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The Mushroom at the End of the World

On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins

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The Mushroom at the End of the World

By: Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
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Summary

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 Anthropology Economics Environmental Economics Social Sciences China Capitalism Socialism Imperial Japan
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A compelling multi-species account of themes around mushroom picking, with a strong development of themes of procerity and personhood under neoliberalism and the new forms of scholarly formulations endorses by people like Haraway. Totally banging book.

The Mushroom at the End of the World

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A great 'read" and extremely well researched. Full of complex and brilliant ideas. I'm ready to start it all over again.

A beautiful, rich and fascinating book.

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brilliant research and narration! thoroughly enjoyed all the different subjects that tie everything together into one ultimate purpose.

enlightening

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Just read this please. Try not to get put off by the occasional lapse into academic sounding language, there is a wealth of experience and understanding and insight into our world in this book, and an openness to open-ended complexity and inter-relatedness, the way any given subject can stretch out and lead us into corners we'd otherwise never encounter.

Please read it, the world?needs more thought like this.

Just the most wonderful subtle fascinating book.

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A fascinating study. Very thought provoking. A little irritated by the reader’s voice but the content itself will interest mushroom lovers and lay people alike.

The comprehensive study of one type of mushroom

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