scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question
Journal ArticleDOI

The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (review)

01 Jan 2017-Anthropological Quarterly (George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research)-Vol. 90, Iss: 1, pp 277-282
About: This article is published in Anthropological Quarterly.The article was published on 2017-01-01. It has received 317 citations till now.
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the concept of slow emergencies is proposed to describe situations of harm that call into question what forms of life can and should be secured by apparatuses of emergency governance.
Abstract: How lives are governed through emergency is a critical issue for our time. In this paper, we build on scholarship on this issue by developing the concept of ‘slow emergencies’. We do so to attune to situations of harm that call into question what forms of life can and should be secured by apparatuses of emergency governance. Through drawing together work on emergency and on racialization, we define ‘slow emergencies’ as situations marked by a) attritional lethality; b) imperceptibility; c) the foreclosure of the capacity to become otherwise; d) emergency claims. We conclude with a call to reclaim ‘emergency’.

100 citations


Cites background from "The Mushroom at the End of the Worl..."

  • ...…rationalities have, since their inception, recognized the future as the risk-filled sphere of becoming-otherwise (Foucault 1989, 2008; O’Malley 2004; Tsing 2015), then slow emergency indexes forms of life that are at once indeterminate and whose possibilities for growth and development are…...

    [...]

BookDOI
13 Aug 2020
TL;DR: In this paper, the main challenges here are not can we do it? but how to do it sustainably? Merely feeding well and sustaining the current situation is not enough, we should not only sustain but improve our food and environment.
Abstract: By 2050, the world will need 70 per cent more food to feed an additional two billion people (FAO 2009). The main challenges here are not can we do it? but can we do it sustainably? Merely feeding well and sustaining the current situation is not enough. We should not only sustain but improve our food and environment. ‘Regenerative Food Systems’ is one crucial step to move beyond sustainability. As per California State University (2017) regenerative agriculture is: ‘a holistic land management practice that leverages the power of photosynthesis in plants to close the carbon cycle, and build soil health, crop resilience and nutrient density.’

75 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors consider the work that attentiveness can and can not do in generating more ethical relations with non-humans, and suggest ways of expanding attentiveness to soils, and building a wider and practical relational ethic of soil care.
Abstract: This paper considers the work that attentiveness can and can’t do in generating more ethical relations with non-humans. How to build better relations with non-humans has been a central debate in geography and cognate disciplines. These concerns include ethical relations with non-humans who both pervade and create liveable environments, such as soil biota. Scholars have specifically identified attentiveness as key in generating more-than-human ethics. However, how attentiveness may arise, and what work attentiveness may be able to do in generating ethical relations has not been sufficiently explored. Additionally, soils as relational materialities remain underexplored in social sciences. In this paper, I address these two important gaps in scholarship. Investigating the rising concern with soil biota in conventional English farming, I propose the care network as a way of conceptualising and investigating the ethical potential of attentiveness. As concerns grow about soil degradation, and the dangers this is posing to food production and to human survival, land managers are attending to soil ecosystems as part of caring for their farm businesses. While this attentiveness is producing some transformative effects, its potential is limited by the configuration of the soil care network. As long as soil care is configured primarily as a farmers’ concern, the potential of attentiveness in generating ethical regard to the needs of soil biota will be limited. In the conclusions, I suggest ways of expanding attentiveness to soils, and building a wider and practical relational ethic of soil care. I also argue we need more attention in geographic research to attentiveness and care as systemic, unequally distributed, and operating at multiple scales.

67 citations

Proceedings ArticleDOI
02 May 2019
TL;DR: An ethnographic study on alternative farming practices, in which the farm is not so much a system but an assemblage characterized by multiple systems or rationalities always evolving and changing, to help open a design space for technological interventions.
Abstract: Recent sustainable HCI research has advocated "working with nature" as a potentially efficacious alternative to human efforts to control it: yet it is less clear how to do so. We contribute to the theoretical aspect of this research by presenting an ethnographic study on alternative farming practices, in which the farm is not so much a system but an assemblage characterized by multiple systems or rationalities always evolving and changing. In them, relationships among species alternate between mutually beneficial in one moment (or season), and harmful in the next. If HCI is to participate in and to support working with nature, we believe that it will have to situate itself within such assemblages and temporalities. In this work, we look into nontraditional users (e.g., nonhumans) and emerging forms of uses (e.g., interactions between human and other species) to help open a design space for technological interventions. We offer three ethnographic accounts in which farmers-and ourselves as researchers-learn to notice, respond, and engage in symbiotic encounters with companion species and the living soil itself.

65 citations


Cites background or methods from "The Mushroom at the End of the Worl..."

  • ...Guiding the study itself and our presentation of it here are a set of theories from posthumanism and multispecies thinking, in particular, Donna Haraway’s notion of “companion species” [35, 36] and Anna Tsing’s practice of “noticing differently” [85]....

    [...]

  • ...How might HCI research and design reconfigure itself to design for humans and nonhumans in a relational perspective? As a response to these challenges, we have taken up two alternative analytical sensibilities from anthropology and posthumanist scholarship: Anna Tsing’s “noticing differently” and Donna Haraway’s “companion species” [35, 85]....

    [...]

References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, an emergent methodological trend in anthropological research that concerns the adaptation of long-standing modes of ethnographic practices to more complex objects of study is surveyed, in terms of testing the limits of ethnography, attenuating the power of fieldwork, and losing the perspective of the subaltern.
Abstract: This review surveys an emergent methodological trend in anthropological research that concerns the adaptation of long-standing modes of ethnographic practices to more complex objects of study. Ethnography moves from its conventional single-site location, contextualized by macro-constructions of a larger social order, such as the capitalist world system, to multiple sites of observation and participation that cross-cut dichotomies such as the “local” and the “global,” the “lifeworld” and the “system.” Resulting ethnographies are therefore both in and out of the world system. The anxieties to which this methodological shift gives rise are considered in terms of testing the limits of ethnography, attenuating the power of fieldwork, and losing the perspective of the subaltern. The emergence of multi-sited ethnography is located within new spheres of interdisciplinary work, including media studies, science and technology studies, and cultural studies broadly. Several “tracking” strategies that shape multi-site...

4,905 citations

BookDOI
TL;DR: Farriss and Reddy as discussed by the authors presented a cultural biography of things: commoditization as process Igor Kopytoff Part II, and two kinds of value in the Eastern Solomon Islands William H. Davenport and William M. Cassanelli Part V.
Abstract: Foreword Nancy Farriss Preface Part I. Toward an anthropology of things: 1. Introduction: commodities and the politics of value Arjun Appadurai 2. The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process Igor Kopytoff Part II. Exchange, Consumption, and Display: 3. Two kinds of value in the Eastern Solomon Islands William H. Davenport 4. Newcomers to the world of goods: consumption among the Muria Gonds Alfred Gell Part III. Prestige, Commemoration, and Value: 5. Varna and the emergence of wealth in prehistoric Europe Colin Renfrew 6. Sacred commodities: the circulation of medieval relics Patrick Geary Part IV. Production Regimes and the Sociology of Demand: 7. Weavers and dealers: the authenticity of an oriental carpet Brian Spooner 8. Qat: changes in the production and consumption of a quasilegal commodity in northeast Africa Lee V. Cassanelli Part V. Historical Transformations and Commodity Codes: 9. The structure of a cultural crisis: thinking about cloth in France before and after the Revolution William M. Reddy 10. The origins of swadeshi (home industry): cloth and Indian society, 1700-1930 C. A. Bayly Index.

4,169 citations

Posted Content
TL;DR: The authors examine how things are sold and traded in a variety of social and cultural settings, both present and past, focusing on culturally defined aspects of exchange and socially regulated processes of circulation, illuminate the ways in which people find value in things and things give value to social relations.
Abstract: The meaning that people attribute to things necessarily derives from human transactions and motivations, particularly from how those things are used and circulated. The contributors to this volume examine how things are sold and traded in a variety of social and cultural settings, both present and past. Focusing on culturally defined aspects of exchange and socially regulated processes of circulation, the essays illuminate the ways in which people find value in things and things give value to social relations. By looking at things as if they lead social lives, the authors provide a new way to understand how value is externalized and sought after. They discuss a wide range of goods - from oriental carpets to human relics - to reveal both that the underlying logic of everyday economic life is not so far removed from that which explains the circulation of exotica, and that the distinction between contemporary economics and simpler, more distant ones is less obvious than has been thought. As the editor argues in his introduction, beneath the seeming infinitude of human wants, and the apparent multiplicity of material forms, there in fact lie complex, but specific, social and political mechanisms that regulate taste, trade, and desire. Containing contributions from American and British social anthropologists and historians, the volume bridges the disciplines of social history, cultural anthropology, and economics, and marks a major step in our understanding of the cultural basis of economic life and the sociology of culture. It will appeal to anthropologists, social historians, economists, archaeologists, and historians of art.

3,034 citations

Book
28 Nov 2004
TL;DR: A history of weediness can be found in this paper, where the authors discuss the frontiers of capitalism, the economy of appearances, knowledge, and freedom in Borneo.
Abstract: Preface ix Introduction 1 PART I: Prosperity "Better you had brought me a bomb, so I could blow this place up" 21 Chapter 1: Frontiers of Capitalism 27 "They communicate only in sign language" 51 Chapter 2: The Economy of Appearances 55 PART II: Knowledge "Let a new Asia and a new Africa be born" 81 Chapter 3: Natural Universals and the Global Scale 88 "Dark rays" 113 Chapter 4: Nature Loving 121 "This earth, this island Borneo" 155 Chapter 5: A History of Weediness 171 PART III: Freedom "A hair in the flour" 205 Chapter 6: Movements 213 "Facilities and incentives" 239 Chapter 7: The Forest of Collaborations 245 Coda 269 Notes 273 References 297 Index 313

2,991 citations

Book
01 Jan 1985
TL;DR: The authors showed how the intelligent analysis of a single commodity can be used to pry open the history of an entire world of social relationships and human behavior, and how the analysis can be applied to the analysis of human behavior.
Abstract: "Shows how the intelligent analysis of the history of a single commodity can be used to pry open the history of an entire world of social relationships and human behavior.""The New York Review of Books.""

1,780 citations