Research that matters

I really enjoyed the writing style of Dr. Carwil Bjork-James. Engaging and vibrant, I found it very easy to stay on top of what he was introducing or describing in the introduction, and chapters 1 and 3. I also really liked the inclusion of figures and charts/graphs, as well as “block out”/”call out” styling for certain explanations/important concepts. Particularly I liked the formatting of the Spanish terms as italicized with definition/translation afterwards. A small detail but enjoyable.

I’m interested to see what the thought process/reasoning behind some of the chosen quotes and formatting in the chapters was. Also why certain people were chosen to be focused on more than others: was this decision made while conducting interviews/following/observing around? Or was it something that was reviewed and changed around as the writing developed?

In this chapter, the author points out that industrial revolution has ruined our environment and she calls for action to change how the society interacts with the environment. The most striking part of this text is of course the wild mushroom trade. The way this group of people used such a small thing and turned it into an industry and changed their community and how it interacts with the nature is fascinating. Different societies have different ways to build communities and make progress. I am wondering how this thinking (multifaceted and unconventional) can affect other parts of our lives as we continue to live in communities.

While reading these chapters, I was left with questions that emphasize the necessity for meticulous deliberation and deliberate implementation of this specific research approach.   Although ethnography offers a detailed and all-encompassing description of a social environment from the perspective of the individuals involved, it also presents several inquiries and difficulties. How can academics effectively avoid imposing their cultural prejudices on the civilizations they are studying? How can individuals effectively address the ethical considerations that emerge while engaging deeply with a different culture? Further, what are the most effective methods for incorporating ethnography into diverse fields of study, particularly those that lie beyond the realm of social sciences? How can the time-intensive process of ethnography be balanced with the rapid requirements of certain sectors or projects?
My collective understanding of Murchison’s take on ethnography offers a profound understanding of human behaviour and civilizations that cannot be exaggerated, even in the face of these difficulties. I believe that it continues to be a potent instrument for comprehending and analyzing the planet in our vicinity, which leaves many loose ends and open-ended questions.

In choosing research topics across all fields and methods of study, I’ve found that I tend to have what my professors call “very interesting ideas worth studying” with limitations they call “hard to achieve as an undergraduate in  one semester”.

In thinking of potential research areas for this course, I’ve sort of hit a wall in terms of what interests me and what I know I can achieve. I found chapter 2 of the Murchison reading to be particularly helpful in reorienting myself and my ideation process because it both offered concise advice and details on the starting process as well as reassurances that the topic is allowed to (and likely will) change as you continue the research process.

Something that stood out to me in the section about discovering the “nonobvious” was the idea of the ‘etic’ and ’emic’ perspectives—the ethnographer and their perspective as themselves is also very important to ethnographic research. I wonder if the ability to identify/distinguish between etic and emic perspectives changes depending on where the ethnographer starts: as an outsider or insider in the group they wish to study?

While reading these chapters, a couple of things stood out to me. Specifically, the notion that the ethnographic topic chosen should be in a constant state of evolution and change. It is emphasized that the topic should not only be consistently “shifting” but also should “add” valuable information not covered in popular sources. Additionally, it was helpful to be reminded that the chosen topic should not only cater to personal needs and interests but also align with the needs and interests of the informant. All these reminders point to larger ethical questions to consider in the research process.

This brought to mind some details I previously highlighted within Tsing’s introduction. I commented on the idea that it is the researcher’s obligation to be cognizant of how their words could potentially be interpreted and consumed by the public.

In Chapters 2 and 3, Murchison (2010) provides a thoughtful overview of how the object of ethnographic study is shaped by first identifying research “problems” or questions then developing a research design that effectively addresses these problems/questions given the accessibility and limitations of the researcher, their informants, their field site, and their resources. From selecting a site to the ethnographer’s intersubjective positionality, from building community trust to the legal, ethical, and sociopolitical restrictions and risks, numerous factors influence the feasibility, extent, breadth, and depth of an ethnographic project. Oftentimes, ethnographer finds themselves in a balancing act adjusting their research and methods to the needs and desires of their informants and community members, their academic and financial institutions, their readers, external organizations, and themselves. Each component requires adequate time and thoughtful consideration. It can be a significant undertaking. In fact, the difficulty of this very balancing act is something an eighth-year graduate student conducting ethnoarchaeological research among Ch’ol Maya communities in Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico, communicated to me himself.

Ethnoarchaeology both in name and practice exists at the crossroads of ethnographic and archaeological methodologies. It provides hope for an archaeologist to approximate towards the coveted yet often rarely fully-flourished “four-field approach” in anthropology. The imaginary line between past and present often is often blurred and nonexistent in a cyclical worldview. Yet, Murchison’s readings reminded me of some of the major methodological issues and considerations that ethnography can pose, especially as part of a larger ethnoarchaeological initiative. Historically, ethnography and ethnoarchaeological research have often been used to supplement understandings and interpretations of cultural artifacts and features identified in the archaeological record, although sometimes at the expense of acknowledging change and agency among contemporary communities. As a response to decolonial shifts in anthropological discourse, ethnoarchaeology’s applications have expanded towards deeply integrating local and heritage community oral histories regarding and relationships to archaeological sites, cultural artifacts, and the past, especially as part of larger community-based project initiatives. Yet daring to pursue an ethnoarchaeological approach, especially as a novice researcher, puts the research at risk of either being too “descriptive” or “exploratory” for contemporary ethnographic standards or labeled less “disciplined” or “rigourous” by a scientific audience. Balancing both worlds to develop an effective research project and argument requires significant time and energy, often at the burden of the researcher (e.g. such as completing a dissertation in a reasonable time frame in the case of my colleague in Mexico).

Reading this text brought me back to many slightly less than fun conversations I had with my advisor while writing my senior undergrad thesis. He was a much more methodologically traditional anthropologist than I wanted to be, and we chafed a lot in terms of thinking about what ethnography should and can be. I was (and still am) deeply invested in collaborative, activist anthropologies and, to his chagrin, actively resisted coming up with my own research question. Instead, I would plant myself on a little soapbox and tell him that I refused to create a research question that wasn’t forged in dialogue with my collaborators (he could call me an idealist, I would call him overly conservative… which was ultimately a very generative endeavor).

To an extent, I still stand by my (over)idealistic approach–– shooting for the stars and whatnot can be helpful in moving towards collaboration. The nuance I was missing, however, is that sometimes you need a question to get started. Murchison’s second chapter speaks about the processes of finding a topic, while the third chapter moves into the actual creation of a research question and research design. I still am grappling with the point where engaged ethnography meets exploratory research, as I fear that formulating a preliminary question based on my perspectives, goals, and expectations would result in a less engaged project later on as I share my thoughts with collaborators. In truth, this is the bind I’m stuck in right now–– earlier projects of mine have had community connections already built in, as service and personal relationships predated research. Now, as a graduate student, I’ve been transplanted into Nashville, and I don’t have the roots to begin a collaborative project right off the bat. Which would be fine and dandy, except there is a pressure to begin fieldwork as soon as humanly possible, and I begin to feel like any research I would do would be research for my own sake, not to benefit and support the community organizations that I hope to work with…

Apologies for the quick tangent, but the Murchison chapter very much brought up the conversations I’ve been having with myself lately. How do you get started doing activist, engaged research when you’re weary about creating research questions (even knowing that they will shift, change, and grow)?

In this reading, I found myself captivated by Tsing’s unique approach, and ability to explore the complexities of our world through the lens of the matsutake mushroom. Tsing’s research on the matsutake mushroom which is a species known to flourish in places affected by human encroachment, acts as a symbolic metaphor showcasing the ecological instability of our world. One of the questions that lingers in my mind is how Tsing’s concept of “salvage accumulation” and “latent commons” can be applied to other aspects of our society beyond the realm of the matsutake mushroom. However, I am left questioning if we can discover more “latent commons” in our society that are presently disregarded or underestimated, and how would acknowledging and fostering these commons enhance our collective survival and well-being?

Reading and annotating Murchinson’s chapters made me realise how much my own research projects need refining. I found myself trying to check all the boxes (find a topic that needs to be studied, that contributes to a larger body of knowledge and is oriented towards problem solving etc…) but when it came to more concrete aspects of my work like data collection I was made aware that I am not nearly enough organized or systematic as an ethnographer. The chapters reminded me indeed of my status of apprentice before anything else – an apprentice who needs to keep her expectations and preconceived notions in check. In my line of work, it seems indeed so easy to put the subjects of my research in a box – the bad guys, the villain male supremacists etc. But their reality is a lot more diverse and complex than this and it is my responsibility as the ethnographer to not occult all these complexities in my quest to knowledge.

Which brings me to the fascinating topic of ethics. Murchinson is very clear when it comes to the fact that the ethnographer’s primary responsibility is to their informant. And I agree. Having access to their inner thoughts and experiences is a privilege one should be aware of. No matter who they are, I shall protect their privacy and anonimity if they wished to remain so. However, a complete other range of ethical questions was raised thereafter: for instance, in order to have access to certain resource and data, I find myself having to give money to miscellaneous radical groups whose ideology I am committed in fighting, which would go against my personal principles. But at the same time, if I don’t pay them that money (to assist to a conference or have access to a membership for a certain website or newspaper) I won’t have access to the information I need. This conundrum to this day leaves me puzzled.

This is my second time reading the earlier chapters of The Mushroom at the End of the World, and what stands out to me this semester is very different from my first time around: previously I was focused on Tsing’s comments on “first, second, third” natures whereas this time around her emphasis on industrial promise and ecological ruin in the beginning of ‘Arts of Noticing’ caught my attention first.

Perhaps also because I’m taking another course that discusses the concept of the ‘Anthropocene’ my attention is directed there, namely that Tsing appears to take some issue with the naming of such an epoch. The term uses “anthropo-” as prefix for human when the cause for disturbances is moreso (in her eyes) the “advent of modern capitalism” (Tsing 19), but is the rise of capitalism not intrinsically tied to human history? I do agree that the term ‘Anthropocene’ is a misnomer: linking the human species and our biology to such an epoch doesn’t make much sense, but can we really say that simply because capitalism turns humans into “resources” and turns people against one another that “modern human conceit” (Tsing 19) is not directly a part of our biological and psychological evolution?

What more is her discussion of ‘precarity’: how maybe uncertainty is at the core of all things we seek to discover and create from. I think this makes sense based on the introduction she gives about finding mushrooms in the ruined Oregon forest as well as her brief history on matsutake in Japan: there are things that we notice when we are uncertain that we would not otherwise see.

As I read Tsing’s introduction, I found myself drawn towards the way Tsing frames her research and the book as a whole. More specifically, I was struck by the manner in which she assumes responsibility both as a researcher and an author. Throughout the introduction, I observed Tsing’s keen awareness of the implications associated with producing a work for public consumption. An illustrative instance of this awareness is evident in her interjection, “this is not an excuse for further damage. Still,…” This, coupled with her recognition and embrace of the “patchiness” discovered through her exploration, conveys a profound message about the essential awareness an author must possess.

Rather than imposing conclusions or remaining oblivious to the potential interpretations of her words, there is instead a deliberate acceptance and care in conveying the ‘correct message.’

Dating the start of the anthropocene to “the advent of modern capitalism” (Tsing 2015: 19) serves as a thought-provoking framework for situating the livelihood of commercial mushroom picking. By positioning the matsutake as both a post-industrial luxury of high economic value and as a resilient and unpredictable being in the face of industrial production and human destruction, Tsing sets the foundation for using mushrooms as an analogy for the illusions of progress and anthropogenic impacts of capitalism. I’m curious to see how evidence in later chapters might support Tsing’s framework. Will this way of life that is “not a common characteristic of all humans” provide an alternative option to the illusions of progress that drives the global economy or serve as a niche case of human and non-human survival in an exploitative capitalist system? As an ethnographer, how might Tsing portray the narratives and agency of nonhuman beings in later chapters? 

I appreciated the way that Tsing’s incorporated reflections on methodological approach and collaboration within her discussions of entanglements. From the second page of text, anthropology and capital-R Research is explicitly defined by their rootedness in the very same entanglements: “Below the forest floor, fungal bodies extend themselves in nets and skeins, binding roots and mineral soils, long before producing mushrooms. All books emerge from similarly hidden collaborations” (viii). Working from this perspective, Tsing moves on to state her intention of “explor[ing] a new anthropology of always-in-process collaboration” (ix) to frame the design of this project as a whole. A final direct quotation I will pull from this section is in regards to knowledge generation: “[at UC Santa Cruz] I glimpsed how scholarship could cross between natural science and cultural studies not just through critique but also through world-building knowledge” (x).

Although Enabling Entanglements serves as an acknowledgement section of the overall text, I was particularly drawn to the immediacy of the connection between the entanglements of mushrooms, our globalized world, and scholarship itself. Too often the processes of research are made exempt from the forces that shape our objects of research; by taking an analytical lens, we are free to see our work as outside of whatever we may be interrogating. However, Tsing situates her research as embedded in the very same webs that she writes about and embraces it, discussing how later volumes build upon the work that she presents in The Mushroom at the End of the World.

One additional quote that I think would be worthwhile to talk through in class is present at the end of Chapter 1: “The modern human conceit won’t let a description be anything more than a decorative footnote” (19-20). I think this point is central to thinking about the role of ethnography within contemporary research, and I am eager to hear how we each come to challenge or embrace this notion of thick description.

What fascinated me in this text is the representation of mushrooms as a Janus-faced entity: one the one hand, the mushroom reveals the putative truth of human condition as precarious, and on the other, presents itself as one example of salvation through unsuspected sustainability. When the author mentions “precarity” in the introduction when talking about human condition, I understood it first as “unpredictability. Unpredictability in the face of what one might come across in one’s ethnography as well as unpredictability in one’s human life course. Within that unpredictability however, mushrooms seem to paradoxically embody a certain line of balance that run through human life: they feed us, they are bestowed upon an aesthetic and cultural hue but they essentially precede us and will long outlive us.
This makes me reflect on the subject of anthropocentrism: mushrooms’ resilience in the face of human precarity and apparent capacity for (self-)destruction demonstrate the stability that the anthropocene and human hybris desperately appear to lack.
This isn’t all: the anthropomorphisation of matsukake mushrooms (“Mushrooms are like people. American mushrooms are white because their people are white…”) says more about its human consumers than them and embodies a critique of human tendencies by betraying the compulsive human need for taxonomy, categrorization and hierarchisation which ultimately are responsible for many of the woes that contribute to that feeling of human precarity.
Finally, this text reminded me of  the ethnographic text How Forests Think by E. Kohn who depicts the conferring of agency to non-human beings. And indeed maybe human condition is that of precarity. But that would make that of mushroom, resiliance.

In this chapter, Jegathesan seeks to answer the question of how ur is experienced by the “landless citizens who continue to inhabit the industrial-residential landscape of the tea plantations” (102). The links and bonds that exist between these people resists the landscape. It is through this writing that I am drawn to the phenomenon of place-making and spatio-temporal freedom. These workers and their families assert their agency through place-making and the assignment of spatial meaning to their line room homes. Not only do they construct new meaning of ur for themselves and their community, but they also disrupt the dominant geographic constructions of this area where they labor. In this way, they exert power, despite their lack of capital, and create both a permanent and transient space wherein they can engage in identity production and activities that are centered around building community.