I genuinely enjoyed Tsing’s writing style in this book – I tend to enjoy narrative ethnographies more so than formal observations as I believe it is more engaging and offers clearer insight into the role of an anthropologist.
Tsing’s use of the matsutake to speak on the importance of post industrial survival and economic renewal is a unique metaphor that represents the resilience of the mushroom itself. The mushroom’s inability to be domesticated by humans demonstrates its strength in the face of human exploitation and overharvesting of resources. However, it seems that the economic nature of our current society has fallen so low that it offers very few other choices. For instance, those who are in the career of extracting resources from the earth need to do so as a living – they are individuals who perpetuate this exploitation, but the overall problem lies in corporations and capitalistic conflicts.
In this context, I once again find the role of the anthropologist intriguing – in an anthropology class I took last year, we discussed whether it was “morally correct” for an anthropologist to passively observe their area of study, even in the face of injustice, or see such injustice happen and actively take a stance in the problem at hand. Here, it seems that Tsing has not only observed the unique context of the Japanese mushrooms, but also inserts her opinion on what it represents and how human agency can dictate the direction of our future. This leads me to wonder, should anthropologists only distribute such information to others, or should they take a stance in what they believe and mobilize people towards doing what is “right?”