Beschreibung
Matsutake is the most valuable mushroom in the worldand a weed that grows in human-disturbed forests across the northern hemisphere. Through its ability to nurture trees, matsutake helps forests to grow in daunting places. It is also an edible delicacy in Japan, where it sometimes commands astronomical prices. In all its contradictions, matsutake offers insights into areas far beyond just mushrooms and addresses a crucial question: what manages to live in the ruins we have made?
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing is professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection and In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an Out-of-the-Way Place (both Princeton).