Pine Mushrooms as World-Makers (re-scheduled from cancelled February meeting)

From Michael: 

Michael Hathaway is an associate professor of cultural anthropology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia. He studies the intersection of indigenous politics and environmentalism in China, and more recently, has been exploring how indigeneity has emerged in the Asia-Pacific region through transnational encounters. His first book, Environmental Winds: Making the Global in Southwest China (University of California Press, 2013) explores how environmentalism was refashioned in China, not only by conservationists, but also by rural villagers and even animals themselves. His second major project examines the global commodity chain of the matsutake, one of the world’s most expensive mushrooms, following it from the highlands of the Tibetan Plateau to the markets of urban Japan. He works with other members of the Matsutake Worlds Research Group, looking at the social worlds this mushroom engenders in Canada, the United States, China, and Japan.