Resurgent life: How to flourish with what's left

In this essay I review Anna Tsing's recent work  The Mushroom at the End of the World (2015). This creatively written ethnography explores how the matustake mushroom is differently conceived and experienced in Oregon, Japan, Yunnan, and Finland. The mushroom emerges as a symbol of the renewal of life after destruction, as they are primarily found in forests that have been subjected to industrial logging. Tsing makes important theoretical advances in the anthropology of value and the anthropology of exchange. She also connects her cultural critique of capitalism to a critique of science.