Okay, so hear me out. Anna Tsing has somehow created a beautifully anthropological piece that could easily be mistaken for a novel filled with articulate, heartfelt, philosophical soliloquies. From the very beginning, she presents a lens of the world both romantic and tragic while shifting between her individual perspective and the wider world context within which she finds herself. The very basis of her imaginative piece is founded upon the relentless juxtapositions found within the human experience: nature and man, construction and destruction, stability and precarity. Focusing on the foraging and distribution of mushrooms, Tsing introduced themes of interconnectedness, transformation, and unpredictability–traits shared by the experiences of both humans and our fungi friends.
Much to the chagrin of my family and close friends, I know a lot about fungi, mushrooms in particular. Aside from some psychoactive properties, nutritional/health value, and their ability to foster a connection to humans that led to the development of (several!) documentaries, mushrooms are known for their unpredictability. They seem to defy many of the rules of nature as if they have a mind of their own. This unpredictability marries well with the precarity that Tsing describes as “the condition of our time.” (20) At the root of precarity, though, is a lack of control. In fact, control assumes a largely antithetical nature beside precarity. However, traces of it can be found in our socially-constructed ideals of progress. Our industrialized world has a preoccupation with convenience and reliability through subjugation, which is why our agricultural practices have transformed our crops from wild stallions to something far less recognizable, domestic in nature. It is for this reason that I do not believe Tsing’s seeming abhorrence of progress to be an encouragement of stagnation or regression but rather a call for the reimagination of the destination towards which we progress. The way I see it, she instead encourages keen, attentive exploration; to build outwards then strategically upwards–kinda like mushrooms (technically mycelium) do.
With the introduction and first chapter swarming with abundant metaphors and passionate sentiments, I had to ask myself, how does this relate to ethnography? Well, first Tsing introduces and explores the cultural significance of her topic, incorporating both literary and historical evidence to support and inform her research. One of the strengths of anthropological inquiry is in its emphasis on the contemporaneous and competing systems and forces that impact the subject of your study. Tsing does this well by including information on the origins and significance of the matsutake in Japan and the historical context of its appearance and importance in Oregon in the late 1980s. She initially focuses on human’s impact on the environment then, on the environment’s impact on humans spanning from social to economic implications, ultimately blurring the lines between humanity and otherness. Applying this reading to the scope of the class, the greatest ethnographic research (in my opinion) involves temporarily relinquishing your personal assumptions to “open our imaginations” (19) to other’s experiential realities while considering the external forces that press upon them.
So, my question is how can we use the metaphor of the mushroom to improve our ethnographies and our articulation of our subject matter?