The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins

by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing Narrated by Susan Ericksen

Overview

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.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

07/27/2015
In this ethnography of the global matsutake mushroom trade, Tsing (Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection) weaves an adventurous tale about the diverse forms of “collaborative survival” that living beings—both human and non-human—negotiate despite the “capitalist damage” of our times. The matsutake, a delicacy in Japan, grows there and in China, Finland, and the U.S. This comprehensive and hopeful book examines the varied “assemblages” (a word used by ecologists in preference to “communities”) that affect the species, from the transnational commodity chain between off-the-grid pickers in Oregon and importers in Japan, to the different trees, nematodes (roundworms), and other forms of life that are necessary for matsutake to thrive. Tsing reveals lesser-known corners of global capitalism by following foragers in three countries: Vietnamese refugees and Vietnam War vets in Oregon, rural workers in China’s Yunnan province, and intergenerational pickers in Japan. Her engrossing account of intersecting cultures and nature’s resilience offers a fresh perspective on modernity and progress. 29 halftones. (Oct.)

Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory

"Provocative. . . . Beginning with an account of the matsutake mushroom, Tsing follows the threads of this organism to tease out an astonishing number of insights about life in the Anthropocene."

From the Publisher

Winner of the 2016 Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing, Society for Humanistic Anthropology

Winner of the 2016 Gregory Bateson Prize, The Society for Cultural Anthropology

Finalist for the 2016 Northern California Book Awards in General Nonfiction, Northern California Book Reviewers

One of Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Books of 2015 in Business and Economics

One of Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Books of 2015 in Science

One of Flavorwire’s 10 Best Books by Academic Publishers in 2015

One of Times Higher Education’s Best Books of 2015

FEBRUARY 2018 - AudioFile

Narrator Susan Ericksen’s performance of this audiobook is a bit on the slow side. The matsutake mushroom, highly valued in Japan, is author Tsing's launching pad as she explores subjects as diverse as logging, refugees, supply chains, history, habitat destruction, academia, and the concept of freedom. Some of Tsing’s stories are real grabbers. Overall, though, there is not a strongly discernable structure to this fairly academic audiobook, and Ericksen does not make it an easier listen. She provides a solid rendition that would be entirely fine for a lot of books, but this one needs a bit more verve in its performance to hold the listener. G.S.D. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2015-06-30
An unusually rewarding meditation on how a wild mushroom can help us see the world's ruined condition after the advent of modern capitalism. The matsutake—a beloved species of mushroom that fetches high prices in Japan—is a survivor that grows inches below ground in deeply human-disturbed forests. Difficult to find and impossible to cultivate, it is said to have been the first living thing to emerge from the devastated landscape of Hiroshima. Bursting with ideas and observations, Tsing's (Anthropology/Univ. of California, Santa Cruz; Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection, 2004, etc.) highly original ethnographic study follows this spicy-smelling mushroom's global commodity chain, from the forests of Oregon's Cascade Mountains and elsewhere to Tokyo auction markets. She recounts her interviews with mushroom pickers, scientists, and entrepreneurs in the United States, Asia, and elsewhere to explore the matsutake's commerce and ecology. "We are stuck with the problem of living despite economic and ecological ruination," she writes. "Neither tales of progress nor of ruin tell us how to think about collaborative survival. It is time to pay attention to mushroom picking. Not that this will save us—but it might open our imaginations." In prose that is both scholarly and deeply personal, Tsing shows how the matsutake, emblematic of survival amid changing circumstances, thrives in transformative collaboration with trees and other species and points the way toward coexisting with environmental disturbance ("the uncontrolled lives of mushrooms are a gift—and a guide—when the controlled world we thought we had fails"). The author covers a staggering array of topics, from freedom, foraging, and forestry to DNA research and the music of John Cage. Consistently fascinating, her story of the picking and selling of this wild mushroom becomes a wonderful window on contemporary life. Serious readers will delight in these pages.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170823871
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	11/28/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	949,999

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