- Email: [email protected]
Foraging for the future
culturelab
Foraging for the future Lisa Ma finds a sustainable global business thriving at society’s margins
THERE is a fungus often given as a gift in Japan that cannot be cultivated. But it was the first thing to grow in the area after the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima. This ability to survive is perhaps part of the reason matsutake are such a desirable commodity. In Japan, they are synonymous with fertility, longevity, autumn and the changing of the seasons. But the trees the mushrooms grow under have been plagued by infection, and matsutake are becoming rarer in Japan. Good, local specimens can sell for $200 each and they are also imported to meet demand. All of this gives a society that values the mushroom the chance to balance ecological and economic needs in new ways, says anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing in The Mushroom at the End of the World. And the effects are felt in other countries and communities. Deep in the Cascade mountains in the US, Asian immigrants and refugees gather to harvest matsutake for cash. Disparate communities of Mien, Hmong, Lao and Khmer form separate campsites, sharing pho soup, tripe broth and the odd shot of scorpion alcohol in a nostalgic recreation of a past village life. The global business of gathering matsutake mushrooms is thriving 44 | NewScientist | 24 October 2015
Many are equipped with jungle Tsing writes detailed accounts skills from the Indochinese wars of her encounters with unfamiliar and hunting for matsutake is both and complex people. She has a salve for their war traumas and little time for hand-waving, and a livelihood. For them, matsutake finds something conceited in the provides a welcome alternative term “Anthropocene”. Human to factory work, and a way of activities may have become the avoiding cultural assimilation. main impact on Earth, but they Forests have always been a do not happen in a vacuum. What haven of refuseniks, from Robin about those moments and places Hood to the Unabomber, but where humans and non-humans Tsing’s description of the free“Many Japanese say they market mechanism sustaining fantasise about eating these mushroom-picking matsutake as though it “renegades” is surprising. This were merely food” fringe community, she says, sustains “Japanese-sponsored supply chains because of their converge to achieve “collaborative overlapping yet diverging survival”? Tsing’s idea of commitments to the freedom of ecology makes room for human the forest”. She then expands on participation. She allows us to her ideas about where humans sit handle and enjoy the world. And in the natural order of things. she celebrates the way certain
Todd Bigelow/Aurora Photos
The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Princeton University Press, $29.95/£19.95
activities, particularly foraging, maintain biodiversity. At the other end of the supply chain, mushrooms are distributed according to a strict code. The wholesalers and auctioneers in Japan are matchmakers rather than salespeople, and ensure that this rare produce is appropriately assigned to the right clientele and occasion. Matsutake is much more than a commodity. As a gift it plays an important role in marriages and other ceremonies to do with long-term relationships. In fact, the mushroom is so loaded with convention, many Japanese admit to indulging defiant fantasies in which they devour matsutake as though it were merely food. Tsing builds a panoramic account of traditional peasant land rights, and how researchers in places as far apart as Japan, China and Finland are beginning to consider their ecological value. Tsing’s book is more than just another microhistorical study. Her case studies give inspiration to those of us who rant about ecological problems but fail to produce tangible proposals. The matsutake fungus and the people involved in its distribution live “in spite of capitalism”, she says, and in spite of those who would preserve nature in some notional “pristine” state. Tsing has an idea of ecology that allows us to touch, use and care for the world without the scolding that usually follows. It might be somewhat idealistic to suggest that our future could be saved by the system she describes, but there may be ways to apply the idea to other walks of life. n Lisa Ma is a speculative designer
Foraging for the future Lisa Ma finds a sustainable global business thriving at society’s margins
THERE is a fungus often given as a gift in Japan that cannot be cultivated. But it was the first thing to grow in the area after the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima. This ability to survive is perhaps part of the reason matsutake are such a desirable commodity. In Japan, they are synonymous with fertility, longevity, autumn and the changing of the seasons. But the trees the mushrooms grow under have been plagued by infection, and matsutake are becoming rarer in Japan. Good, local specimens can sell for $200 each and they are also imported to meet demand. All of this gives a society that values the mushroom the chance to balance ecological and economic needs in new ways, says anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing in The Mushroom at the End of the World. And the effects are felt in other countries and communities. Deep in the Cascade mountains in the US, Asian immigrants and refugees gather to harvest matsutake for cash. Disparate communities of Mien, Hmong, Lao and Khmer form separate campsites, sharing pho soup, tripe broth and the odd shot of scorpion alcohol in a nostalgic recreation of a past village life. The global business of gathering matsutake mushrooms is thriving 44 | NewScientist | 24 October 2015
Many are equipped with jungle Tsing writes detailed accounts skills from the Indochinese wars of her encounters with unfamiliar and hunting for matsutake is both and complex people. She has a salve for their war traumas and little time for hand-waving, and a livelihood. For them, matsutake finds something conceited in the provides a welcome alternative term “Anthropocene”. Human to factory work, and a way of activities may have become the avoiding cultural assimilation. main impact on Earth, but they Forests have always been a do not happen in a vacuum. What haven of refuseniks, from Robin about those moments and places Hood to the Unabomber, but where humans and non-humans Tsing’s description of the free“Many Japanese say they market mechanism sustaining fantasise about eating these mushroom-picking matsutake as though it “renegades” is surprising. This were merely food” fringe community, she says, sustains “Japanese-sponsored supply chains because of their converge to achieve “collaborative overlapping yet diverging survival”? Tsing’s idea of commitments to the freedom of ecology makes room for human the forest”. She then expands on participation. She allows us to her ideas about where humans sit handle and enjoy the world. And in the natural order of things. she celebrates the way certain
Todd Bigelow/Aurora Photos
The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Princeton University Press, $29.95/£19.95
activities, particularly foraging, maintain biodiversity. At the other end of the supply chain, mushrooms are distributed according to a strict code. The wholesalers and auctioneers in Japan are matchmakers rather than salespeople, and ensure that this rare produce is appropriately assigned to the right clientele and occasion. Matsutake is much more than a commodity. As a gift it plays an important role in marriages and other ceremonies to do with long-term relationships. In fact, the mushroom is so loaded with convention, many Japanese admit to indulging defiant fantasies in which they devour matsutake as though it were merely food. Tsing builds a panoramic account of traditional peasant land rights, and how researchers in places as far apart as Japan, China and Finland are beginning to consider their ecological value. Tsing’s book is more than just another microhistorical study. Her case studies give inspiration to those of us who rant about ecological problems but fail to produce tangible proposals. The matsutake fungus and the people involved in its distribution live “in spite of capitalism”, she says, and in spite of those who would preserve nature in some notional “pristine” state. Tsing has an idea of ecology that allows us to touch, use and care for the world without the scolding that usually follows. It might be somewhat idealistic to suggest that our future could be saved by the system she describes, but there may be ways to apply the idea to other walks of life. n Lisa Ma is a speculative designer