The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (42 page)

2
. A regulation requires buyers to record the place where matsutake are picked; however, I never saw such records being made. In other matsutake buying areas, this regulation is enforced through pickers’ self-statements.

3
. This is fire protection mandated by the industry-promoted Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003. Jacqueline Vaughn and Hanna Cortner,
George W. Bush’s healthy forests
(Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2005).

4
. During the four seasons I watched the buying, I saw two buyers leave, midseason, because of quarrels with their respective field agents; another absconded. No one was forced out of business because of competition.

5
. Jerry Guin’s
Matsutake mushroom: “White” goldrush of the 1990s
(Happy Camp, CA: Naturegraph Publishers, 1997) offers a picker’s diary from 1993.

6
. For one example, see the account of Marlboro’s history in Richard Barnet,
Global dreams: Imperial corporations and the new world order
(New York: Touchstone, 1995).

7
. Other amazing accounts of precarious labor in the forests of the U.S. Pacific Northwest include Rebecca McLain, “Controlling the forest understory: Wild mushroom politics in central Oregon” (PhD diss., University of Washington, 2000); Beverly Brown and Agueda Marin-Hernández, eds.,
Voices from the woods: Lives and experiences of non-timber forest workers
(Wolf Creek, OR: Jefferson Center for Education and Research, 2000); Beverly Brown, Diana Leal-Mariño, Kirsten McIlveen, Ananda Lee Tan,
Contract forest laborers in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico
(Portland, OR: Jefferson Center for Education and Research, 2004); Richard Hansis, “A political ecology of picking: Non-timber forest products in the Pacific Northwest,”
Human Ecology
26, no. 1 (1998): 67–86; Rebecca Richards and Susan Alexander,
A social history of wild huckleberry harvesting in the Pacific Northwest
(USDA Forest Service PNW-GTR-657, 2006).

C
HAPTER 6.
W
AR
S
TORIES

1
. For a Vang Pao supporter’s blow-by-blow account, see Hamilton-Merritt,
Tragic mountains
(cited in chap. 2, n. 13).

2
. CBS News, “Deer hunter charged with murder,” November 29, 2004,
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/30/national/main658296.shtml
.

3
. “The Refugee Population,”
A country study: Laos
, Library of Congress, Country Studies,
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/latoc.html#la0065
.

4
. Susan Star and James Griesemer, “Institutional ecology, ‘translations’ and boundary objects,”
Social Studies of Science
19, no. 3 (1989): 387–420.

C
HAPTER 7.
W
HAT
H
APPENED TO THE
S
TATE?

1
.
Shigin
refers to classical poetry recitation in Japan. This poem was distributed, in Japanese and with an English translation, by Kokkan
N
omura, at the September 18, 2005 celebration of matsutake heritage at the Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center. Miyako Inoue helped to craft this new English translation.

2
. This agreement forced Japan to stop issuing new passports for potential immigrants; it did not cover wives and family members of men already living in the United States. This exception encouraged the practice of finding “picture brides,” a practice that was stopped by the “Ladies’ Agreement” of 1920.

3
. Pegues writes (personal communication, 2014): “Executive Order 9066 is signed on Feb. 19, 1942, with most of the relocation and internment/incarceration occurring between March–June. In August the Western Defense Commander announces that Japanese American removal and internment is complete. On the other side of things, Mexico declares war on the Axis powers on June 1st and the U.S. establishes the Bracero Program in July 1942 by executive order.”

4
. The term comes from Lauren Kessler,
Stubborn twig: Three generations in the life of a Japanese American family
(Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2008), chap. 13.

5
. Many of the Southeast Asian pickers in Open Ticket receive disability checks and/or Aid to Dependent Children from the government; however, these do not cover expenses.

6
. The first Christian Great Awakening of the eighteenth century was a precursor of the American Revolution. The second, of the early nineteenth century, is credited with creating the political culture of the American frontier as well as the Civil War. The third, in the late nineteenth century, sparked the social gospel of American nationalism and its worldwide missionary movement. Some call the Born-Again movement of the late twentieth century the Fourth Great Awakening. These Christian revivals are not the only kind of civic mobilizations in the United States, but it may be useful to see them as forming the
pattern
on which mobilization to shape public culture can successfully occur.

7
. Susan Harding, “Regulating religion in mid-20
^th
century America: The ‘Man: A Course of Study’ curriculum,” paper presented at “Religion and Politics in Anxious States,” University of Kentucky, 2014.

8
. Thomas Pearson,
Missions and conversions: Creating the Montagnard-Dega refugee community
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

C
HAPTER 8.
B
ETWEEN THE
D
OLLAR AND THE
Y
EN

1
. U.S. whaling interests pushed this initiative, which demanded assistance for U.S. whaling ships (Alan Christy, personal communication, 2014).
Moby-Dick
haunts me.

2
. The 1858 Harris Treaty opened more ports, made foreign nationals free from Japanese law, and put foreigners in charge of import-export duties. European powers then imposed similar treaties.

3
. Kunio
Y
oshihara,
Japanese economic development
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); Tessa Morris-Suzuki,
A history of Japanese economic thought
(London: Routledge, 1989).

4
. Satsuka,
Nature in translation
(cited in chap. 4, n. 2).

5
. Hidemasa
M
orikawa,
Zaibatsu: The rise and fall of family enterprise groups in Japan
(Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1992).

6
. E. Herbert Norman,
Japan’s emergence as a modern state
(1940; Vancouver: UBC Press, 2000), 49.

7
. Some three hundred zaibatsu were listed for breakup, but only about ten were dissolved before the occupation government changed course. Still, regulations were put in place that made prewar vertical integration difficult to sustain (Alan Christy, personal communication, 2014).

8
. Kenichi
M
iyashita and David Russell,
Keiretsu: Inside the hidden Japanese conglomerates
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994); Michael Gerlach,
Alliance capitalism: The social organization of Japanese business
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). In
The fable of the keiretsu
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), Yoshiro
M
iwa and J. Mark Ramseyer reassert neoclassical orthodoxy and call the
keiretsu
a figment of Japanese Marxist and Western Orientalist imaginations.

9
. Alexander Young,
The sogo shosha: Japan’s multinational trading companies
(Boulder, CO: Westview, 1979); Michael Yoshiro and Thomas Lifson,
The invisible link: Japan’s sogo shosha and the organization of trade
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986); Yoshihara,
Japanese economic development
, 49–50, 154–155.

10
. When global commodity chains first came to the attention of American sociologists in the 1980s (Gary Gerrefi and Miguel Korzeniewicz, eds.,
Commodity chains and global capitalism
[Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1994]), they were impressed by the new “buyer-driven” chains (clothes, shoes) and contrasted them with earlier “producer-driven” chains (computers, cars). Japanese economic history recommends equal attention to “trader-driven” chains.

11
. Anna Tsing,
Friction
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); Peter Dauvergne,
Shadows in the forest: Japan and the politics of timber in Southeast Asia
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997); Michael Ross,
Timber booms and institutional breakdown in Southeast Asia
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

12
. On salmon in Chile, see Heather Swanson, “Caught in comparisons: Japanese salmon in an uneven world” (PhD diss., University of California, Santa Cruz, 2013).

13
. Robert Castley,
Korea’s economic miracle: The crucial role of Japan
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997).

14
. Ibid., 326.

15
. Ibid., 69.

16
. Kaname
A
kamatsu, “A historical pattern of economic growth in developing countries,”
Journal of Developing Economies
1, no. 1 (1962): 3–25.

17
. “Quality control” was a part of this transnational dialogue: an American idea that took off in Japan during the American-led rationalization of Japanese industry after World War II, it was reimported to the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. William M. Tsutsui, “W. Edwards Deming and the origins of quality control in Japan,”
Journal of Japanese Studies
22, no. 2 (1996): 295–325.

18
. For an example of U.S. anti-Japanese economic journalism from this period, see Robert Kearns,
Zaibatsu America: How Japanese firms are colonizing vital U.S. industries
(New York: Free Press, 1992).

19
. My analysis is inspired by Karen Ho,
Liquidated
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009).

20
. For an example of U.S.-style reforms promoted by a Japanese economist, see Hiroshi
Y
oshikawa,
Japan’s lost decade
, trans. Charles Stewart, Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan Intl. Trust Library Selection 11 (Tokyo: International House of Japan, 2002). The book argues that small- and medium-size enterprises are a drain on the economy.

21
. Robert Brenner,
The boom and the bubble: The U.S. in the world economy
(London: Verso, 2003).

22
. Shintaro
I
shihara,
The Japan that can say no
, trans. Frank Baldwin (1989, with Akio
M
orita; New York: Touchstone Books, 1992).

23
. Petrovic and Hamilton, “Making global markets” (cited in chap. 4, n. 7), 121.

24
. According to Robert Brenner (
The boom
), the Reverse Plaza Accord of 1995, in which world powers stopped the ascent of the yen, triggered a shift in the world economy by both killing U.S. manufacturing and triggering the Asian financial crisis.

25
. Quoted in Miguel Korzeniewicz, “Commodity chains and marketing strategies: Nike and the global athletic footwear industry,” in
Commodity chains
, ed. Gerrefi and Korzeniewicz, 247–266, on 252.

C
HAPTER 9.
F
ROM
G
IFTS TO
C
OMMODITIES—AND
B
ACK

1
. Bronislaw Malinowski,
Argonauts of the Western Pacific
(London: Routledge, 1922).

2
. My ability to think about objects, alienated and otherwise, draws on Marilyn Strathern,
The gender of the gift
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); Amiria
Henare, Martin Holbraad, and Sari Wastell, eds.,
Thinking through things
(London: Routledge, 2006); and David Graeber,
Toward an anthropological theory of value
(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001).

3
. Capitalist commodities, unlike kula objects, cannot carry the weight of entanglement histories and obligations. It is not simply
exchange
that defines capitalist commodities; alienation is required.

4
. Marilyn Strathern paraphrases Christopher Gregory: “If in a commodity economy things and persons assume the social forms of things, then in a gift economy they assume the social forms of persons” (Strathern,
Gender
, 134, citing Christopher Gregory,
Gifts and commodities
[Waltham, MA: Academic Press, 1982], 41).

5
. Many matsutake foraged in the U.S. Pacific Northwest are labeled as Canadian because exporters send them from British Columbia. Exporters attach tags based on the location of the exporting airport. Japanese law forbids foreign food products from being labeled by region, a privilege saved for Japanese products. Only national origins are allowed.

6
. Matsutake are not the only fine foods used in this way. Specialty melons and salmon are among the goods that enter this gift economy and, like matsutake, mark seasonality. Such gifts are commonly regarded as confirming “Japanese” ways of life; their status as gifts drives rankings and prices.

7
. If all mushrooms are picked before their spores mature, there is no reason—in terms of the reproductive success of the fungus—to privilege babies.

8
. Babies are conventionally sorted “number 3” grade (out of five), although the mushroom hunters sometimes intervene to get a few into the more expensive “number 1” crate.

9
. Buyers in the central Cascades sort matsutake by maturity into five priced grades. Bulkers re-sort by size; exported mushrooms are packed by both size and maturity.

C
HAPTER 10.
S
ALVAGE
R
HYTHMS

1
. Daisuke
N
aito, personal communication, 2010.

2
. The accumulation of capital relies on translations in which pericapitalist sites are brought into capitalist supply lines. Here again are some of my key claims: (1) salvage accumulation is the process through which value created in noncapitalist value forms is translated into capitalist assets, allowing accumulation; (2) pericapitalist spaces are sites in which both capitalist and noncapitalist value forms may flourish simultaneously—thus allowing translations; (3) supply chains are organized through such translations, which link the inventory-making of lead firms with pericapitalist sites, where all kinds of practices, capitalist and otherwise, flourish; (4) economic diversity makes capitalism possible—and offers sites of instability and refusal of capitalist governance.