The Mushroom at the End of the World

On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins

By: Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

Narrated by: Susan Ericksen

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.

©2015 Princeton University Press (P)2017 Tantor

so much to tell about a mushroom

First of all I should say that this kind of anthropological, ethnographic combined with biological, environmental research is quite new to me.
Tsing takes you through the complete value chain of the Matsutake mushroom and uncovers as far as I can remember two kinds of stories about capitalism that are intertwined.

The mushroom was a delicacy in Japan because it was so rare and only grows in certain pine forests. However, due to human intervention in the forests of Oregon, the mushroom started to flourish. This is where southeast Asian migrants (war refugees) started to make a living from this mushroom, picking them on common land and selling them in the 'open ticket' market in Vancouver. This is what she calls 'salvage accumulation', whereby common resources are turned into private profits.

At the same time she tries to take these scenarios as examples for living in precarity. She goes into great detail in how the mushroom is foraged and traded and what the customs and beliefs of the migrant as well as the white pickers and sellers are. She draws parallels in between the mushroom itself and how it only grows in a ravaged landscape and how people (could) live. She analyses how the mushroom makes its journey from spore to fruiting body of the mycelium, picked and sold, until once it's on its way in a crate it has become a 'full capitalist commodity', whereafter it becomes entwined again in cultural practices of giving and ceremony and the non-capitalist values that encompasses.

Because her book branches out into so many detailed accounts of these different aspects of the mushroom, it's sometimes hard to keep track of the point she's trying to make. I started listening not knowing what I would hear exactly and perhaps a sort of map, chart or legend (book summary) would have helped. It's only after finishing that I start to see the web and links that she has been spinning.
The narrator does a really good job and takes you into the story. I did however, start listening at 1.3 times the speed to keep myself more engaged.

Had to make her talk faster

It’s a heavy text book, but with the slow reading, I couldn’t see the big picture and the concept Tsing was highlighting. As for the writing itself, I wish she would go in depth more with technogical terms, and stop saying “i imagine”- redundancies...?maybe just my taste...? Yet, I don’t mind rereading and listening to this again though. Super interesting topic.

great text

great text. i don't know why, but the narrator's voice never say well with me. something about the affect i think--probably just a personal preference

saTOyaMA

Once again I wish Audible would make sure narrators can pronounce at least one of the languages they’re going to be reading names and loan words in. I don’t speak any of the southeast Asian languages that many of the names of the subjects in this book come from, but the narrator’s Japanese pronunciation was painful enough I had to give up.

Brilliant

A clever, novel and inspiring perspective on post modern society, capitalism, ecology, biology, anthropology... And probably another few fields I am missing.
I just finished listening and I am starting it again.

Masterful

This is collaborative scholarship at its best. This work gave me hope in these times of collapse.

Brilliant

Everyone who lives on earth, under capitalism, in a society, with a human heart should read this amazing book. So many ideas, so much insight.

About SO MUCH more than “ just” mushrooms.

Stunning

This book is a remarkable example of contemporary scholarship and its promise. If you don’t have an academic background, some of the ongoing debates may not feel completely pertinent, and yet this book taken as a whole offers a compelling glimpse of a different way of understanding the world — a difference that we scholars have been working on now for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
Suggest this book to your reading group, and your nerdy cousin. Let the spores of an untimely history fly into the atmosphere!

my favorite book ever

Capitalism, mushrooms, geopolitical history, human behavior. I couldn't ask for a better book. it is very entertaining and educational.

Great read for economists and naturalists alike

This has become one of my most highly recommended books to the point I convinced my brother in law whom is a literary professor at CU Boulder to add it to one of his courses. Fungi is a connector and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing uses this wondrous mushroom to connect vastly different worlds and economies by following the lines in the soil. Read this book and share it.