human intervention are clear, as is the tragic of the commons, in the transformation of non-market, communal fungi to hot market assets.
Still the book is surprisingly light on the whole market and supply chain of the mushroom from the title as compared to a academic post-capitalism critique. Sure there are some chapters on the balance between fire and preservation and renewal, but the whole praise for non-scaleable as a characteristic, humans not able to replicate the growing conditions of the fungi, feels rather bolted on just to support the narrative the author tries to paint.
The proliferation of terms, like "Salvage capitalism" which is basically just capitalism, maybe excluding the most purpose led, values driven ESG focussed firms, but even that is doubtful, makes this book quite hard to get through. Also the praise sung for an auction, empowering the pluckers of mushrooms feels distinctly off, how is the mechanism any different from any market functioning?
Overall I am quite disappointed by this book; I learned little of the mushroom of the title, and the people involved in the harvest or buying hardly get a face compared to the concepts the author tries to push upon the reader.
December 29, 2020
You’ve seen this book before. It’s on the shelves of every contemporary art gallery, probably sitting somewhere near Hyperobjects. It’s in the window of every independent bookstore in the recently curated ‘nature’ section, tucked in next to Donna Harraway. Years pass and it’s still there, in fact it's been around for so long now that it's basically entered itself into the canon by virtue of its constant presence just about everywhere.
When my curiosity finally got the better of me and I actually sat down with it, I thought to myself, has anyone actually read this book? The content is so bewilderingly contrary to all appearances and contexts that I can only assume that this book has gained its sales solely on the basis of its hip, anthropocene title, and taken-for-granted association with better known thinkers of the eco-critical circuit. I’ll put it plainly; this book is awful, and those who claim to like it either missed the big picture or simply haven't read it. Furthermore, it’s underlying political message is deeply problematic. There are few books out there that have left such a lingering bad taste in my mouth; and yet I was certain this was something i’d enjoy.
Once you pick it up and read the introductory sections, you feel like there’s a lot to like here. Multidisciplinary approach, combining anthropology, ecology and critical theory? Sign me up. An examination of the conditions of late capitalism and its effects on the natural world? Tell me more. You keep reading and reading with these hopes high for the first few chapters, but soon enough the massive flaws of this book make themselves apparent.
Before I describe those flaws, it must be acknowledged that there are some interesting ideas at work before they go so painfully awry. Tsing sets the stage with criticisms you’ve heard elsewhere in a different terminology. What she calls ‘scalable knowledge’ is a mode of thinking with its roots in the early natural sciences and the logic of plantation colonialism, one that seeks to generalise and increase whilst erasing intricate details. This destructive, colonial scalability is at the root of modern capitalism, and it has brought alienation at all turns, for humans and nonhumans as well as objects. Sounds like your average Marxist ecocriticism, right? Wrong.
As you quickly learn, Tsing is anything but an anticapitalist. A large portion of the book is dedicated to a site in Oregon she calls ‘open ticket’ which has sprung up around the demand for the Matsutake mushroom, a delicacy in Japan that is now imported from other parts of the world. Open ticket is made up of freelance (read; vulnerable) mushroom pickers most of whom are ethnic minorities from Southeast Asia with no stable employment and who are under constant threat from the police, racist hunters, and general poverty. Despite Tsing’s best efforts to describe it otherwise, their work comes off as dirty, dangerous and precarious, but this seems to be precisely what she loves about it.
There is no structure at open ticket - no rules, only certain unspoken codes that make sure that business can be done without interference. Tsing describes this as the perfect condition for mutual benefit; in this case, where pickers can sell to buyers in a truly deregulated environment that fluctuates and changes according to its own internal logics; not directives imposed from the outside. All this is learned through a truly painful to read passage in which Tsing describes with spunky enthusiasm the scenes of a market exchange in action; mushrooms change hands at the blink of an eye, prices shoot up unpredictably, another buyer has entered the scene! If you read it out of context, you’d seriously think she’s describing a Wall St stock exchange.
The reason she thinks the free market is so exciting is because its conditions are mirrored in nature itself (yes, seriously). The matsutake mushroom, her recurring theme that never really goes anywhere, is also precarious and unpredictable; wild and free like the ‘freedom-loving mountain men’ (actual quote) that pick them. The term freedom first appears in quotation marks but soon occurs so frequently in her writing that her previously crypto-libertarianism becomes anything but crypto. Tsing has a bad case of the American dream, and she seeks to locate it in every migrant picker she discusses. According to her, these pickers are at Open Ticket because they love the thrill of the pick - they have ‘rejected labour’ in favour of freedom to pick and sell as they please. The relentless aestheticisation of deregulated, pseudo-black market work is exhausting; perhaps if these poor pickers just unionised they wouldn't have such precarious lives? Nope, because apparently ‘competition and independence means freedom for all’.
Tsing’s book does teach us one thing, which is that not everyone can be an interdisciplinarian. Her forays into economic analysis are embarrassing to read when it comes to her characterisation of the mushrooms being sold. For Tsing these are not just commodities, in fact they are commodities second to being ‘trophies of freedom’; just one piece of magical thinking she mobilises using a terrible and problematic comparison to the gift exchange of indigenous peoples. Just because you pretend something is not a commodity, that does not make it so. You wouldn’t be blamed for assuming that Tsing doesn’t even believe in commodities; for her the term free market is something of a dirty word that obscures the play, performance and excitement of exchange. Verbatim; ‘this is a performance of competition; the point is the drama’. Fuck.
The problematic conception of human-nature relationships must also be addressed. Tsing is vocally ‘pro disturbance’, by which she means that some level of human intervention upon natural landscapes will always be beneficial for nature. She ‘proves’ this using some flat-out ridiculous anecdotal evidence (Professor K, remember his meandering story about a school field trip?) that wouldn’t pass in any academic standard of review. Her general line of argument seems to be that disturbance can’t be spoken of generally, as some agent always benefits. Tsing puts this into action by choosing the agent that most benefits from a disturbance scenario (ie; logging) and speaking from its perspective, seemingly in order to defend… logging?
The two perspectives she uses to discuss her pro-disturbance position are those of the US and Japanese forest management approaches; she characterises the latter as progressive and dynamic and the former has restrictive, too much ‘red tape’. Again she takes the perspective of that most likely to benefit from disturbance; the matsutake mushroom, which also happens to be a rare commodity of immense value. What this all adds up to is a bizarre defence of human intervention in forestry so that more mushrooms can be harvested by pickers and then sold under the counter to anonymous Japanese businessmen. She even acknowledges at one point that Japanese forest management has been motivated by the market demand for matsutake. Worryingly she doesn’t seem to realise that just because one agent benefits from a destructive practice such as commercial logging, it does not excuse the overall practice itself.
For a book you would expect to be aware of the issues that come with the term anthropocene, it is highly anthropocentric. Any respectable writer addressing this large field always discusses the limits to the term, often concluding, as Bonneuil, Fressoz, Yussoff, and Merchant do, that something of a saviour complex comes with attributing such power to the human race; if humans have destroyed the earth through intervention, they have the power to fix it by the same means. Tsing apparently has no intention of challenging this, content to keep humans in a position of crucial power where many other writers in her field act to level it.
Last but not least we have to mention how this book has been written and structured. Tsing admits early in the book that her writing is ‘patchy’, which is apparently a way of describing a bunch of different papers you wrote earlier sewn together into some kind of frankenbook. Despite knowing this, Tsing still comes off like she’s writing on ritalin; random motifs make unpredictable appearances never to be seen again; John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and classical music to name a few. Ideas are begun and abandoned over and over again. At one point when discussing Finnish forestry she asks ‘but where do matsutake mushrooms fit in with all this?’. Apparently the answer is anywhere, because structure doesn’t mean much when precarity is your central philosophy.
It truly astonishes me that this book has somehow ended up as an anthropocene-era classic, and I shudder to think of the number of undergraduates citing this as an academic reference in their essays. You’ve either got to be a libertarian or someone who has read next to no books at all within or around this field to be praising it, but unbelievably, this is the number one best seller in 'Agricultural Science' on Amazon right now. Please, do yourself a favour and leave this one on the shelf.
When my curiosity finally got the better of me and I actually sat down with it, I thought to myself, has anyone actually read this book? The content is so bewilderingly contrary to all appearances and contexts that I can only assume that this book has gained its sales solely on the basis of its hip, anthropocene title, and taken-for-granted association with better known thinkers of the eco-critical circuit. I’ll put it plainly; this book is awful, and those who claim to like it either missed the big picture or simply haven't read it. Furthermore, it’s underlying political message is deeply problematic. There are few books out there that have left such a lingering bad taste in my mouth; and yet I was certain this was something i’d enjoy.
Once you pick it up and read the introductory sections, you feel like there’s a lot to like here. Multidisciplinary approach, combining anthropology, ecology and critical theory? Sign me up. An examination of the conditions of late capitalism and its effects on the natural world? Tell me more. You keep reading and reading with these hopes high for the first few chapters, but soon enough the massive flaws of this book make themselves apparent.
Before I describe those flaws, it must be acknowledged that there are some interesting ideas at work before they go so painfully awry. Tsing sets the stage with criticisms you’ve heard elsewhere in a different terminology. What she calls ‘scalable knowledge’ is a mode of thinking with its roots in the early natural sciences and the logic of plantation colonialism, one that seeks to generalise and increase whilst erasing intricate details. This destructive, colonial scalability is at the root of modern capitalism, and it has brought alienation at all turns, for humans and nonhumans as well as objects. Sounds like your average Marxist ecocriticism, right? Wrong.
As you quickly learn, Tsing is anything but an anticapitalist. A large portion of the book is dedicated to a site in Oregon she calls ‘open ticket’ which has sprung up around the demand for the Matsutake mushroom, a delicacy in Japan that is now imported from other parts of the world. Open ticket is made up of freelance (read; vulnerable) mushroom pickers most of whom are ethnic minorities from Southeast Asia with no stable employment and who are under constant threat from the police, racist hunters, and general poverty. Despite Tsing’s best efforts to describe it otherwise, their work comes off as dirty, dangerous and precarious, but this seems to be precisely what she loves about it.
There is no structure at open ticket - no rules, only certain unspoken codes that make sure that business can be done without interference. Tsing describes this as the perfect condition for mutual benefit; in this case, where pickers can sell to buyers in a truly deregulated environment that fluctuates and changes according to its own internal logics; not directives imposed from the outside. All this is learned through a truly painful to read passage in which Tsing describes with spunky enthusiasm the scenes of a market exchange in action; mushrooms change hands at the blink of an eye, prices shoot up unpredictably, another buyer has entered the scene! If you read it out of context, you’d seriously think she’s describing a Wall St stock exchange.
The reason she thinks the free market is so exciting is because its conditions are mirrored in nature itself (yes, seriously). The matsutake mushroom, her recurring theme that never really goes anywhere, is also precarious and unpredictable; wild and free like the ‘freedom-loving mountain men’ (actual quote) that pick them. The term freedom first appears in quotation marks but soon occurs so frequently in her writing that her previously crypto-libertarianism becomes anything but crypto. Tsing has a bad case of the American dream, and she seeks to locate it in every migrant picker she discusses. According to her, these pickers are at Open Ticket because they love the thrill of the pick - they have ‘rejected labour’ in favour of freedom to pick and sell as they please. The relentless aestheticisation of deregulated, pseudo-black market work is exhausting; perhaps if these poor pickers just unionised they wouldn't have such precarious lives? Nope, because apparently ‘competition and independence means freedom for all’.
Tsing’s book does teach us one thing, which is that not everyone can be an interdisciplinarian. Her forays into economic analysis are embarrassing to read when it comes to her characterisation of the mushrooms being sold. For Tsing these are not just commodities, in fact they are commodities second to being ‘trophies of freedom’; just one piece of magical thinking she mobilises using a terrible and problematic comparison to the gift exchange of indigenous peoples. Just because you pretend something is not a commodity, that does not make it so. You wouldn’t be blamed for assuming that Tsing doesn’t even believe in commodities; for her the term free market is something of a dirty word that obscures the play, performance and excitement of exchange. Verbatim; ‘this is a performance of competition; the point is the drama’. Fuck.
The problematic conception of human-nature relationships must also be addressed. Tsing is vocally ‘pro disturbance’, by which she means that some level of human intervention upon natural landscapes will always be beneficial for nature. She ‘proves’ this using some flat-out ridiculous anecdotal evidence (Professor K, remember his meandering story about a school field trip?) that wouldn’t pass in any academic standard of review. Her general line of argument seems to be that disturbance can’t be spoken of generally, as some agent always benefits. Tsing puts this into action by choosing the agent that most benefits from a disturbance scenario (ie; logging) and speaking from its perspective, seemingly in order to defend… logging?
The two perspectives she uses to discuss her pro-disturbance position are those of the US and Japanese forest management approaches; she characterises the latter as progressive and dynamic and the former has restrictive, too much ‘red tape’. Again she takes the perspective of that most likely to benefit from disturbance; the matsutake mushroom, which also happens to be a rare commodity of immense value. What this all adds up to is a bizarre defence of human intervention in forestry so that more mushrooms can be harvested by pickers and then sold under the counter to anonymous Japanese businessmen. She even acknowledges at one point that Japanese forest management has been motivated by the market demand for matsutake. Worryingly she doesn’t seem to realise that just because one agent benefits from a destructive practice such as commercial logging, it does not excuse the overall practice itself.
For a book you would expect to be aware of the issues that come with the term anthropocene, it is highly anthropocentric. Any respectable writer addressing this large field always discusses the limits to the term, often concluding, as Bonneuil, Fressoz, Yussoff, and Merchant do, that something of a saviour complex comes with attributing such power to the human race; if humans have destroyed the earth through intervention, they have the power to fix it by the same means. Tsing apparently has no intention of challenging this, content to keep humans in a position of crucial power where many other writers in her field act to level it.
Last but not least we have to mention how this book has been written and structured. Tsing admits early in the book that her writing is ‘patchy’, which is apparently a way of describing a bunch of different papers you wrote earlier sewn together into some kind of frankenbook. Despite knowing this, Tsing still comes off like she’s writing on ritalin; random motifs make unpredictable appearances never to be seen again; John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and classical music to name a few. Ideas are begun and abandoned over and over again. At one point when discussing Finnish forestry she asks ‘but where do matsutake mushrooms fit in with all this?’. Apparently the answer is anywhere, because structure doesn’t mean much when precarity is your central philosophy.
It truly astonishes me that this book has somehow ended up as an anthropocene-era classic, and I shudder to think of the number of undergraduates citing this as an academic reference in their essays. You’ve either got to be a libertarian or someone who has read next to no books at all within or around this field to be praising it, but unbelievably, this is the number one best seller in 'Agricultural Science' on Amazon right now. Please, do yourself a favour and leave this one on the shelf.
Read
March 25, 2020honestly ending this book with an excerpt from ursula le guin is some king shit
February 23, 2019
کتاب رو آنا سینگ، استاد انسانشناسی دانشگاه کالیفرنیا، سنت کروز، در مدت 15 سال (!!!!) نوشته. قهرمان اصلی کتاب قارچی هست به نام ماتسوتاکه که توی ژاپن کالای بسیار ارزشمندی به حساب میاد (چون بوی پاییز و قدیم رو میده) و در نتیجه بازار خرید و فروش بزرگی در سطح جهان به راه انداخته. خصوصیت این قارچ اینه که در خرابهها رشد میکنه، یعنی در حالت عادی توی جنگل پیدا نمیشه، بلکه بعد از اینکه جنگل به هر دلیلی مثل جنگل زدایی و آتشسوزی و این چیزها از بین میره و تبدیل به خرابه میشه (تلاش میکنم کلمات خود کتاب رو به کار ببرم)، این قارچها در کنار بعضی درختها شروع به رشد میکنن (درواقع به رشد اون درختها کمک میکنه و تغذیه شون میکنه). همین مساله باعث شده که خوراکی ای خاص، از نظر این کتاب، و کمیاب محسوب بشه و از یه تاریخی به بعد هم به دلایلی در ژاپن نایاب میشه و همین قضیه باعث میشه که کشورهای دیگه تبدیل به تولید کنندههای اصلی بشن. برای مثال یکی از جنگلهای ایالت ارگان در آمریکا، که سابقا برای تولید چوب و الوار ازش استفاده میشده، تبدیل به یکی از مهمترین منابع این قارچ میشه. اما نکته اینجاست که این بازار جها��ی یه چیز کاملا غیر رسمی هست. اونایی که قارچها رو میکنند عمدتا در جنگل ها اتراق میکنن و از قشر آسیبپذیر جامعه هستن، (یعنی مثلا شغل ثابتی ندارن، مکان ثابتی ندارن)، و از نژادهای مختلفی هستن و داستانهای مختلفی هم دارن. مثلا یه عده زیادی شون پناهندههای اهل کامبوج و ویتنام هستن که بعد از جنگ به آمریکا پناه آوردن (بعضا برای آمریکا جنگیدن) و بخشی از کتاب به داستان زندگی اینها و مسیری که طی کردن و تلاشی که برای ادغام شدن در فرهنگ آمریکا کردن میپردازه. عدهای سفیدپوستها هستن که بعضا خیلی هم نژاد پرستن، یه عده اهل آمریکای لاتین هستن که خیلی از بقیه فاصله میگیرن. کتاب از کندن قارچ و اینکه چه کسی میکنه و چه جوری پیداشون میکنه و بازار خرید و فروش محلی و جهانی و مزایده هاشون و اینها شروع میکنه و تا خود ژاپن و مصرفکنندههای نهایی پیش میره و سعی میکنه تیکه به تیکه سر بزنه به داستانهای حاشیه ای، یا درواقع برای نویسنده داستان های اصلی. اینکه ارزش این قارچ در طول این فرایند چه تغییراتی میکنه، از اینکه صرفا به عنوان هدیه بین ژاپنی ها دست به دست میشه تا اینکه تبدیل به کالا میشه و توی سیستم جهانی سرمایهداری و منتقل میشه و ارزش مادیِ مصنوعی یا واقعی پیدا میکنه. اینکه چه کسی تعیینکننده ارزش این کالا هست، بر چه اساسی این ارزش رو مشخص میکنه و در طی چه فرایندی؟ اینکه اون یابنده های قارچ، کارگر labor)) هستن یا نه؟ کارشون در خدمت سرمایهداری هست یا نه؟ آزادی کار دارن یا نه؟ اصلا تعریفشون از آزادی چیه؟ آیا در فرایند انباشت سرمایه هستن یا نه؟
در کنار همه اینه�� که توضیح دادم، یکی دیگه از کارهایی که این کتاب میکنه، تاکید روی رابطه بین انسان و طبیعت هست. به طور کلی یکی از بحثهای مهم در حوزه محیطزیست و اکولوژی و توسعه سیاسی و جغرافیا و این چیزها، رابطه فرهنگ و طبیعت هست. اینجوری که ما عمدتا یه چیزی توی ذهنمون هست به عنوان "طبیعت"، مثلا طبیعت شمال، طبیعت بکر و دست نخورده ی آمازون و خلاصه یه جوری که انگار یه جایی هست که از گزند انسان به دور مونده. یا یه موجوداتی هستن که طبیعت هستن، یعنی غیر انسان هستن و از قارچ گرفته تا حیوون و یخچال های قطب و غیره رو شامل میشن. یعنی خلاصه ما انسان ها یه ور، همه بقیه هم اون یکی ور که بهش میگیم طبیعت. بحثی که وجود داره اینه که آیا اصلا چنین دوگانگی ای وجود داره؟ فرهنگ و جامعه چیزی مجزا از طبیعت هستن؟ اصلا مگه میشه؟ مگه داریم طبیعتی که هنوز تبدیل به منبعی برای برداشتِ سرمایه دارها نشده باشه؟ این کتاب (و خیلی کتابها و مقالههای دیگه) روی این بحث تاکید دارن که نشون بدن طبیعت و انسان دو چیز مجزا نیستن، بلکه همه موجودات اعم از بشر و غیر بشر در "شبکه ای" درهم پیچیده قرار گرفتن و رابطه دو طرفه و چند طرفه با هم دارن. مثلا در این کتاب به رابطه انسان و قارچ و کاج و زمین و خیلی چیزهای دیگه اشاره میکنه که "با هم دیگه" یک فضا رو به وجود میارن.
یه نکته نهایی هم یه بخش هایی از کتاب هست که به "تولید دانش" درباره این قارچ ها میپردازه. اینکه در دوره پسااستعماری، چه دانشی اعتبار بیشتری داره؟ دانشی که در ژاپن تولید شده یا در آمریکا؟ به انگلیسی یا به چینی؟ و آیا این تولیدکننده های دانش با هم ارتباط دارن؟ نوع ارتباطشون چه جوریه؟ همدیگه رو قبول دارن با ندارن یا چی؟
کتاب خیلی حالت داستانی و ماجراجویانه داره و هیچ شباهتی به یک کتاب آکادامیک نداره و در نتیجه نمیاد مثلا بگه راجع به چه تئوری ها و یا مفاهیمی حرف میزنه، بنابراین کتاب درسی طور نیست. اما به نظرم وقتی که کتاب رو تموم کنید، احساس متفاوتی نسبت به بازار جهانی و ارزش یک کالا و آدم های درگیر باهاش پیدا خواهید کرد. خود من بعد از خوندن این کتاب بود که به قدرت انسان شناسی در دیدن داستان هایی که اصولا به چشم نمیاد پی بردم، داستان هایی که به سیستم های پیش رومون سر و شکل میدن و ما معمولا از کنارشون میگذریم.
در کنار همه اینه�� که توضیح دادم، یکی دیگه از کارهایی که این کتاب میکنه، تاکید روی رابطه بین انسان و طبیعت هست. به طور کلی یکی از بحثهای مهم در حوزه محیطزیست و اکولوژی و توسعه سیاسی و جغرافیا و این چیزها، رابطه فرهنگ و طبیعت هست. اینجوری که ما عمدتا یه چیزی توی ذهنمون هست به عنوان "طبیعت"، مثلا طبیعت شمال، طبیعت بکر و دست نخورده ی آمازون و خلاصه یه جوری که انگار یه جایی هست که از گزند انسان به دور مونده. یا یه موجوداتی هستن که طبیعت هستن، یعنی غیر انسان هستن و از قارچ گرفته تا حیوون و یخچال های قطب و غیره رو شامل میشن. یعنی خلاصه ما انسان ها یه ور، همه بقیه هم اون یکی ور که بهش میگیم طبیعت. بحثی که وجود داره اینه که آیا اصلا چنین دوگانگی ای وجود داره؟ فرهنگ و جامعه چیزی مجزا از طبیعت هستن؟ اصلا مگه میشه؟ مگه داریم طبیعتی که هنوز تبدیل به منبعی برای برداشتِ سرمایه دارها نشده باشه؟ این کتاب (و خیلی کتابها و مقالههای دیگه) روی این بحث تاکید دارن که نشون بدن طبیعت و انسان دو چیز مجزا نیستن، بلکه همه موجودات اعم از بشر و غیر بشر در "شبکه ای" درهم پیچیده قرار گرفتن و رابطه دو طرفه و چند طرفه با هم دارن. مثلا در این کتاب به رابطه انسان و قارچ و کاج و زمین و خیلی چیزهای دیگه اشاره میکنه که "با هم دیگه" یک فضا رو به وجود میارن.
یه نکته نهایی هم یه بخش هایی از کتاب هست که به "تولید دانش" درباره این قارچ ها میپردازه. اینکه در دوره پسااستعماری، چه دانشی اعتبار بیشتری داره؟ دانشی که در ژاپن تولید شده یا در آمریکا؟ به انگلیسی یا به چینی؟ و آیا این تولیدکننده های دانش با هم ارتباط دارن؟ نوع ارتباطشون چه جوریه؟ همدیگه رو قبول دارن با ندارن یا چی؟
کتاب خیلی حالت داستانی و ماجراجویانه داره و هیچ شباهتی به یک کتاب آکادامیک نداره و در نتیجه نمیاد مثلا بگه راجع به چه تئوری ها و یا مفاهیمی حرف میزنه، بنابراین کتاب درسی طور نیست. اما به نظرم وقتی که کتاب رو تموم کنید، احساس متفاوتی نسبت به بازار جهانی و ارزش یک کالا و آدم های درگیر باهاش پیدا خواهید کرد. خود من بعد از خوندن این کتاب بود که به قدرت انسان شناسی در دیدن داستان هایی که اصولا به چشم نمیاد پی بردم، داستان هایی که به سیستم های پیش رومون سر و شکل میدن و ما معمولا از کنارشون میگذریم.
March 23, 2020
I can't believe I finished this book which had like 100 pp of forest ecology but that's what a pandemic does, give you lots of time and desperation for some kind of transformative hope-giving ideology!
Tsing explicitly states that her writing aims to be "patchy" rather than motivated by a central thesis, as she characterizes the systems she studies. What this actually taught me is that centralization and systematization are not inherently bad, in fact kind of necessary in writing... Otherwise you get an academic text held together by metaphor, where the reader has to forage (hah) for whatever points were made:
-matsutake mushrooms have symbiotic relationships with their environment. Humans cannot farm them. This is a metaphor for how we all depend on one another, and how many things are not scalable
-mushrooms also flourish in ruined forests, destroyed by capitalism/logging. This is a metaphor for how we too can survive capitalism. There's actually a kind of beautiful parallel with how many mushroom foragers are survivors of wars, white veterans and SE Asian refugees alike, as well as Japanese American survivors of internment (there was a neat ethnographic analysis of how these SE Asians are less invested in assimilation than the JapAms). But I think this is a parallel to be made briskly, not bogged down by pages and pages of circular academic writing...
-the one part of the book where I think there was actually substantive analysis was about mushroom supply chains, how they go from the aforementioned interestingly diverse independent foragers to various middlemen to be sold as gifts in Japan. I think Tsing claims that because the foragers are independent and in the business in pursuit of "freedom," their role in the system is noncapitalist. She also makes the bizarre claim that relationships between foragers and middlemen are noncapitalist because although "there is a lot of money changing hands... it slips away, never forming an investment" (??? more on definitions of capitalism later, but does she think the money just... disappears into thin air? That the foragers/middlemen who sustain themselves off this trade don't do anything with it?). And she says that because the mushrooms are gifts, that part of the supply chain is noncapitalist as well. Hence, capitalism depends on non-capitalist elements, and we should view this as potential for anticapitalist subversion!
-Ok so yeah I have a lot of ?!s about this analysis. First, I think that if you define capitalism as an entirely rigid, rational, plantation-like system "that conquers all," from top down (she uses the word "scalable" a lot) -- of course not everything in the real world fits that model. That is trivial. If you zoom into any enterprise, not just mushroom supply chains, you will find workers who aren't total automatons, coworkers with actual relationships, higher-ups who court each other by giving each other gifts
-It's also value-neutral. I just started reading Super Pumped, an actually cogent nonfiction book. Uber drivers are "independent," Uber executives and VCs have strong bonds of bro-hood. Uber might not be highly rational and systematized but it's certainly not free of exploitation, in fact the drivers' "independence" is a key part of that...
-Ultimately Tsing's problem with capitalism seems to be mostly that it "alienates" objects from their "life-worlds," mushrooms are separated from their environments (I don't think she objects to the actual picking but to the conceptualization of mushrooms as distinct from environments), consumers of mushrooms are separated from the relationships along the supply chain (so I guess by separated here would mean... lacking awareness?). But see I think the problem with capitalism is exploitation? Environmental destruction? Etc.? Maybe you could say that conceptual atomization enables these things -- like in not paying attention to how everything is interrelated, we exploit and destroy without regard for how that affects us -- but I can certainly imagine a world in which a mushroom is just a fucking mushroom and we also have like UBI and universal healthcare
-A more imaginative and beautiful world than where Tsing lands, a forest cleanup. She lauds its diversity and "entangledness" but it just seems so banal
-I guess that's also where How to Do Nothing landed and this book and Julian's scathing review are making me rethink my positive impression of it... Both books seek anticapitalist lessons in ecology and shift goals away from progress to something mushier. But I think is that How to Do Nothing was motivated by an actual problem, the attention economy, and had an actual argument, while this book is a fluffy series of metaphors. And Jenny Odell actually sharpens her argument so that it's not so general and co-optable https://newrepublic.com/article/12305...
-Last thoughts on reading this book in a pandemic: idk this pandemic is making me feel like I should learn STEM and avoid theory lol. So it's infuriating to read something that assumes systematized = bad. And as I was reading I had nightmare visions of it being about viruses instead of mushrooms, about what we can learn/interpret from viruses. Both are nonhuman and "natural," who cares? We gotta be more present than that https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/o...
Tsing explicitly states that her writing aims to be "patchy" rather than motivated by a central thesis, as she characterizes the systems she studies. What this actually taught me is that centralization and systematization are not inherently bad, in fact kind of necessary in writing... Otherwise you get an academic text held together by metaphor, where the reader has to forage (hah) for whatever points were made:
-matsutake mushrooms have symbiotic relationships with their environment. Humans cannot farm them. This is a metaphor for how we all depend on one another, and how many things are not scalable
-mushrooms also flourish in ruined forests, destroyed by capitalism/logging. This is a metaphor for how we too can survive capitalism. There's actually a kind of beautiful parallel with how many mushroom foragers are survivors of wars, white veterans and SE Asian refugees alike, as well as Japanese American survivors of internment (there was a neat ethnographic analysis of how these SE Asians are less invested in assimilation than the JapAms). But I think this is a parallel to be made briskly, not bogged down by pages and pages of circular academic writing...
-the one part of the book where I think there was actually substantive analysis was about mushroom supply chains, how they go from the aforementioned interestingly diverse independent foragers to various middlemen to be sold as gifts in Japan. I think Tsing claims that because the foragers are independent and in the business in pursuit of "freedom," their role in the system is noncapitalist. She also makes the bizarre claim that relationships between foragers and middlemen are noncapitalist because although "there is a lot of money changing hands... it slips away, never forming an investment" (??? more on definitions of capitalism later, but does she think the money just... disappears into thin air? That the foragers/middlemen who sustain themselves off this trade don't do anything with it?). And she says that because the mushrooms are gifts, that part of the supply chain is noncapitalist as well. Hence, capitalism depends on non-capitalist elements, and we should view this as potential for anticapitalist subversion!
-Ok so yeah I have a lot of ?!s about this analysis. First, I think that if you define capitalism as an entirely rigid, rational, plantation-like system "that conquers all," from top down (she uses the word "scalable" a lot) -- of course not everything in the real world fits that model. That is trivial. If you zoom into any enterprise, not just mushroom supply chains, you will find workers who aren't total automatons, coworkers with actual relationships, higher-ups who court each other by giving each other gifts
-It's also value-neutral. I just started reading Super Pumped, an actually cogent nonfiction book. Uber drivers are "independent," Uber executives and VCs have strong bonds of bro-hood. Uber might not be highly rational and systematized but it's certainly not free of exploitation, in fact the drivers' "independence" is a key part of that...
-Ultimately Tsing's problem with capitalism seems to be mostly that it "alienates" objects from their "life-worlds," mushrooms are separated from their environments (I don't think she objects to the actual picking but to the conceptualization of mushrooms as distinct from environments), consumers of mushrooms are separated from the relationships along the supply chain (so I guess by separated here would mean... lacking awareness?). But see I think the problem with capitalism is exploitation? Environmental destruction? Etc.? Maybe you could say that conceptual atomization enables these things -- like in not paying attention to how everything is interrelated, we exploit and destroy without regard for how that affects us -- but I can certainly imagine a world in which a mushroom is just a fucking mushroom and we also have like UBI and universal healthcare
-A more imaginative and beautiful world than where Tsing lands, a forest cleanup. She lauds its diversity and "entangledness" but it just seems so banal
-I guess that's also where How to Do Nothing landed and this book and Julian's scathing review are making me rethink my positive impression of it... Both books seek anticapitalist lessons in ecology and shift goals away from progress to something mushier. But I think is that How to Do Nothing was motivated by an actual problem, the attention economy, and had an actual argument, while this book is a fluffy series of metaphors. And Jenny Odell actually sharpens her argument so that it's not so general and co-optable https://newrepublic.com/article/12305...
-Last thoughts on reading this book in a pandemic: idk this pandemic is making me feel like I should learn STEM and avoid theory lol. So it's infuriating to read something that assumes systematized = bad. And as I was reading I had nightmare visions of it being about viruses instead of mushrooms, about what we can learn/interpret from viruses. Both are nonhuman and "natural," who cares? We gotta be more present than that https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/o...
July 15, 2018
I had high expectations of this book but I think the the title is misleading - Tsing doesn't really explore the possibility of life in or after capitalist ruins - at least not in a way that feels very politically generative for me. The anthropology of people and mushrooms is fascinating though, but overall the book is a bit let down by Tsing's Panglossian characterisations of precarity as freedom and also her lack of engagement in Marxian political economy and also permaculture. But maybe this is just me saying 'this isn't the book I wanted it to be' - I've never read anything like it and I'm glad I perservered!
May 9, 2018
What I liked most about this book was how grounded it is in biology and systems thinking. A background in biology is not required but if you have one, you are going to get so much more out the ideas.
It is the kind of book where I read a statement and it had to spin off to read the source. I became torn between following the cadence or a reference.
I think I’ll need to make my own glossary of concepts from this book and read it again.
It was the first book to reference A. D. M Rayner
Degrees Of Freedom: Living In Dynamic Boundaries.
It is so rich with ideas and uses those ideas to return again and again to a central theme or themes.
Scalability is one example. History is another idea. The author uses the word in a way that makes it not about human stories, but about ‘story’ that any organism creates, yet more than that- better to come from the author...
“As long as trees make history, they threaten industrial governance. Cleaning the forest is part of the work of stopping this history. But since when do trees make history?
“History” is both a human storytelling practice and that set of remainders from the past that we turn into stories. Conventionally, historians look only at human remainders, such as archives and diaries, but there is no reason not to spread our attention to the tracks and traces of nonhumans, as these contribute to our common landscapes. Such tracks and traces speak to cross-species entanglements in contingency and conjuncture, the components of “historical” time. To participate in such entanglement, one does not have to make history in just one way.1 Whether or not other organisms “tell stories,” they contribute to the overlapping tracks and traces that we grasp as history.2 History, then, is the record of many trajectories of world making, human and not human.’
Seriously is that not just ‘Wow’?!
Another word the author opens us to is ‘world’. I’ve always seen World as the human expression on the Earth but what the author does is explain that humans aren’t the only life forms that create their own Worlds. The idea is fascinating.
I think this is great book for an eReader, just for the number of times you might want to look back at earlier pieces of a theme or when an idea was first introduced.
Precarity is another interesting theme in the book, but I’ll leave you to the book to learn about that one.
It is the kind of book where I read a statement and it had to spin off to read the source. I became torn between following the cadence or a reference.
I think I’ll need to make my own glossary of concepts from this book and read it again.
It was the first book to reference A. D. M Rayner
Degrees Of Freedom: Living In Dynamic Boundaries.
It is so rich with ideas and uses those ideas to return again and again to a central theme or themes.
Scalability is one example. History is another idea. The author uses the word in a way that makes it not about human stories, but about ‘story’ that any organism creates, yet more than that- better to come from the author...
“As long as trees make history, they threaten industrial governance. Cleaning the forest is part of the work of stopping this history. But since when do trees make history?
“History” is both a human storytelling practice and that set of remainders from the past that we turn into stories. Conventionally, historians look only at human remainders, such as archives and diaries, but there is no reason not to spread our attention to the tracks and traces of nonhumans, as these contribute to our common landscapes. Such tracks and traces speak to cross-species entanglements in contingency and conjuncture, the components of “historical” time. To participate in such entanglement, one does not have to make history in just one way.1 Whether or not other organisms “tell stories,” they contribute to the overlapping tracks and traces that we grasp as history.2 History, then, is the record of many trajectories of world making, human and not human.’
Seriously is that not just ‘Wow’?!
Another word the author opens us to is ‘world’. I’ve always seen World as the human expression on the Earth but what the author does is explain that humans aren’t the only life forms that create their own Worlds. The idea is fascinating.
I think this is great book for an eReader, just for the number of times you might want to look back at earlier pieces of a theme or when an idea was first introduced.
Precarity is another interesting theme in the book, but I’ll leave you to the book to learn about that one.
January 14, 2020
this is definitely an academic, theory-heavy book, and I'd honestly be surprised if anyone with no background in (what I perceive to be) often-esoteric theory would have had the fortitude to finish the book.
as someone who hasn't read this kind of writing in a long long time, I'm definitely not really qualified to evaluate it as it's meant to be. that being said I'm not quite sure this title is reflective of its contents. there's not really a prescriptive argument for or even engagement with what "life in capitalist ruins" really looks like, but more so a "patchwork" (as tsing would call it) of related topics about the mushroom that aren't necessarily *not* about capitalism -- maybe that's the point? or maybe I missed it? idk tbh, but I was expecting something different based on the title.
topics/chapters/concepts that stuck out to me:
- the mushroom picking communities in oregon, the ethnic diversity of the pickers, and the ways their backgrounds interact;
- history & analysis of the supply chain as a concept;
- a short chapter on understanding the gift economy through the mushroom (relatedly, the process of how matsutake, which begins as the product of unalienated labor, becomes "alienated" in transit and then decommoditized when it reaches the consumer)
- a comparison of land management as state-building in japan and the us;
- some reflections on science/ biology as a discipline; questioning the assumptions made (e.g. what makes a species?) and noting when science becomes national projects (e.g. it's not just that research has different goals in different countries, but that research on the same topic from other countries are often ignored)
learning about this specific mushroom and how it's picked was pretty cool too I guess; pretty curious about what it tastes like now
I don't regret reading this book, but also wouldn't necessarily recommend.
as someone who hasn't read this kind of writing in a long long time, I'm definitely not really qualified to evaluate it as it's meant to be. that being said I'm not quite sure this title is reflective of its contents. there's not really a prescriptive argument for or even engagement with what "life in capitalist ruins" really looks like, but more so a "patchwork" (as tsing would call it) of related topics about the mushroom that aren't necessarily *not* about capitalism -- maybe that's the point? or maybe I missed it? idk tbh, but I was expecting something different based on the title.
topics/chapters/concepts that stuck out to me:
- the mushroom picking communities in oregon, the ethnic diversity of the pickers, and the ways their backgrounds interact;
- history & analysis of the supply chain as a concept;
- a short chapter on understanding the gift economy through the mushroom (relatedly, the process of how matsutake, which begins as the product of unalienated labor, becomes "alienated" in transit and then decommoditized when it reaches the consumer)
- a comparison of land management as state-building in japan and the us;
- some reflections on science/ biology as a discipline; questioning the assumptions made (e.g. what makes a species?) and noting when science becomes national projects (e.g. it's not just that research has different goals in different countries, but that research on the same topic from other countries are often ignored)
learning about this specific mushroom and how it's picked was pretty cool too I guess; pretty curious about what it tastes like now
I don't regret reading this book, but also wouldn't necessarily recommend.
October 21, 2021
Uno de los mejores libros que he leído este año. Me ha recordado a ‘El queso y los gusanos’, en cómo partiendo de un objeto de estudio pequeño se puede trazar un magnífico análisis estructural, en este caso, del capitalismo y sus cadenas de distribución. Pero además, es un brillante ensayo de antropología, sociología, biología y botánica en torno a algo tan, en principio, nimio como la seta matsutake.
Read
December 21, 2021I do not feel strongly about the content of this book but the sheer amount of research that went into it fills me with awe. To be honest I'm just glad I finally conquered the mountain and finished this book lmao I don't think I'll retain much but at the end of the day it was still lovely (although very, VERY thorough and thus extremely slow-moving) and I always love a good example of how all things are interconnected :)
December 16, 2018
This was one of the most though-provoking, unique and interesting books I read in 2018. It is evocatively written in a series of short chapters, “like the flushes of mushrooms that come up after a rain.” Not your typical academic publication!
The approach is a "practice of noticing," in which the small is examined in order to gain insights in the large. In this case, that means looking at the Matsutake mushroom trade as a lens or gateway into late and post-capitalist ruin. Since Heidegger, philosophers have often explored the way each culture and each age puts forth its own philosophy of nature by which it defines itself. By looking at these underlying notions, we can uncover the preoccupations of the age.
Anthropologist ALT begins her long meditation on late-capitalist commodity chains and devastated landscapes by looking at the way Enlightenment philosophy was itself built on this concept of mind-body duality to view nature (as lacking in mind and soul) as being set apart from human beings. While it may be grand and universal, it is also passive and mechanical, she says. Nature is seen as more of a backdrop and resource. Something to be used; for which "the moral intentionality of man, which could tame and master." Her book is interesting as it avoids the use of the word "anthropocene," instead describing our current state of being as one of “post-capitalist ruin." This is crucial, for according to Lowenhaught Tsing, the history of the human accumulation of wealth has turned not only the environment but also human beings ourselves into resources and this has led to the state of deep alienation we find ourselves in. From economic theories of self-interest to scientific theories of the selfish gene, we have come to view ourselves as being isolated. Incapsulated in bodies, alienated from nature and from our fellow critters. And it is in this lack of understanding of interconnectedness that is leading to our ruin.
How can we move beyond this understanding of nature as resource and of human beings as motivated strictly by self-interest?
Well, we need a new paradigm.
But how can we really make peace with the clusterfuck of global capitalism?
In looking at the mastutake trade we find something interesting. In the days after WWII, we see a Japan desperate to catch up to the West. With America’s help, Japan sets out on a fast road to development. This involves not only major environmental destruction within the country, but Japan sets up an intricate network of supply chains that allows the country to exploit the resources in other lands (SEAsia) without direct interference —as the supply chains hide the causal networks between forest deforestation and the plight of animals on Borneo and Japan’s building boom. This is so successful that America of the 90s takes up the offshoring practice and this leads to further environmental plunder “over there”— But it also leads to a state of grave precocity at home.
How can the world’s richest country no longer be able to provide people with stability? With healthcare and jobs that allow them to educate and raise their children without the anxieties of month to month subsistence?
The New Republic had a very good review of this book in which the reviewer rightly criticized ALT for romanticizing the existence of the people who live in the cracks of our society. I think only someone who has not lived this life with kids depending on them could possibly associate the gig economy and the life of the mushroom gatherers as being one of adventure—as the reviewer states, without healthcare or social safety nets that can protect your kids, this life has more in common with a nightmare. And the reviewer is also right-on in suggesting that “precarity” (the word ALT coins to define our age) is precisely what the lords of neoliberal capitalist projects wanted all along: jobs without protections and the gig economy and labor and markets that are globalized are very profitable for them. But they are terrible for anyone but the lucky few—not to mention the planet and the animals.
That said, I really appreciated (I loved) her call for a new kind of imagining of our place in an interconnected ecosystem. She writes so beautifully at the end of the book about the way, “Without meaning to, most of us learn to ignore the multi species worlds around us.” And the last pages of her wonderful book are about ways that we can re approach the natural world through human curiosity. Co-evolution implies the necessity of so-existence —we must move bend treating everything in the world (including our own selves) as resources for efficient utilization. A first step, she says, will be to uncover the latent commons around us—to learn to speak the language of nature before it is too late.
Beautiful book. I read it along with Donna Haraway’s Staying with the Trouble (HIGHLY RECOMMEND) as well as Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet… and Roy Scranton’s collection of essays.
The approach is a "practice of noticing," in which the small is examined in order to gain insights in the large. In this case, that means looking at the Matsutake mushroom trade as a lens or gateway into late and post-capitalist ruin. Since Heidegger, philosophers have often explored the way each culture and each age puts forth its own philosophy of nature by which it defines itself. By looking at these underlying notions, we can uncover the preoccupations of the age.
Anthropologist ALT begins her long meditation on late-capitalist commodity chains and devastated landscapes by looking at the way Enlightenment philosophy was itself built on this concept of mind-body duality to view nature (as lacking in mind and soul) as being set apart from human beings. While it may be grand and universal, it is also passive and mechanical, she says. Nature is seen as more of a backdrop and resource. Something to be used; for which "the moral intentionality of man, which could tame and master." Her book is interesting as it avoids the use of the word "anthropocene," instead describing our current state of being as one of “post-capitalist ruin." This is crucial, for according to Lowenhaught Tsing, the history of the human accumulation of wealth has turned not only the environment but also human beings ourselves into resources and this has led to the state of deep alienation we find ourselves in. From economic theories of self-interest to scientific theories of the selfish gene, we have come to view ourselves as being isolated. Incapsulated in bodies, alienated from nature and from our fellow critters. And it is in this lack of understanding of interconnectedness that is leading to our ruin.
How can we move beyond this understanding of nature as resource and of human beings as motivated strictly by self-interest?
Well, we need a new paradigm.
But how can we really make peace with the clusterfuck of global capitalism?
In looking at the mastutake trade we find something interesting. In the days after WWII, we see a Japan desperate to catch up to the West. With America’s help, Japan sets out on a fast road to development. This involves not only major environmental destruction within the country, but Japan sets up an intricate network of supply chains that allows the country to exploit the resources in other lands (SEAsia) without direct interference —as the supply chains hide the causal networks between forest deforestation and the plight of animals on Borneo and Japan’s building boom. This is so successful that America of the 90s takes up the offshoring practice and this leads to further environmental plunder “over there”— But it also leads to a state of grave precocity at home.
How can the world’s richest country no longer be able to provide people with stability? With healthcare and jobs that allow them to educate and raise their children without the anxieties of month to month subsistence?
The New Republic had a very good review of this book in which the reviewer rightly criticized ALT for romanticizing the existence of the people who live in the cracks of our society. I think only someone who has not lived this life with kids depending on them could possibly associate the gig economy and the life of the mushroom gatherers as being one of adventure—as the reviewer states, without healthcare or social safety nets that can protect your kids, this life has more in common with a nightmare. And the reviewer is also right-on in suggesting that “precarity” (the word ALT coins to define our age) is precisely what the lords of neoliberal capitalist projects wanted all along: jobs without protections and the gig economy and labor and markets that are globalized are very profitable for them. But they are terrible for anyone but the lucky few—not to mention the planet and the animals.
That said, I really appreciated (I loved) her call for a new kind of imagining of our place in an interconnected ecosystem. She writes so beautifully at the end of the book about the way, “Without meaning to, most of us learn to ignore the multi species worlds around us.” And the last pages of her wonderful book are about ways that we can re approach the natural world through human curiosity. Co-evolution implies the necessity of so-existence —we must move bend treating everything in the world (including our own selves) as resources for efficient utilization. A first step, she says, will be to uncover the latent commons around us—to learn to speak the language of nature before it is too late.
Beautiful book. I read it along with Donna Haraway’s Staying with the Trouble (HIGHLY RECOMMEND) as well as Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet… and Roy Scranton’s collection of essays.
February 23, 2016
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing writes:
Now it seems that all our lives are precarious – even when, for the moment, our pockets are lined. In contrast to the mid-twentieth century, when poets and philosophers of the global north felt caged by too much stability, now many of us, north and south, confront the condition of trouble without end.
And:
While I refuse to reduce either economy or ecology to the other, there is one connection between economy and environment that seems important to introduce up front: the history of the human concentration of wealth through making both humans and nonhumans into resources for investment. This history has inspired investors to imbue both people and things with alienation, that is, the ability to stand alone, as if the entanglements of living did not matter. Through alienation, people and things become mobile assets; they can be removed from their life worlds in distance-defying transport to be exchanged with other assets from other life worlds, elsewhere. This is quite different from merely using others as part of a life world – for example, in eating and being eaten. In that case, multispecies living spaces remain in place. Alienation obviates living-space entanglement. The dream of alienation inspires landscape modification in which one stand-alone asset matters; everything else becomes weeds or waste. Here, attending to living-space entanglements seems inefficient, and perhaps archaic. When its singular asset can no longer be produced, a place can be abandoned. The timber has been cut; the oil has run out; the plantation soil no longer supports crops. The search for assets resumes elsewhere. Thus, simplification for alienation produces ruins, spaces of abandonment for asset production.
Global landscapes today are strewn with this kind of ruin. Still, these places can be lively despite announcements of their death: abandoned asset fields sometimes yield new multispecies and multicultural life. In a global state of precarity, we don’t have choices other than looking for life in this ruin.
Now it seems that all our lives are precarious – even when, for the moment, our pockets are lined. In contrast to the mid-twentieth century, when poets and philosophers of the global north felt caged by too much stability, now many of us, north and south, confront the condition of trouble without end.
And:
While I refuse to reduce either economy or ecology to the other, there is one connection between economy and environment that seems important to introduce up front: the history of the human concentration of wealth through making both humans and nonhumans into resources for investment. This history has inspired investors to imbue both people and things with alienation, that is, the ability to stand alone, as if the entanglements of living did not matter. Through alienation, people and things become mobile assets; they can be removed from their life worlds in distance-defying transport to be exchanged with other assets from other life worlds, elsewhere. This is quite different from merely using others as part of a life world – for example, in eating and being eaten. In that case, multispecies living spaces remain in place. Alienation obviates living-space entanglement. The dream of alienation inspires landscape modification in which one stand-alone asset matters; everything else becomes weeds or waste. Here, attending to living-space entanglements seems inefficient, and perhaps archaic. When its singular asset can no longer be produced, a place can be abandoned. The timber has been cut; the oil has run out; the plantation soil no longer supports crops. The search for assets resumes elsewhere. Thus, simplification for alienation produces ruins, spaces of abandonment for asset production.
Global landscapes today are strewn with this kind of ruin. Still, these places can be lively despite announcements of their death: abandoned asset fields sometimes yield new multispecies and multicultural life. In a global state of precarity, we don’t have choices other than looking for life in this ruin.
February 23, 2018
I love to sink into the mind of Anna Tsing, because she knows her mind -- and her writing -- isn't 'hers.' It's a web of roots and rhizomes where all kinds of creatures are welcome.
As academic writing: this is such a good challenge to old epistemologies and ego-infused academies. This is playful, collaborative, and surprising. As Tsing writes: "Getting by without progress requires a good deal of feeling around with our hands."
As lyrical prose: some sentences made me grit my teeth.
As political stance: I mostly loved the commitment to learn how to appreciate the wastelands left after 'development.' Sometimes though, amid all the postmodern caveats and nuance, I longed for the bravery to make some unequivocal value statement -- some kind of "It is wrong to kill this forest and we will fight to protect it," even though "forest" can't be defined, and neither can "kill" or "protect" or even "we." I want nuance and realism in ecologies and ethics -- but I don't want to give up my fighting words.
It was valuable in those times to remember this isn't Tsing's first book about destroyed forests. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection showed a forest gone up in flames, and though it was still nuanced and postmodern, it showed its grief up-front. After all that mourning, Tsing deserves to write a book that finds some comfort in the ruins.
As academic writing: this is such a good challenge to old epistemologies and ego-infused academies. This is playful, collaborative, and surprising. As Tsing writes: "Getting by without progress requires a good deal of feeling around with our hands."
As lyrical prose: some sentences made me grit my teeth.
As political stance: I mostly loved the commitment to learn how to appreciate the wastelands left after 'development.' Sometimes though, amid all the postmodern caveats and nuance, I longed for the bravery to make some unequivocal value statement -- some kind of "It is wrong to kill this forest and we will fight to protect it," even though "forest" can't be defined, and neither can "kill" or "protect" or even "we." I want nuance and realism in ecologies and ethics -- but I don't want to give up my fighting words.
It was valuable in those times to remember this isn't Tsing's first book about destroyed forests. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection showed a forest gone up in flames, and though it was still nuanced and postmodern, it showed its grief up-front. After all that mourning, Tsing deserves to write a book that finds some comfort in the ruins.
Without stories of progress, the world has become a terrifying place. The ruin glares at us with the horror of its abandonment. It’s not easy to know how to make a life, much less avert planetary destruction. Luckily there is still company, human and not human. We can still explore the overgrown verges of our blasted landscapes — the edges of capitalist discipline, scalability, and abandoned resource plantations.
January 5, 2020
Came across this book written by anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing subtitled as hunting for mushrooms and the capitalist ruins :). it's an incredible book of anthropology about matsutake mushrooms which is world's most expensive mushroom. She tracks the communities of people often violently exiled, who are harvesting the mushroom in the northwest of United Sates and the different kinds of collaborations, commodity chains and affiliations that spring up. But even though it's about mushrooms, it's also this great book on art. Because you can't make the mushroom grow, it only grows in disturbed ecological environments. One has to search for it. It's a kind of fecundity that grows out of damage. And she is really into entanglement and impurity like all these different ways that out of the wreckage of the disturbed forest, people come together to find the mushroom. Sometimes, mushrooms is just a commodity, other times important for religious or symbolic reasons and she follows the shifting meanings of the mushroom. Also it's a reflective first person work, where she talks about the meditative practice of mushroom hunting and believing in the possibility of still making discoveries in the midst of these ravaged landscapes. So I feel, I keep thinking about the book in terms of the impossible urgent question everyone keeps asking everyone about, how do we make meaning now?, how do we make community now?. Her answer is an emotive attention she developed looking for the mushroom. A really beautiful book.
September 19, 2016
Отличная (в обоих смыслах) начальная точка для переориентации всей нашей антропоцентрической парадигмы, хоть сойти с этих позиций человеку и трудно, это я понимаю. Но отнюдь не невозможно, как становится ясно даже по этой книжке. Больше того — даже вполне можно научиться «мыслить, как грибы», хотя для этого понадобится тренировка серьезнее. На память сами собой приходят мыслящие (и помнящие) камни Пинчона, а кроме того это все — расширенная сноска к Кену Кизи: здесь дается социоэкономический фон, в частности, романа «Порою блажь великая».
Даже помимо очевидного интереса к маргиналиям т. н. «прогресса», книжка для меня стала прекрасным дополнением к канону дальневосточной литературы. Сам я, правда, в детстве мацутакэ в Приморье не собирал — вокруг Владивостока сосновых боров, прямо скажем, нет, а в более далекую глубинку я не забирался. Но они там растут — и даже п��одаются по каким-то безумным ценам; да и каких-то китайских браконьеров-грибников ловят — грибок-то у нас в «Красной книге».
Даже помимо очевидного интереса к маргиналиям т. н. «прогресса», книжка для меня стала прекрасным дополнением к канону дальневосточной литературы. Сам я, правда, в детстве мацутакэ в Приморье не собирал — вокруг Владивостока сосновых боров, прямо скажем, нет, а в более далекую глубинку я не забирался. Но они там растут — и даже п��одаются по каким-то безумным ценам; да и каких-то китайских браконьеров-грибников ловят — грибок-то у нас в «Красной книге».
May 17, 2022
This was a quirky and interesting book recommended to me by my friend Alice. It really made me want to forage, and taught me a lot not only about alternatives to capitalism as a framework for conducting a life, but also the degree to which my own ability to imagine or consider such things has been constrained by the heavyhandedness of the capitalist system we all inhabit.
It did have a lot of filler that I didn't find all that interesting, and the ethnographer's tendency to make what seem like wildly overgeneralized claims (Laotians prefer X, while Cambodians prefer Y, etc.). But pretty consistently interesting throughout.
It did have a lot of filler that I didn't find all that interesting, and the ethnographer's tendency to make what seem like wildly overgeneralized claims (Laotians prefer X, while Cambodians prefer Y, etc.). But pretty consistently interesting throughout.
January 30, 2024
daha önce farklı bölümlerini, farklı yerlerde parça parça okuduğum bir kitaptı. çevre & iklim & doğa koruma ile ilgilenenlerin en az bir yerde karşısına çıkıyor çünkü. okuduğum bölümleri de genel olarak çok beğendiğimi hatırlıyorum.
ancak bir bütün olarak başarısı vaatlerinin altında kalıyor diyebilirim. matsutake mantarının küresel ticaretini, farkı kıtalarda toplama pratiklerini, kullanım alanlarını anlatarak yıkılan dünyada ümit aramanın kendisi o kadar da etkili bir pratik mi ondan da emin değilim ayrıca. tüm bu açılardan matsutake'yi incelerken ya bomboş bırakılıyor bazı "ümit arama" kısımları ya da tek bir mantar ticareti örneğinden yola çıkarak o kadae global o kadar genelleştirici yorum yapılıyor ki denge kaybetmemek mümkün değil. tekil case'lerden süper genel teori çıkarma çabası zaten genel olarak natural scientist'ler tarafından çok da ciddiye alınmama tehlikesiyle sürekli karşı karşıyayken, tsing'in oradan çıkmaması biraz beni hayal kırıklığına uğrattı açıkçası.
ama mantarın kendisi hakkında, mantar toplama pratikleri hakkında her ne kadar romantize edilmiş bir ekonomi olarak yansıtılsa da okumaktan keyif aldım. endüstriyel ormancılığa göbekten bağlı olduğu için çok güzel bir ormancılık tarihi takip ediyor tsing, çokça ikincil kaynak çıkardım kendime referanslarından.
genel olarak baktığımda okumaktan keyif aldığım ancak teorisini yer yer romantize yer yer boşluklu bulduğum bir hikaye oldu. okuduğuma pişman değilim ama.
ancak bir bütün olarak başarısı vaatlerinin altında kalıyor diyebilirim. matsutake mantarının küresel ticaretini, farkı kıtalarda toplama pratiklerini, kullanım alanlarını anlatarak yıkılan dünyada ümit aramanın kendisi o kadar da etkili bir pratik mi ondan da emin değilim ayrıca. tüm bu açılardan matsutake'yi incelerken ya bomboş bırakılıyor bazı "ümit arama" kısımları ya da tek bir mantar ticareti örneğinden yola çıkarak o kadae global o kadar genelleştirici yorum yapılıyor ki denge kaybetmemek mümkün değil. tekil case'lerden süper genel teori çıkarma çabası zaten genel olarak natural scientist'ler tarafından çok da ciddiye alınmama tehlikesiyle sürekli karşı karşıyayken, tsing'in oradan çıkmaması biraz beni hayal kırıklığına uğrattı açıkçası.
ama mantarın kendisi hakkında, mantar toplama pratikleri hakkında her ne kadar romantize edilmiş bir ekonomi olarak yansıtılsa da okumaktan keyif aldım. endüstriyel ormancılığa göbekten bağlı olduğu için çok güzel bir ormancılık tarihi takip ediyor tsing, çokça ikincil kaynak çıkardım kendime referanslarından.
genel olarak baktığımda okumaktan keyif aldığım ancak teorisini yer yer romantize yer yer boşluklu bulduğum bir hikaye oldu. okuduğuma pişman değilim ama.
November 16, 2021
This book tries to be a lot of things at once. It is an anthropological description of the society of matsutake mushroom pickers, a story of possibly post-capitalist economics, a work about botany, ecology, forestry and micobiology, and a story of the interconnectedness of things. It uses the matsutake mushroom to tie all of these subjects together around a central theme of hopeful but precarious developments of nature and humanity in the wake of human disturbance of the natural environment. If it had worked, it could have been awesomely good, but it didn't, at least not for me.
Part of the problem was that the book was too ambitious in its aims. At its best, it never goes quite deep enough to fully deliver on its promise, but that's only the beginning of the problem. Tsing writes in a voice that I found horribly irritating. She is simultaneously chirpy and laden with unnecessary post modern academic jargon. Her economics are simplistic and naive. There is definitely a collectivist spirit in the pickers that goes beyond simple every-man-for-himself capitalism, but she fails to develop this into any sort of coherent theory. She tries to use the interconnectedness of the environment and the hopeful idea of the matsuktake thriving on the ruins of a damaged landscape as a metaphor for something bigger and better, but it is never entirely clear what the bigger and better thing is. There are the seeds, or I should say spores, of something interesting here, but they are not fully realized. Tsing should have had a better editor and should have spent another six months to rewrite the book and find better ways to articulate her core themes.
Part of the problem was that the book was too ambitious in its aims. At its best, it never goes quite deep enough to fully deliver on its promise, but that's only the beginning of the problem. Tsing writes in a voice that I found horribly irritating. She is simultaneously chirpy and laden with unnecessary post modern academic jargon. Her economics are simplistic and naive. There is definitely a collectivist spirit in the pickers that goes beyond simple every-man-for-himself capitalism, but she fails to develop this into any sort of coherent theory. She tries to use the interconnectedness of the environment and the hopeful idea of the matsuktake thriving on the ruins of a damaged landscape as a metaphor for something bigger and better, but it is never entirely clear what the bigger and better thing is. There are the seeds, or I should say spores, of something interesting here, but they are not fully realized. Tsing should have had a better editor and should have spent another six months to rewrite the book and find better ways to articulate her core themes.
April 7, 2020
This book is continually fascinating, not just in the broad and impossibly entangled subjects it covers, but in the way it unfolds in rhythms, moving around the mushroom in ever-increasingly sized circles to reveal a web of interconnections in everything. Fuck Capitalism and fuck Boxes! Commodification is the trading of meaning for value, there's spores in the fuckin Stratosphere! Inevitably, covering so much eclectic ground, there are a few bits which grab my attention less BUT even though the history of forest maintenance isn't that interesting to me personally, seeing how it's entangled with the lives of so many people, on personal and global scales, is very exciting. An intricate and beautiful and playful and maybe even unique book... lovely.
February 11, 2024
Tämä oli UPEA. Runsas, älykäs, perusteellinen, kaunis, kiehtova: omia sanojaan lainaten upea monimuotoisuuden laikku kaiken kliinisen, skaalautuvan ja pöhisevän keskellä. Rakastin jokaista sivua, alleviivasin lähes kaiken. Täytyy lukea vielä uudestaan (ja uudestaan ja uudestaan), jotta aukeaa vielä syvemmin, mutta tällaisenaankin lähes täydellinen.
Enemmän yhteisöllisyyttä, monimuotoisen yhteistyön sommitelmia, vähemmän kilpailua, skaalautuvia näkymiä ja kapitalismia.
Enemmän yhteisöllisyyttä, monimuotoisen yhteistyön sommitelmia, vähemmän kilpailua, skaalautuvia näkymiä ja kapitalismia.
February 16, 2018
This book is full of remarkable descriptions of the micro and macro, the individual and social--someone feeling the ground of the forest for traces of Matsutake, the energy of a mushroom auction, the byzantine links of transnational supply chains. Tsing's curiosity is infectious. I want to interview the local shoelace tying collective.
/
Look, this isn't revolutionary political philosophy, and I suspect some of the knocks on this book are because that's what folks want it to be. Its ethnographic approach means Tsing is most often descriptive when it comes to the interplay of mushroom salvage, commons, and capital. And it's the gorgeous braids of particular detail and systemic analysis that make this a joy to read.
/
Tsing posits that the ruins capitalist production creates are sites of opportunity--disturbed landscapes in which the energetic peasant can make lemonade.
Here Tsing's fascination with the upshots of disturbed landscapes rejects conservative conservationism's celebration of "virgin" wild (it's a myth) and its newer manifestations (see Peter Wohlleben's Secret Life of Tress with its ode to old growth forest). Tsing would call the landscapes these environmentalists love 'aristocratic'; she is all about celebrating 'peasant' landscapes. Tsing also turns away from the pessimism of Carson with her emphasis on "the pollution of the total environment of mankind" and the apocalypticism of folks follow the possible chains of consequences of global warming to book of revelation visions of annihilation. Though the title mentions capitalist ruins, her emphasis is far more on the irrepressibility of life. What she adds to the general idea that capitalist devastation isn't permanent beyond what folks like Fred Pearce propose is the idea that ecologies that flourish in capitalist ruins aren't an expression of nature taking over where man leaves off but, rather, are often the result of cultural practices which play out on a different scale and tempo than industrial plantation or resource extraction capitalist projects. They're the result of intensive use of the landscape.
Though Tsing's optimism could give me pause when she projects her findings in regard to matsutake picking onto the global economy in general. Matsutake foraging provides freedom, cultural meaning, and considerable profit. So much other salvage (say electronics recycling) is harder, dirtier, and far less free or profitable than mushroom hunting. I also resist the idea that what capitalist production leaves behind is simply commons. Would have liked to see some nods to ppl like Gabrys who also theorize capitalist waste, particularly her emphasis on sinks and the idea that much of the waste of capitalism isn't simply available to the world as scrap to turn into gold but, rather, often spends a long time in transition, wastes continue to be possessed before they are disposed of or opened up. I also wonder what Tsing would do with the idea of negative commons-spaces that operate as commons in being open for use (and salvage) but only at an intense biological cost. It's an important distinction to make, I think-that between commons that sustain life and those commons of last resort, those that sustain life in the short term while also quickly burning it up.
Though perhaps Tsing gets at this in her later definitions of the commons ("Latent commons are not good for everyone," "Latent commons cannot redeem us," but she doesn't approach these discussions with her usual knack for alluring examples.
/
A quote that stuck: "Salvage is not an ornament on ordinary capitalist processes; it is a feature of how capitalism works" (63).
/
Thank for the book, Carra.
/
Look, this isn't revolutionary political philosophy, and I suspect some of the knocks on this book are because that's what folks want it to be. Its ethnographic approach means Tsing is most often descriptive when it comes to the interplay of mushroom salvage, commons, and capital. And it's the gorgeous braids of particular detail and systemic analysis that make this a joy to read.
/
Tsing posits that the ruins capitalist production creates are sites of opportunity--disturbed landscapes in which the energetic peasant can make lemonade.
Here Tsing's fascination with the upshots of disturbed landscapes rejects conservative conservationism's celebration of "virgin" wild (it's a myth) and its newer manifestations (see Peter Wohlleben's Secret Life of Tress with its ode to old growth forest). Tsing would call the landscapes these environmentalists love 'aristocratic'; she is all about celebrating 'peasant' landscapes. Tsing also turns away from the pessimism of Carson with her emphasis on "the pollution of the total environment of mankind" and the apocalypticism of folks follow the possible chains of consequences of global warming to book of revelation visions of annihilation. Though the title mentions capitalist ruins, her emphasis is far more on the irrepressibility of life. What she adds to the general idea that capitalist devastation isn't permanent beyond what folks like Fred Pearce propose is the idea that ecologies that flourish in capitalist ruins aren't an expression of nature taking over where man leaves off but, rather, are often the result of cultural practices which play out on a different scale and tempo than industrial plantation or resource extraction capitalist projects. They're the result of intensive use of the landscape.
Though Tsing's optimism could give me pause when she projects her findings in regard to matsutake picking onto the global economy in general. Matsutake foraging provides freedom, cultural meaning, and considerable profit. So much other salvage (say electronics recycling) is harder, dirtier, and far less free or profitable than mushroom hunting. I also resist the idea that what capitalist production leaves behind is simply commons. Would have liked to see some nods to ppl like Gabrys who also theorize capitalist waste, particularly her emphasis on sinks and the idea that much of the waste of capitalism isn't simply available to the world as scrap to turn into gold but, rather, often spends a long time in transition, wastes continue to be possessed before they are disposed of or opened up. I also wonder what Tsing would do with the idea of negative commons-spaces that operate as commons in being open for use (and salvage) but only at an intense biological cost. It's an important distinction to make, I think-that between commons that sustain life and those commons of last resort, those that sustain life in the short term while also quickly burning it up.
Though perhaps Tsing gets at this in her later definitions of the commons ("Latent commons are not good for everyone," "Latent commons cannot redeem us," but she doesn't approach these discussions with her usual knack for alluring examples.
/
A quote that stuck: "Salvage is not an ornament on ordinary capitalist processes; it is a feature of how capitalism works" (63).
/
Thank for the book, Carra.
November 20, 2022
Ok, this was such a mind-blowing read, one of the craziest I have read this year along with How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence. Both happened to be about mushrooms.
Sighting Japan’s economic rise in the 80s as the direct cause of end-capitalism in the USA (And elsewhere) today is a wild wild theory with which one may or may not agree, but just to read about all these crazy facts surrounding Matsutake mushrooms and people who work in the field is worth a read.
(It’s an academic book so writing can be a bit dry at times I’m warning ya. I say it's 4.5 stars because of that, but not the author's fault.)
Sighting Japan’s economic rise in the 80s as the direct cause of end-capitalism in the USA (And elsewhere) today is a wild wild theory with which one may or may not agree, but just to read about all these crazy facts surrounding Matsutake mushrooms and people who work in the field is worth a read.
(It’s an academic book so writing can be a bit dry at times I’m warning ya. I say it's 4.5 stars because of that, but not the author's fault.)
February 5, 2021
Really wanted to love this but it reads like a robot ingested a load of Goldsmiths social studies MA dissertations and regurgitated something soulless - will probably give it another try one day
November 10, 2020
This book is extraordinary and a joy to read.
January 20, 2024
Het onderwerp en het uitgevoerde onderzoek vond ik interessant, de schrijfstijl en chaotische hoofdstukken vond ik daarentegen niet heel fijn tijdens het lezen. Vanaf een bepaald punt was het heel veel herhaling, terwijl ze niet heel duidelijk een punt maakte. Het boek belichaamde misschien ook een beetje het avontuur van de paddestoelen zoektocht, maar dat deed niet heel veel voor mij…
September 23, 2022
Het állerbeste boek dat ik ooit las!!! Over kapitalisme, de klimaatcrisis, medemenselijkheid, paddenstoelen en zoveel meer.
July 28, 2022
I have come to realize that one of the greatest challenges in Sustainability science is the communication of the dire situation to the general readers, without evoking hopelessness and helplessness.
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing does a brilliant job of communicating the story of the climatic emergency and the cost of inaction from the capitalistic economy without sounding preachy. This book is an example of what a powerful narration and story can do to tickle the imagination of those in a different field, to question the already accepted ideas/concepts/models. This book is also suggested as an academic reading in many universities, and I cannot stress how wonderful such a recommendation is.
Sustainability scientists have been writing academic papers on the topics/ subjects dealt by Anna here. But, when the same concepts are told through the journey of a mushroom, it becomes intimate and more understandable.
This is a fantastic book.
(I would also recommend the books of Amitav Ghosh on the same subjects to understand the power of narration of complex ideas that are discussed vigorously in academia and policy makers).
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing does a brilliant job of communicating the story of the climatic emergency and the cost of inaction from the capitalistic economy without sounding preachy. This book is an example of what a powerful narration and story can do to tickle the imagination of those in a different field, to question the already accepted ideas/concepts/models. This book is also suggested as an academic reading in many universities, and I cannot stress how wonderful such a recommendation is.
Sustainability scientists have been writing academic papers on the topics/ subjects dealt by Anna here. But, when the same concepts are told through the journey of a mushroom, it becomes intimate and more understandable.
This is a fantastic book.
(I would also recommend the books of Amitav Ghosh on the same subjects to understand the power of narration of complex ideas that are discussed vigorously in academia and policy makers).
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