The Term 'Alienation' in Anna L. Tsing's work 'The Mushroom at the End of the World'. A new concept?

Academic Paper from the year 2020 in the subject Pedagogy - Theory of Science, Anthropology, grade: 6, University of Bern (Institut für Sozialanthropologie), language: English, abstract: The present work is of a theoretical kind and attempts to make philosophical and conceptual ideas fruitful for ethnographic research. It deals with the term 'Alienation' and a new concept of it by the author herself. In her work The Mushroom at the End of the World Anna L. Tsing investigates the question of what remains after capitalism and its developments. Not very much anymore, she claims. Thus she examines the various forms of ecological and social life within capitalist ruins. The main role in her investigation is played by the Matsutake mushroom, an edible and also precious mushroom, which is some sort of an artefact fungus. This means that it grows best where humans have exerted a considerable influence on the environment. Her patchwork ethnography traces a rhizome-like interweaving of heterogeneous fields of investigation. One of the few constants in her work is the term 'alienation'. Tsing introduces the term with the assertion that alienation transforms people and non-human entities into movable goods. Alienation therefore also creates the capitalist ruins, leaving behind those places unsustainable from which people and other things have been moved out as goods. Alienation is in this respect a deficient relationship. It denote a disturbed world- and self relatedness. What stands out further is that the Matsutake mushrooms, for example, can assume different stages of alienation. While they are still perceived by mushroom pickers as meaningful trophies, they are alienated as market products within the international supply chains. Only again in the Japanese exchange of gifts can the Matsutake mushrooms be released from their alienated status. I have noticed that the term is theoretically not negligible in Tsing's work, but unfortunately, it remains under-determined. Much of the term remains unexplained and thus incomprehensible. Furthermore, it is immediately apparent that the term in Tsing's work is partly opposed to the classical or everyday understanding of 'alienation'. In the present work, I would therefore like to deal with the question of how 'alienation' can be understood in Tsing's work. I will first trace the classical concepts and connect them with Tsing's ideas.

Studium der Philosophie und der Sozialanthropologie an der Universität Bern (CH)