I found this ethnography interesting because it traces ethnic formation in the Southeast Asian diaspora through the lens of the matsutake mushroom. I knew culture and economic livelihood were tied together, but it was interesting to read about the extent to which matsutake mushrooms brought the Iu Mien community together in Oregon’s Cascade Mountains. One line in particularly struck me in which community members described the matsutake smell as evoking “village life and a child visiting grandparents and chasing dragonflies.” One type of food commodity can unify a community in terms of evoking memories of that ethnic enclave growing and cultural customs such as ways to cook matsutake.
The evidence Tsing uses to make her argument are accounts of her experiences interacting with Iu Mien community members, tasting matsutake mushrooms cooked in different ways, and traveling to trace the commodity chain of matsutake mushrooms. She uses these experiences to argue that matsutake mushrooms are fundamental to a global commodity chain and are key parts of Japanese and Southeast Asian cultures. My question about her methods is how many people does she estimate talking to in her ethnography? And how long and how deep of a relationship did she develop with each of those people?