{"id":7962,"date":"2019-01-28T03:18:15","date_gmt":"2019-01-28T03:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/the-mushroom-at-the-end-of-the-world\/"},"modified":"2019-01-28T03:18:15","modified_gmt":"2019-01-28T03:18:15","slug":"the-mushroom-at-the-end-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/en\/the-mushroom-at-the-end-of-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"The mushroom at the end of the world"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In this book, U.S. anthropologist <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Anna_Tsing\">Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing<\/a> tells the story of the edible mushroom <em>matsutake &#8211; <\/em>and its relationship to its environment, to non-human and human actors. From its interconnections &#8211; underground as well as above ground, culinary and economic, to its role in ethnic and identity politics, its smell and the poems of the last centuries praising it.<\/p>\n<p>One reading of the book could be that it is based on the question of the survival of human beings in a world that is itself becoming a great &#8220;ruin of capitalism,&#8221; exploited and destroyed by a globalized economic system that is irretrievably consuming human and non-human resources in a highly complex manner. Tsings&#8217; ethnographic-ecological plea for collaborations and alliances, for relationships and networks argues and narrates the life of the <em>Matsutake <\/em>and that of the people<em> &#8211; <\/em>far from hollowed-out formulas of concern or foreshortening, but with political imagination, attitude and radicalism.<\/p>\n<p>The matsutake mushroom is one of the most expensive foods in the world and grows preferentially in post-industrial landscapes, in &#8220;the ruins of capitalism.&#8221; It is not cultivable, so it cannot be grown by humans. Millions upon millions of its roots permeate the soil and decompose it, creating the basis for the growth of other, non-human creatures. It grows rapidly and, because of its high market value, is usually quickly gone again &#8211; often picked by precarious, migrant collectors, who are often denied access to other wage labor.<\/p>\n<p>The polyphony of this thematic structure also flows into its form &#8211; Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing writes vividly and literarily, without losing sight of theoretical approaches, transdisciplinary, without releasing her essay into a formal arbitrariness. It follows the tracks of the <a href=\"https:\/\/people.ucsc.edu\/~atsing\/migrated\/matsutake\/group.html\"><br \/>\n  <em>Matsutake<\/em><br \/>\n<\/a> &#8211; across genre, country and era boundaries.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing 2018: The mushroom at the end of the world. About life in the ruins of capitalism. Berlin: Matthes &amp; Seitz<\/p>\n<p>If you don&#8217;t have a bookstore worth supporting near you, you can also buy the book from the alternative non-profit online bookstore <a href=\"http:\/\/links-lesen.de\">links-lesen.de<\/a>, which supports political projects with the profits. The link to the book can be found <a href=\"https:\/\/links-lesen.buchkatalog.de\/Product\/3000002019179\/55741\/10002\/-3\/Buecher_Sachbuecher\/Anna-Lowenhaupt-Tsing\/Der-Pilz-am-Ende-der-Welt\/4099276460822241391\/%204099276460822241224\/%204099276460822241224\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this book, U.S. anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing tells the story of the edible mushroom matsutake &#8211; and its relationship to its environment, to non-human and human actors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7839,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[401,377],"tags":[362,428,378,405,396,432,463],"class_list":{"0":"post-7962","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"category-trade-literature","9":"tag-capitalism","10":"tag-classism","11":"tag-globalization","12":"tag-historiography","13":"tag-postcolonialism","14":"tag-solidarity","15":"tag-working-conditions"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/pilz_am_ende_der_welt.png",785,415,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/pilz_am_ende_der_welt-300x300.png",300,300,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/pilz_am_ende_der_welt-600x317.png",600,317,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/pilz_am_ende_der_welt-768x406.png",768,406,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/pilz_am_ende_der_welt.png",785,415,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/pilz_am_ende_der_welt.png",785,415,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/pilz_am_ende_der_welt.png",785,415,false],"bunyad-small":["https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/pilz_am_ende_der_welt.png",150,79,false],"bunyad-medium":["https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/pilz_am_ende_der_welt.png",450,238,false],"bunyad-full":["https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/pilz_am_ende_der_welt.png",785,415,false],"bunyad-viewport":["https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/pilz_am_ende_der_welt.png",785,415,false],"bunyad-768":["https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/pilz_am_ende_der_welt.png",768,406,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"glokal e.V.","author_link":"https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/en\/author\/glokal\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"In this book, U.S. anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing tells the story of the edible mushroom matsutake - and its relationship to its environment, to non-human and human actors.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mangoes-and-bullets.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}