Mushroom at the End of the World

No cover — Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing: Mushroom at the End of the World (2015, Princeton University Press)

352 pages

English language

Published Jan. 2, 2015 by Princeton University Press.

ISBN:: 978-1-4008-7354-8

(1 review)

"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,"--Amazon.com.

5 editions

enne📚 reviewed The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

The Mushroom at the End of the World

4 stars

I heard about The Mushroom at the End of the World from this Sophie from Mars video called "The World Is Not Ending", which talks quite a bit about mushrooms, and doomerism, and quotes frequently from this book.

I don't read a lot of non-fiction, but this book quite deliberately and explicitly structures itself in a rambling manner, interspersing history and anecdotes, with tangents galore. Rather than some formal thesis and organized argument, this book paints a series of encounters with matsutake mushrooms in varying contexts and perspectives, with a thematic framing.

If I had to sum it up, the book posits that progress (and even hope) are part of capitalism and its need to scale and organize and alienate; if we are to thrive in the decline of capitalism, then we need different tools that often fall in its margins: noticing, unpredictable encounters, new relationships, and more mutualism. …

I heard about The Mushroom at the End of the World from this Sophie from Mars video called "The World Is Not Ending", which talks quite a bit about mushrooms, and doomerism, and quotes frequently from this book.

I don't read a lot of non-fiction, but this book quite deliberately and explicitly structures itself in a rambling manner, interspersing history and anecdotes, with tangents galore. Rather than some formal thesis and organized argument, this book paints a series of encounters with matsutake mushrooms in varying contexts and perspectives, with a thematic framing.

If I had to sum it up, the book posits that progress (and even hope) are part of capitalism and its need to scale and organize and alienate; if we are to thrive in the decline of capitalism, then we need different tools that often fall in its margins: noticing, unpredictable encounters, new relationships, and more mutualism.

I also enjoyed this review which gets at all of this much better than I can.

Subjects

Human ecology
Economic development, environmental aspects
Environmental degradation