The Mushroom at the End of the World.: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins
(eBook)

"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" Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing is professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of Friction and In the Realm of the Diamond Queen (both Princeton). What a rare mushroom can teach us about sustaining life on a fragile planet 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. "Highly original. . . . This book brilliantly turns the commerce and ecology of this most rare mushroom into a modern parable of post-industrial survival and environmental renewal."---Peter D Smith, The Guardian "There's a double meaning to Tsing's title. The mushroom is at the end of the known world because it's hard to find, a secret tucked deep in the forest. But she's also hinting at the end of the world as we know it, given our instinct for extracting as much from the earth as we can. Humanity has never seemed so finely calibrated and rationalized: the seamless journey of a very expensive mushroom from nature to a dinner plate tells this story."---Hua Hsu, New Yorker "Evolves into a well-researched and thought-provoking meditation on capitalism, resilience, and survival."---E. Ce Miller, Bustle.com "This was a year of many of books about the Anthropocene--the name now frequently invoked to describe an era of incalculable human impact on geological and ecological conditions. Few of these books are as focused and useful as Tsing's, which follows the supply chain of the Matsutake, the most valuable mushroom in the world, through 'Japanese gourmets, capitalist traders, Hmong jungle fighters, industrial forests, Yi Chinese goat herders, Finnish nature guides, and more.' How else to negotiate the conditions--if there are any--for our survival?"---Jonathan Sturgeon, Flavorwire "A fascinating account of the biology, ecology, genetics and anthropology of the world's most valued mushroom."---Louise O. Fresco, Times Higher Education "A poetic and remarkably fertile exploration of the relationship between human beings and the natural environment, and what can still be done to stem its rapid deterioration."---Pankaj Mishra, The Guardian "A beautiful, humble book. . . . [A]nth