This post was originally published on the University of Manchester’s Sustainable Consumption Institute Blog. 

Image credit: Mark Shtanov

Caroline Cornier, Tetyana Solovey, Tim Siew and Mark Shtanov on sustainability through interdisciplinary lenses

This blog is the result of an interdisciplinary group of PhD researchers who came together over the summer to read and discuss Anna Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World – On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (2015). While the book doesn’t solely focus on sustainability, its exploration of human-disturbed forests and the commodity chains of matsutake mushrooms sparked ideas related to sustainability. Coming from diverse disciplines — architecture, political economy, political theory, and sociology — we found new ways to engage with and discuss sustainability from different perspectives.

Caroline Cornier, PhD researcher at the Global Development Institute

As a doctoral researcher investigating the postcolonial political economy of cocoa, what struck me is Tsing’s actor-focused, patchy yet all-encompassing look at a particular value chain: the journey of the matsutake mushroom from the hands of precarious pickers to affluent eaters and back. Constructing her narrative out of detailed, site-specific stories around mushrooms without ever hiding the subjective nature of her assemblage she shows her argument through her structure: the world is built on uncountable connections and the more connections we notice the more sustainable our individual sensemaking can be.

By defending the inherent value of the ‘art of noticing’ for research, she effectively extends qualitative, inductive methods and site-specific sustainability visions to the study of homogenising global supply chain based capitalism. In a world obsessed with measurability and economies of scale, she rehabilitates attention to ‘humble details’ and ‘indeterminate encounters’ to explain convergence within difference and survival despite precarity. Hence, she effectively rejects visions of capitalism as a necessarily uniforming bulldozer. Instead, she shows that supply chain capitalism actually relies on uncontrolled production and individual actors’ translation efforts to amass capital and ultimately create value. She claims that it is only in this second stage that capitalist alienation and related unsustainable practices occur, while in the first stage individual actors have the freedom to proactively use their unregulated production practices to build precarity reducing (inter-species) relationships and common agendas.

For a Political Economist, often accused of cultivating determinism, these new ways of making room for specificity and agency within the study of capitalism are utterly exciting. The challenge will be, however, to stay away from romanticising these rediscovered realities while figuring out how to sustainably coexist in the long run.

Tetyana Solovey, PhD researcher in Sociology

I research material culture, sustainability, and affect theory, with a background in media and communications. What particularly resonates with me is the discussion of sustainability and nostalgia.

The book illustrates this through the story of the “satoyama woodlands,” where the culturally significant matsutake mushroom grows in Japan. The story begins with Professor K, who initially studied economics to alleviate poverty but shifted his focus to restoring peasant forests in Japan. This is how he came to the conclusion that sustainability is shaped by nostalgia. Starting with this promise of nostalgic romanticisation of pre-modern nature, Tsing eventually critiques, even caricatures the idealisation of pristine nature and the simplification of human-nature relationships.

The satoyama woodlands illustrate the dynamic interplay between human activity and nature. Here, rice cultivation contributes to a diverse ecosystem, showing that human disruption can enhance resilience rather than degrade nature. The matsutake mushroom thrives in these disrupted environments. Even more, by comparing matsutake forests in the U.S., China, and Finland, the book reveals how perceptions of cultivated vs. “pristine” landscapes vary in different continents, eras and cultures. What may seem messy is actually alive and dynamic. It challenges the simplification of human-nature relationships, neither romanticising pre-modern nature nor condemning industrial approaches that treat forests as mere commodities.

So-called material turn in humanity studies acknowledges the equal roles of human and non-human participants in shaping social life. Conveying this complexity requires a specific language and approach. Tsing’s book exemplifies this by treating non-human participants—like mushrooms—as integral to the research. Through their materiality and interconnectedness with ecosystems and human activity, she presents the mushroom forest from multiple perspectives: nematode worms, pines, intermediaries, pickers, scientists, etc. This polyphonic storytelling, rather than a purely anthropological account, aligns with methodological attempts that avoid prioritising humans in research and writing.

Sustainability is often presented in problematic ways. While romanticising the pre-industrial past may entice people into eco-consciousness without moral pressure, it can also be misleading. A more nuanced narrative, informed by material culture studies, allows us to understand sustainability as a complex web of material relationships between human and non-human actors and an ongoing, collaborative process.

Tim Siew, PhD researcher in Political Theory

I research democratic theory, focusing on how democracy might work despite stubborn disagreement. Two themes were particularly interesting: (i) her conception of Assemblages, and (ii) hyper-acceptance of Precarity. Tsing conceives of Assemblages as unfixed, unbounded sites of Contamination (where different species and lifeways influence each other by adapting and collaborating) where a diversity of entangled agents “coalesce, change, and dissolve” in patches of “layered, inconsistent, and jumbled” worldviews in response to conditions. She advocates for this in a total acceptance of Precarity (our dependence on, and vulnerability to, each other) due to its inevitability, viewing Modernity’s attempts at overcoming Precarity through centralising survival efforts as misguided.

Broadly speaking, I agree with Tsing’s characterisation of Assemblages as a non-uniform, decentralised site of interdependency. Such an arrangement would give its members greater agency in determining their outcomes. However, people (and various other organisms) differ in their needs and wants, and interpret the world differently. Conflicting needs and wants are inevitable, and no perfect solution will arise. For this reason, I find Tsing over-privileges Precarity, since people can conceive of their interests at the expense of others. Our vulnerability to, and dependency on, others cannot justify a society built on assuming the ‘kindness of strangers’. Some centralised protection against the worst ravages of Precarity can be justified, and figuring out what this might be is politics. As a democratic theorist, I’m interested in how, and to what degree, we should seek to mitigate Precarity, considering the diversity (in attitudes and demands) of citizens. Factoring in the environmental requirement of sustainability complicates this further – how should Precarity be mitigated, considering that a trade-off between mitigating Precarity and sustainability might exist?

Mark Shtanov, PhD researcher in Architecture

I research the ritualistic practices of anatomical specimens at industrial waste incinerators. Tsing’s idea of freedom directly relates to social sustainability, an increasingly prominent aspect of sustainability strategies across businesses and institutions, notably influencing the United Nations’ development goals. A social sustainability perspective incorporates matters of justice, peace and wellbeing into the wider debates around the environmental challenges. Rather than being an isolated anthropocentric concern, societal well-being is an integral component of sustainable more-than-human ecologies. The book touches on the conditions fostering mental wellbeing in the context of natural settings, deteriorated by capitalist production.

In the early chapters, Tsing introduces the concept of freedom, as a ‘shared concern that yet takes on many meanings and leads in varied directions’ (p. 94). Oregon forests offer war veterans and refugees a liberating therapy of safely and meaningfully enacting their trauma and healing their memories. Unable to meaningfully pursue urban capitalist lifestyles, the troubled members of the human community find mental and economic freedom in interacting with the more-than-human habitats at the pericapitalist fringes. Society’s outcasts interact with forests that are in themselves troubled through loggers’ or activists’ efforts: these cause for only particular tree and plant species to thrive. This resulting habitat makes possible the emergence of matsutake that are subsequently foraged by the veterans and refugees. Through symbiotic inter-species transactions, a disturbed forest sustains disturbed minds. As the book progresses beyond this Oregon example, we encounter further freedom-seeking exiles across the different corners of the world.

Under the guise of freedom, Tsing presents conditions for achieving peace with oneself and with others. Emerging as part of networked inter-species assemblages outside of institutional planning and regulatory control, these conditions are unlikely to lend themselves to replication or scaling up. On this basis, it is challenging to directly translate Tsing’s observations into policies and approaches for social sustainability. Nevertheless, the book offers a hopeful insight of how therapeutic environments can spring up as a result of unruly forces – like mushrooms.

An undercurrent in Tsing’s work is her rejection of homogeneity and standardisation, especially regarding systems with complex dynamics between organisms. Doing so, one can find different perspectives to view reality. Latching onto this theme, the four of us have unveiled four different perspectives on sustainability in our own ways. Through the methodology of Noticing, one might discover heterogeneity, debunking the myth of standardisation. By examining the interplay between human and nature co-adapting around each other, one can uncover the complex network of material relationships between human and non-human actors. The “layered, inconsistent, and jumbled” worldviews in assemblages highlight our mutual dependency and vulnerability. Meanwhile, the prism of freedom helps in appreciating the pericapitalist fringes with uncontrollable dimensions of social sustainability for people living in more-than-human habitats. To look at anything from one perspective misses the point. Those striving towards sustainability should reject a ‘unified inventory’ of solutions, recognise the multiplicity of interrelated contexts, and address them where they stand. This approach could lead to sustainable paths within postcapitalist ruins.

Tetyana Solovey, a cultural sociologist, researching/working across the fields of material culture, sustainability and consumption, qualitative research, and affect theory.

Timothy Siew, a political theorist researching on the potential for a just, egalitarian democracy that a pluralist polity finds legitimate.

Mark Shtanov, an architect and a researcher working at the intersection of waste studies and death studies using graphic ethnography.

Caroline Cornier, a political economist researching the drivers of commodity dependence using the case of cocoa in Côte d’Ivoire.

 

Note:  This article gives the views of the author/academic featured and does not represent the views of the Global Development Institute as a whole.

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