The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins

摘要

Reviews of Anna Tsing's The Mushroom at the End of the World are beginning to appear in scholarly journals and magazines. She is a very well respected anthropologist and so a reviewer would have to be somewhat brash to outright condemn the work. But reviewers do tend to take a stab at very popular authors like Tsing. Of course a review must weigh good and bad for our benefit. And there are ideological and methodological predilections to consider. That the proponents of a political economy approach toneoliberalism would find Tsing's evaluation of contemporary capitalism soft is of no surprise, she being more of a postmodernist herself, if you will excuse the pigeon holes. I do not know exactly what kind of anthropologist I am, but my criticisms do not stem from conventional political economy. And I do not even come close to condemning the work. In essence, while seemingly unfinished or uncritical to some, I find the work compelling and inspirational. I refer to a few recent reviews as a foil for aspecifically anthropological critique and also point out how CAFE readers in particular might engage with it.