The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (43 page)

3
. Some examples: In her influential study of electronics workers in Malaysia, Aihwa Ong (
Spirits of resistance and capitalist discipline
[Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987]) found that contingent trajectories of colonial and
postcolonial governance produced the kind of rural Malay women that factories wanted to hire. Sylvia Yanagisako (
Producing culture and capital
[Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002]) showed how factory owners and managers based their decisions on cultural ideals. Rather than a neutral system of efficiency, she argues, capitalist business develops within cultural histories. Owners as well as workers develop class interests through cultural agendas.

4
. Jane Guyer’s study of West African economic transactions shows how monetary exchanges need not be a sign of already-established equivalence; money can be used to realign cultural economies and translate their logics from one patch to another (
Marginal gains
[Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004]). Transactions may incorporate nonmarket logics even as money is exchanged. Guyer’s research shows how economic systems incorporate difference. Transnational commodity chains are a privileged place to see this: Lisa Rofel and Sylvia Yanagisako explore how Italian silk companies negotiate the making of value with Chinese producers across gaps of comprehension and practice (“Managing the new silk road: Italian-Chinese collaborations,” Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture, University of Rochester, October 20, 2010). See also Aihwa Ong,
Neoliberalism as Exception
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006); Neferti Tadiar,
Things fall away
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009); Laura Bear,
Navigating austerity
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015).

5
. Jeffrey Mantz, “Improvisational economies: Coltan production in the eastern Congo,”
Social Anthropology
16, no. 1 (2008): 34–50; James Smith, “Tantalus in the digital age: Coltan ore, temporal dispossession, and ‘movement’ in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo,”
American Ethnologist
38, no. 1 (2011): 17–35.

6
. Peter Hugo, “A global graveyard for dead computers in Ghana,”
New York Times Magazine
, August 4, 2010.
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/08/04/magazine/20100815-dump.html?_r=1&
.

I
NTERLUDE.
T
RACKING

1
. Charles Darwin ends
On the origin of species
([London: John Murray, 1st ed., 1859], 490) with the image of an entangled bank: “from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

2
. For a sampler of introductions, see Nicholas Money,
Mr. Bloomfield’s orchard
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) [general exposition]; G. C. Ainsworth,
Introduction to the history of mycology
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) [history]; J. André Fortin, Christian Plenchette, and Yves Poché,
Mycorrhizas: The new green revolution
(Quebec: Editions Multimondes, 2009) [agronomy]; Jens Pedersen,
The kingdom of fungi
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013) [photography].

3
. Lisa Curran, “The ecology and evolution of mast-fruiting in Bornean Dipterocarpaceae: A general ectomycorrhizal theory” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1994).

4
. Paul Stamets’s
Mycelium running
(Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2005) offers this and other fungal stories.

5
. S. Kohlmeier, T.H.M. Smits, R. M. Ford, C. Keel, H. Harms, and L. Y. Wick, “Taking the fungal highway: Mobilization of pollutant-degrading bacteria by fungi,”
Environmental Science and Technology
39 (2005): 4640–4646.

6
. Scott Gilbert and David Epel’s
Ecological developmental biology
(Sunderland, MA: Sinauer, 2008), chap. 10, details some of the most important mechanisms.

7
. Margaret McFall-Ngai, “The development of cooperative associations between animals and bacteria: Establishing détente among domains,”
American Zoologist
38, no. 4 (1998): 593–608.

8
. Gilbert and Epel,
Ecological developmental biology
, 18.
Wolbachia
infection also causes problems for many insects through how it shapes reproduction. John Thompson,
Relentless evolution
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 104–106, 192.

9
. J. A. Thomas, D. J. Simcox, and R. T. Clarke, “Successful conservation of a threatened
Maculinea
butterfly,”
Science
203 (2009): 458–461. For related entanglements, see Thompson,
Relentless evolution
, 182–183; Gilbert and Epel,
Ecological developmental biology
, chap. 3.

10
. Gilbert and Epel,
Ecological developmental biology
, 20–27.

11
. Scott F. Gilbert, Emily McDonald, Nicole Boyle, Nicholas Buttino, Lin Gyi, Mark Mai, Neelakantan Prakash, and James Robinson, “Symbiosis as a source of selectable epigenetic variation: Taking the heat for the big guy,”
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B
365 (2010): 671–678, on 673.

12
. Ilana Zilber-Rosenberg and Eugene Rosenberg, “Role of microorganisms in the evolution of animals and plants: The hologenome theory of evolution,”
FEMS Microbiology Reviews
32 (2008): 723–735.

13
. Gil Sharon, Daniel Segal, John Ringo, Abraham Hefetz, Ilana Zilber-Rosenberg, and Eugene Rosenberg, “Commensal bacteria play a role in mating preferences of
Drosophila melanogaster,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
(November 1, 2010):
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1009906107
.

14
. Gilbert et al., “Symbiosis,” 672, 673.

15
. Thomas et al., “Successful conservation.”

16
. Population geneticists do study mutualisms, including those involving ectomycorrhizal fungi and trees. But the structure of the discipline urges most studies to see each organism as analytically self-contained rather than emerging in historical interaction. As one recent review explains, “Mutualisms are reciprocal exploitations that nevertheless increase the fitness of each partner” (Teresa Pawlowska, “Population genetics of fungal mutualists of plants,” in
Microbial population genetics
, ed. Jianping
X
u, 125–138 [Norfolk, UK: Horizon Scientific Press, 2010], 125). The goal of the study of mutualism is then to measure costs and benefits to each self-contained species, with special attention to “cheating.” Researchers can ask how more or less mutualistic variants of a species emerge to exploit benefits, but they cannot see transformative synergies.

17
. Margulis and Sagan,
What is life?
(cited in chap. 2, n. 1).

18
. Masayuki
H
orie, Tomoyuki
H
onda, Yoshiyuki
S
uzuki, Yuki
K
obayashi, Takuji
D
aito, Tatsuo
O
shida, Kazuyoshi
I
kuta, Patric Jern, Takashi
G
ojobori, John
M. Coffin, and Keizo
T
omonaga, “Endogenous non-retroviral RNA virus elements in mammalian genomes,”
Nature
463 (2010): 84–87.

19
. One promising edge of population genetics uses DNA sequencing techniques to differentiate variant alleles within a single population. To study allelic differences requires a different set of DNA markers than to study species. The specificity of scale matters. Nonscalability theory welcomes stories that can be told about allelic differences and notes that they do not translate easily in research methods and results to other scales.

20
. Daniel Winkler, interview, 2007.

21
. R. Peabody, D. C. Peabody, M. Tyrell, E. Edenburn-MacQueen, R. Howdy, and K. Semelrath, “Haploid vegetative mycelia of
Amillaria gallica
show among-cell-line variation for growth and phenotypic plasticity,”
Mycologia
97, no. 4 (2005): 777–787.

22
. Scott Turner, “Termite mounds as organs of extended physiology,” State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry,
http://www.esf.edu/efb/turner/termite/termhome.htm
.

C
HAPTER 11.
T
HE
L
IFE OF THE
F
OREST

1
. Reflections on this problem have emerged from science studies (e.g., Bruno Latour, “Where are the missing masses?” in
Technology and society
, ed. Deborah Johnson and Jameson Wetmore, 151–180 [Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008]); indigenous studies (e.g., Marisol de la Cadena, “Indigenous cosmopolitics in the Andes: Conceptual reflections beyond ‘politics’”
Cultural Anthropology
25, no. 2 [2010]: 334–370); postcolonial theory (e.g., Dipesh Chakrabarty,
Provincializing Europe
[Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000]); new materialism (e.g., Jane Bennett,
Vibrant matter
[Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010]); and folklore and fiction (e.g., Ursula Le Guin,
Buffalo gals and other animal presences
[Santa Barbara, CA: Capra Press, 1987]).

2
. Richard Nelson,
Make prayers to the raven: A Koyukon view of the northern forest
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983); Rane Willerslev,
Soul hunters: Hunting, animism, and personhood among the Siberian Yukaghirs
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007); Viveiros de Castro, “Cosmological deixis” (cited in chap. 1, n. 7).

3
. Some humanists worry about the politics of the word “landscape,” because one of its genealogies leads to landscape painting, with its distance between viewer and scene. As Kenneth Olwig reminds us, however, another genealogy leads to that political unit in which moots could be convened (“Recovering the substantive nature of landscape,”
Annals of the Association of American Geographers
86, no. 4 (1996): 630–653). My landscapes are places for patchy assemblages, that is, for moots that include both human and nonhuman participants.

4
. Jakob von Uexküll,
A foray into the world of animals and humans
, trans. Joseph D. O’Neil (1934; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010).

5
. Uexküll’s bubble worlds inspired Martin Heidegger’s idea that nonhuman animals are “poor in world.” Martin Heidegger,
The fundamental concepts of meta
physics: World, finitude, solitude
, trans. W. McNeill and N. Walker (1938; Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001).

6
. Lilin
Z
hao, Shuai
Z
hang, Wei
W
ei, Haijun
H
ao, Bin
Z
hang, Rebecca A. Butcher, Jianghua
S
un, “Chemical signals synchronize the life cycles of a plant-parasitic nematode and its vector beetle,”
Current biology
(October 10, 2013):
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2013.08.041
.

7
. Kazuo
S
uzuki, interview, 2005; Kazuo Suzuki, “Pine Wilt and the Pine Wood Nematode,” in
Encyclopedia of forest sciences
,” ed. Julian Evans and John Youngquist, 773–777 (Waltham, MA: Elsevier Academic Press, 2004).

8
. Yu
W
ang, Toshihiro
Y
amada, Daisuke
S
akaue, and Kazuo Suzuki, “Influence of fungi on multiplication and distribution of the pinewood nematode,” in
Pine wilt disease: A worldwide threat to forest ecosystems
, ed. Manuel Mota and Paolo Viera, 115–128 (Berlin: Springer, 2008).

9
. T. A. Rutherford and J. M. Webster, “Distribution of pine wilt disease with respect to temperature in North America, Japan, and Europe,”
Canadian Journal of Forest Research
17, no. 9 (1987): 1050–1059.

10
. Stephen Pyne,
Vestal fire
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000).

11
. Pauline Peters,
Dividing the commons
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1994); Kate Showers,
Imperial gullies
(Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005).

12
. While Bruno Latour has worked hard to separate the truth claims of science, on the one hand, and the practices of science, on the other, his deployment of the legacy of French structuralism to contrast structural logics has encouraged sharp dichotomies between science and indigenous thought. See Bruno Latour,
We have never been modern
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).

13
. Here I evoke the “new alliance” of Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers’s
La nouvelle alliance
, unfortunately translated into English as
Order out of chaos
(New York: Bantam Books, 1984). Prigogine and Stengers argue that appreciation of indeterminacy and irreversible time might lead to a new alliance between the natural and human sciences. The gauntlet they lay down inspires my efforts.

14
. A most useful English-language reference on satoyama is K.
T
akeuchi, R. D. Brown, I.
W
ashitani, A.
T
sunekawa, and M.
Y
okohari,
Satoyama: The traditional rural landscape of Japan
(Tokyo: Springer, 2008). For a sampling of the extensive literature, see also
A
rioka Toshiyuki,
Satoyama
[in Japanese] (Tokyo: Hosei University Press, 2004); T.
N
akashizuka and Y.
M
atsumoto, eds.,
Diversity and interaction in a temperate forest community: Ogawa Forest Reserve of Japan
(Tokyo: Springer, 2002); Katsue
F
ukamachi and Yukihuro
M
orimoto, “Satoyama management in the twenty-first century: The challenge of sustainable use and continued biocultural diversity in rural cultural landscapes,”
Landscape and Ecological Engineering
7, no. 2 (2011): 161–162; Asako
M
iyamoto, Makoto
S
ano, Hiroshi
T
anaka, and Kaoru
N
iiyama, “Changes in forest resource utilization and forest landscapes in the southern Abukuma Mountains, Japan during the twentieth century,”
Journal of Forestry Research
16 (2011): 87–97; Björn E. Berglund, “Satoyama, traditional farming landscape in Japan, compared to Scandinavia,”
Japan Review
20 (2008): 53–68; Katsue
F
ukamachi, Hirokazu
O
ku,
and Tohru
N
akashizuka, “The change of a satoyama landscape and its causality in Kamiseya, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan between 1970 and 1995,”
Landscape Ecology
16 (2001): 703–717.