The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (44 page)

15
. For an introduction to disturbance, see Seth Reice,
The silver lining: The benefits of natural disasters
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). For an attempt to bring histories of disturbance into social theory (here psychoanalysis), see Laura Cameron, “Histories of disturbance,”
Radical History Review
74 (1999): 4–24.

16
. Histories of ecological thought include Frank Golley,
A history of the ecosystem concept in ecology
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993); Stephen Bocking,
Ecologists and environmental politics
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997); Donald Worster,
Nature’s economy: A history of ecological ideas
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

17
. Rosalind Shaw, “‘Nature,’ ‘culture,’ and disasters: Floods in Bangladesh,” in
Bush base: Forest farm
, ed. Elisabeth Croll and David Parkin, 200–217 (London: Routledge, 1992).

18
. Clive Jones, John Lawton, and Moshe Shachak, “Organisms as ecosystems engineers,”
Oikos
69, no. 3 (1994): 373–386; Clive Jones, John Lawton, and Moshe Shachak, “Positive and negative effects of organisms as physical ecosystems engineers,”
Ecology
78, no. 7 (1997): 1946–1957.

19
. Consider a world with multiple interbreeding hominids; we might imagine resemblance beyond species more readily in that world. Our loneliness without closer cousins shapes our willingness to allow each species to stand apart in a biblical tableau.

20
. This process is what Donna Haraway usefully calls “becoming with” (
When species meet
[Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007]).

21
. More contrasts: The matsutake I saw in the United States and Finland grew in industrial timber; in China, as in Japan, they grew in peasant woodlands. In Yunnan and Oregon, matsutake grow in forests regarded as messy mistakes; in Lapland and Japan, matsutake forests are aesthetically idealized. Two-by-two tables would be possible—but I have not wanted to set each location as a type. I am looking for how assemblages gather.

C
HAPTER 12.
H
ISTORY

1
. As long as one does not get stuck in their stereotypes, it is possible to mix “mythology” and “history.” History is not just national teleology; mythology is not just eternal return. To become entangled in history, one does not have to share a cosmology. Renato Rosaldo (
Ilongot headhunting
[Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1980]) and Richard Price (
Alabi’s World
[Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990]) offer examples of the interweaving of varied cosmologies and world-making practices in making history. Morten Pedersen (
Not quite shamans
[Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011]) shows histories in the making of cosmology. Many others, however, emphasize contrasts between mythology and history. By limiting the meaning of “history” through this contrast, however, they lose
the ability to see the hybrid, layered, and contaminated cosmologies of any history in the making—and vice versa.

2
. Thom van Dooren (
Flight ways
[New York: Columbia University Press, 2014]) argues that birds tell stories through the ways they make places into homes. In this meaning of “story,” many organisms tell stories. These are among the traces I watch as “history.”

3
. Chris Maser,
The redesigned forest
(San Pedro, CA: R. & E. Miles, 1988).

4
. David Richardson, ed.,
Ecology and biogeography of
Pinus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

5
. David Richardson and Steven Higgins, “Pines as invaders in the southern hemisphere,” in
Ecology
, ed. Richardson, 450–474.

6
. Peter Becker, “Competition in the regeneration niche between conifers and angiosperms: Bond’s slow seedling hypothesis,”
Functional Ecology
14, no. 4 (2000): 401–412.

7
. James Agee, “Fire and pine ecosystems,” in
Ecology
, ed. Richardson, 193–218.

8
. David Read, “The mycorrhizal status of
Pinus
,” in
Ecology
, ed. Richardson, 324–340, on 324.

9
. Ronald Lanner,
Made for each other: A symbiosis of birds and pines
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

10
. Ronald Lanner, “Seed dispersal in pines,” in
Ecology
, ed. Richardson, 281–295.

11
. Charles Lefevre, interview, 2006; Charles Lefevre, “Host associations of
Tricholoma magnivelare
, the American matsutake” (PhD diss., Oregon State University, 2002).

12
. Ogawa,
Matsutake
(cited in chap. 3, n. 4).

13
. Lefevre, “Host associations.”

14
. Pines were in Finland by nine thousand years ago (Katherine Willis, Keith Bennett, and John Birks, “The late Quaternary dynamics of pines in Europe,” in
Ecology
, ed. Richardson, 107–121, on 113). The first artifact of human presence is a Karelian fishing net from 8300 BCE (Vaclav Smil,
Making the modern world: Materials and dematerialization
[Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2013], 13).

15
. Simo Hannelius and Kullervo Kuusela,
Finland: The country of evergreen forest
(Tampere, FI: Forssan Kirkapiano Oy, 1995). I also draw on field trips with foresters.

16
. Medieval farmers in Finland ringed pine and spruce to bring landscapes into broadleaf agroforestry rotations (Timo Myllyntaus, Mina Hares, and Jan Kunnas, “Sustainability in danger? Slash-and-burn cultivation in nineteenth-century Finland and twentieth-century Southeast Asia,”
Environmental History
7, no. 2 [2002]: 267–302). For a vivid description of Finnish swidden, see Stephen Pyne,
Vestal fire
(cited in chap. 11, n. 10), 228–234.

17
. Timo Myllyntaus, “Writing about the past with green ink: The emergence of Finnish environmental history,” H-Environment,
http://www.h-net.org/~environ/historiography/finland.htm
.

18
. By the mid-nineteenth century, timber outpaced tar as an export. Sven-Erik Åstrom,
From tar to timber: Studies in northeast European forest exploitation and foreign
trade, 1660–1860
, Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum, no. 85 (Helsinki: Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters, 1988).

19
. Edmund von Berg,
Kertomus Suomenmaan metsisistä
(1859; Helsinki: Metsälehti Kustannus, 1995). This translation is from Pyne,
Vestal fire
, 259.

20
. Ibid. This translation is from Martti Ahtisaari, “Sustainable forest management in Finland: Its development and possibilities,”
Unasylva
200 (2000): 56–59, on 57.

21
. Raw and processed timber accounted for three-quarters of the value of Finnish exports by 1913. David Kirby,
A concise history of Finland
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Twentieth-century settlements dispersed in the forests, following the work, a pattern that continued until the 1970s, when mill jobs declined because of competition from tropical wood. Jarmo Kortelainen, “Mill closure—options for a restart: A case study of local response in a Finnish mill community,” in
Local economic development
, ed. Cecily Neil and Markku Tykkläinen, 205–225 (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 1998).

22
. One-third of the reparations were paid directly in forestry and paper products; the other two-thirds involved agricultural products and machinery. Providing the last of these built Finland’s postwar industry. Max Jacobson,
Finland in the new Europe
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 1998), 90.

23
. Hannelius and Kuusela,
Finland
, 139.

24
. Timo Kuuluvainen, “Forest management and biodiversity conservation based on natural ecosystem dynamics in northern Europe: The complexity challenge,”
Ambio
38 (2009): 309–315.

25
. For example, Hannelius and Kuusela,
Finland
, 175.

26
. Curran,
Ecology and evolution
(cited in “Tracking” interlude, n. 3).

27
. Weather and undergrowth conditions also make a difference in whether seeds will sprout and if seedlings will become established. For wavelike regeneration of northern Sweden’s Scots pine, without fire, see Olle Zackrisson, Marie-Charlotte Nilsson, Ingeborg Steijlen, and Greger Hornberg, “Regeneration pulses and climate-vegetation interactions in nonpyrogenic boreal Scots pine stands,”
Journal of Ecology
83, no. 3 (1995): 469–483; Jon Agren and Olle Zackrisson, “Age and size structure of
Pinus sylvestris
populations on mires in central and northern Sweden,”
Journal of Ecology
78, no. 4 (1990): 1049–1062. The authors do not consider masting. Other researchers report: “Mast years are relatively frequent but at the boreal forest limit seed maturation is impeded by the short growing season; mast years may occur as seldom as once or twice in 100 years.” Csaba Matyas, Lennart Ackzell, and C.J.A. Samuel,
EUFORGEN technical guidelines for genetic conservation and use of Scots pine
(Pinus sylvestris) (Rome: International Genetic Resources Institute, 2004), 1.

28
. Hiromi
F
ujita, “Succession of higher fungi in a forest of
Pinus densiflora
” [in Japanese],
Transactions of the Mycological Society of Japan
30 (1989): 125–147.

29
. The study of matsutake ecology in Nordic Europe is in its infancy. For an introduction, see Niclas Bergius and Eric Darnell, “The Swedish matsutake (
Tricholoma nauseosum
syn.
T. matsutake
): Distribution, abundance, and ecology,”
Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research
15 (2000): 318–325.

C
HAPTER 13.
R
ESURGENCE

1
. Scholarship on the disappearance of the peasantry begins with histories of the formation of the modern (e.g., Eugen Weber,
Peasants into Frenchmen
[Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1976]). In the discussion of contemporary life, the trope is used to suggest our entry into a postmodern era (e.g., Michael Kearney,
Reconceptualizing the peasantry
[Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996]; Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri,
Multitude
[New York: Penguin, 2004]).

2
. As discussed in chapter
II
, I include
Quercus, Lithocarpus
, and
Castanopsis
in my use of the term “oak.”

3
. Oliver Rackham,
Woodlands
(London: Collins, 2006). Some biologists speculate that oaks may have developed their ability to coppice from long association with elephants, once common in the global north (George Monbiot,
Feral
[London: Penguin, 2013]). Even the suggestion speaks of the new importance of the cross-species evolutionary thinking discussed in the “Tracking” interlude.

4
. For Japan: Hideo
T
abata, “The future role of
satoyama
woodlands in Japanese society,” in
Forest and civilisations
, ed. Y.
Y
asuda, 155–162 (New Delhi: Roli Books, 2001). For the coexistence of tree species in the satoyama, see Nakashizuka, and Matsumoto,
Diversity
(cited in chap.
II
, n. 14).

5
. Atsuki
A
zuma, “Birds of prey living in yatsuda and satoyama,” in
Satoyama
, ed. Takeuchi et al., (cited in chap.
II
, n. 14), 102–109.

6
. Ibid., 103–104.

7
. Larval forms of this butterfly eat
Celtis sinensis
, one of the species of the coppice woodlands. Adults eat the sap of
Quercus acutissima
, another peasant coppiced oak (Izumi
W
ashitani, “Species diversity in satoyama landscapes,” in
Satoyama
, ed. Takeuchi et al., 89–93 [cited in chap.
II
n. 14], on 90). Coppice supports a high diversity of plants as well as insects; in comparison, abandoning an area may allow a few aggressive species to dominate. See Wajirou
S
uzuki, “Forest vegetation in and around Ogawa Forest Reserve in relation to human impact,” in
Diversity
, ed. Nakashizuka and Matsumoto, 27–42.

8
. Conrad Totman following earlier Japanese historians, offers this focus in
The green archipelago: Forestry in preindustrial Japan
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).

9
. This paragraph draws from Totman,
Green archipelago
; Margaret McKean, “Defining and dividing property rights in the commons: Today’s lessons from the Japanese past,” International Political Economy Working Paper no. 150, Duke University, 1991; Utako
Y
amashita, Kulbhushan Balooni, and Makoto Inoue, “Effect of instituting ‘authorized neighborhood associations’ on communal (iriai) forest ownership in Japan,”
Society and Natural Resources
22 (2009): 464–473; Gaku
M
itsumata and Takeshi
M
urata, “Overview and current status of the
irai
(commons) system in the three regions of Japan, from the Edo era to the beginning of the 21st century,” Discussion Paper No. 07–04 (Kyoto: Multilevel Environmental Governance for Sustainable Development Project, 2007).

10
. Oliver Rackham points out that aristocrats in Europe used oak for elite building; thus oak was a lords’ tree. In Japan, lords had sugi and hinoki for building. Rackham, “Trees, woodland, and archaeology,” paper presented at Yale Agrarian Studies Colloquium, October 19, 2013,
http://www.yale.edu/agrarianstudies/colloqpapers/07rackham.pdf
.

11
. Tabata, “The future role of satoyama.”

12
. Matsuo
T
sukada, “Japan,” in
Vegetation history
, ed., B. Huntley and T. Webb III, 459–518 (Dordrecht, NL: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988).

13
. Interview, 2008. Deforestation was associated with logging, shifting cultivation, the spread of intensive agriculture, and residential settlement. See Yamada Asako,
H
arada Hiroshi, and
O
kuda Shigetoshi, “Vegetation mapping in the early Meiji era and changes in vegetation in southern Miura peninsula” [in Japanese],
Eco-Habitat
4, no. 1 (1997): 33–40;
O
gura Junichi, “Forests of the Kanto region in the 1880s” [in Japanese],
Journal of the Japanese Institute of Landscape Architects
57, no. 5 (1994): 79–84; Kaoru
I
chikawa, Tomoo
O
kayasu, and Kazuhiko
T
akeuchi, “Characteristics in the distribution of woodland vegetation in the southern Kanto region since the early 20th century,”
Journal of Environmental Information Science
36, no. 5 (2008): 103–108.