Critical Review; The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins
Read: 03/02 - 18/02Format: PhysicalGenre: EthnographyMy rating: ★★★★★
In ‘The Mushroom at the End of the World’ Tsing takes us on an adventure with Japan’s precious matsutake mushroom while shedding light on a plethora of realisations she has come to along the way. The episodic chapters reveal how this beloved Japanese delicacy is entangled with a multitude of Capitalist and non-Capitalist aspects of life. She mainly draws inspiration from what she calls “patches” of Capitalist ruin in many of the forests that surround us today.
At the beginning of this ethnography, the dismal state of our economy is laid bare; stagnant, unstable, precarious. However, as the book progresses something magical happens. Tsing brings back the curiosity that so many of us seem to have lost to the utopian ideal of never-ending human “progress”, all with the help of matsutake.
Since the Anthropocene (which Tsing argues truly began at the dawn of Capitalism) humankind has gleaned so much from linear progress that many seem blind to the rich diversity of the world around us. The basic human desire for safety makes society obsess over order, structure and stability. This is because we have evolved surrounded by so much disorder and precarity that it was necessary to obtain balance. Now, however, we seem to be going the other way. The idyllic dream of linear progress comes at the cost of our freedom. Every day we see heavier restrictions set into place around the world that seem to be doing more harm than good. The scales have flipped.
Against this currect economic backdrop we bein out journey with the wonderful matsutake. Tsing notes that matsutake are much more than a delicious ingredient in Japanese cuisine. They transport people to a long-lost time of thriving forests and a healthy sense of community and countryside that city life has stolen. After WWII, in the 1950’s and 60’s, Japan underwent a period of rapid urbanisation. The once richly diverse forest life has abruptly dissolved as countryside areas were abandoned and left to ruin for the false promise of brighter futures in the city. This created many political, social and cultural issues the effects of which are still being faced today. However, every cloud has a silver lining, or as Tsing puts it, “Mistakes were made… and mushrooms popped up”.
Matsutake can only thrive when left alone, in disturbed forests. Thus, abandoned satoyama (public forests) happen to be the perfect breeding grounds for matsutake. True to their free spirit, and much to the dismay of capitalist cooperation, matsutake cannot grow under controlled conditions, forever preventing them from becoming a harvested, fully alienated commodity. Instead, their ability to freely thrive in precarious forestry must be maintained. For similar reasons of forestry ruin, matsutake grace the soil of a handful of North American forests.
Tsing dedicates a large portion of this book to her experiences in a particular area of Oregon forestry and the people she meets along the way, a place she calls “Open Ticket”. The pickers in Open Ticket are not formally employed workers supported by the state; they are not paid a set wage nor do they earn a stable income and many have other menial jobs to support them. This results in a unique mix of people foraging for mushrooms as a means of survival. She identifies: white veterans, South Asian refugees, as well as undocumented Native American and Latino pickers, each group with their own reasons for dwelling in the forests. Tsing guides us through some of the confusing and precarious paths of forest pickers, recognising many of their struggles as they search for their own freedom in Open Ticket.
The nature of the picking community in North America is only possible because the matsutake supply chain cultivates what Tsing calls “pericapitalist patches”. These are spaces in between Capitalist and non-Capitalist societies, rife with precarity and diversity. These spaces create a unique environment for mushroom transaction to be explored. In Oregon, picking groups function in the same area autonomously, without mingling between groups and only forming bonds of kinship with buyers when it suits them. This upper hand gives pickers the economic freedom to negotiate and demand the highest price for mushrooms at the current value. Extravagant buying tents filled with authentic food and drink are put up to encourage pickers’ loyalty to certain buyers, thereby providing as close to constant a supply of mushrooms as possible.
But buyers in Open Ticket have little to no means of communication for continued trade across the Pacific. Somehow, their mushrooms end up on consumers plates in Japan - how does this work? Tsing accredits this to salvage accumulation which she defines as: the amassing of capital “without controlling the conditions under which commodities are produced”. A multitude of steps are involved within this fragile trade system ensuring balance between precarity and stability in order for matsutake to thrive and be transported across the globe. Middlemen forge the gap between the fluctuating free market of buyers and pickers, and the regulated high-demand Japanese market. Without these middlemen communication would go awry, the delicate supply chain would break down and Japan’s access to American matsutake would inadvertently be lost.
Interestingly, Japanese sellers don’t display any information regarding the location or conditions from which certian matsutake orginate. This lack of knowledge and subsequent irradication ensures the animated community of Open Ticket remains invisible. Foster’s observation, “the politics of value chains entails a politics of knowledge” holds esepecially true in this instance as the indentity and value of each mushroom is dictacted by middlemen who are privy to sufficient information on the supply chain. This separation enables full alienation between Japanese consumers and North American pickers, furthering the misconception of matsutake as purely Japanese.
This poetic ethnography was a pleasure to read and analyse. Tsing closely examines many areas of anthropological thought, namely, concepts of value, gifts and commodities, alienation, informal labour, social and economic systems and man’s relation to nature. Within later chapters concerning biolgical and genetic studies Tsing demonstrates the dependencies and interconnection of species, coming full circle to rhetoric’s echoed in earlier chapters. She states, “unselfconscious privilege allows us to fantasise, counterfactually, that we each survive alone”. This undertone of a deeper, almost spiritual awareness pervades through her critiques on Capitalist society. Tsing rightfully urges us to accept precarity in daily life through awareness of the “here and now”, returning the readers attention to her initial message in Chapter 1, “Arts of Noticing”. If you are looking for a challenging and insightful read that will transport you to a world within our world I emplore you to pick up this ethnography and you will be amazed at what you find.
