What a Mushroom Lives For : Matsutake and the Worlds They Make

How the prized matsutake mushroom is remaking human communities in China--and providing new ways to understand human and more-than-human worlds What a Mushroom Lives For pushes today's mushroom renaissance in compelling new directions. For centuries, Western science has promoted a human- and animal-centric framework of what counts as action, agency, movement, and behavior. But, as Michael Hathaway shows, the world-making capacities of mushrooms radically challenge this orthodoxy by revealing the lively dynamism of all forms of life. The book tells the fascinating story of one particularly prized species, the matsutake, and the astonishing ways it is silently yet powerfully shaping worlds, from the Tibetan plateau to the mushrooms' final destination in Japan. Many Tibetan and Yi people have dedicated their lives to picking and selling this mushroom--a delicacy that drives a multibillion-dollar global trade network and that still grows only in the wild, despite scientists' intensive efforts to cultivate it in urban labs. But this is far from a simple story of humans exploiting a passive, edible commodity. Rather, the book reveals the complex, symbiotic ways that mushrooms, plants, humans, and other animals interact. It explores how the world looks to the mushrooms, as well as to the people who have grown rich harvesting them. A surprise-filled journey into science and human culture, this exciting and provocative book shows how fungi shape our planet and our lives in strange, diverse, and often unimaginable ways. "When Michael Hathaway embarked on the fieldwork that led to this book years ago, he thought he would be writing a conventional ethnography, centered on the lives of people engaged in the foraging and circulation of an exotic type of mushroom known as the matsutake, which sells for a thousand dollars a kilogram in Japan. In southwest China's Himalayan forests, Hathaway spent months in two mountain communities, among ethnic Tibetans and among the Yi people, whose lives have been transformed beyond recognition by the lucrative matsutake trade. After spending time with Chinese and Japanese matsutake scientists in their labs and field stations, and as he became an ever-more skilled mushroom forager himself, Hathaway reconceived this book entirely. Rather than writing a book on the social worlds of Chinese mushroom hunters, he decided to key on how the mushroom's own behavior shapes the actions of humans and human communities -- as well as the actions of other living beings -- in ways that aren't often considered. The matsutake and other fungi aren't simply pawns of human economic projects. They seek out other species to carry out their own life projects -- i.e., they make their own worlds. And in so doing the exert profound influence on all living things around them. Of course this is true not just of fungi. All living organisms, including plants and animals, constantly and actively interpret and engage with their surroundings. But until recently we have not been able to appreciate the extent to which the "lowly" fungi engage in these activities as well -- how profoundly they shape the rest of nature. They make worlds that we, as humans, are part of, whether we notice it or not. Hathaway's book keys on how fungi exercise this capacity for world making. The matsutake takes center stage for most of this book. The vast majority of this particular mushroom species are never foraged by humans. They live their own complex mycelial lives, shuttling nutrients and water between trees, soil, and minerals, travelling slowly through subterranean depths for centuries, and attracting a wide variety of insects, birds, and mammals to their fruiting bodies. Hathaway's book explores the many ways in which the matsutake, humans, and other forms of life on our planet engage with each other, and pull each other into their respective lives"-- Provided by publisher Epigraph Contents Foreword • Anna Tsing Preface introduction 1. Fungal Planet: The Little-Known Story of How Fungi Helped Foster Terrestrial Life 2. Everyday Fungal World-Making 3. Umwelt: The Sensorial Experience and Interpretation of the Lively World 4. Matsutake’s Journeys 5. The Yi and the Matsutake 6. Tibetan Entanglements with Plants, Animals, and Fungi 7. Final Thoughts on Understanding Fungiand Others as World-Makers Appendix Notes Bibliography Acknowledgments Index