The Mushroom at the End of the World
On the Possibility of Life In Capitalist Ruins
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (Princeton University Press, 2015)
Recommended by Tom Dobbins
Whether at the scale of a building, a material or an ecology, viewing place through a non-human lens is a necessary act towards an empathetic management of its character. It makes space for under-represented qualities and characteristics to gain value, which in turn can expand what is deserving of protection, rehabilitation or praise. Anna Tsing’s observations of the world in relation to the matsutake mushroom are one fascinating example of this. The book exposes a web of hidden global narratives, sited across a series of forests, where place is read in the spaces between ecology, commodity and community.
