Conversations in Anthropology

Episode 32: Anna Tsing

5 snips
Jun 7, 2020
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ANECDOTE

Learning To Love Mushrooms In The Field

  • Tsing describes learning to love mushrooms through difficulty and awe at pickers' abilities to spot hidden fungi.
  • Her field struggles to find mushrooms made her appreciate them and reshaped the project's focus.
INSIGHT

Hope As Uncertainty Plus Possibility

  • Hope in current environmental scholarship is complex: it's uncertainty plus possibility, not guaranteed progress.
  • We must learn to navigate unknown alliances rather than rely on teleological visions of inevitable victory.
INSIGHT

Tell Terrible Stories Beautifully

  • Anthropologists must learn to 'tell terrible stories beautifully' so warnings about ecological and social collapse engage rather than paralyze.
  • Staying with trouble means using careful description and artful narrative to make difficult realities legible and motivating.
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