Tsing's Things (concepts)
When a picker may return to the buyer for the difference between the original price paid and a higer price offered on the same night.
What is "open ticket"? (75)
Supply chains are often thought to be organized and scalable. Tsing suggests that they are actually this.
What is "irrational"? (61)
In framing the book, Tsing suggests that our current era is defined by this.
What is "precarity"? (3)
Tsing briefly mentions how she stumbled upon the matsutake. She was looking for this.
What is "A culturally colorful global commodity"? (57)
Up to this point, the book has focused on this state.
What is "Oregon"?
This is the process through which firms amass capital without controlling the conditions under which commodities are produced.
What is "salvage accumulation"? (63)
On the US supply chain side, independent foragers pick mushrooms, then sell to independent buyers, then they sell to these actors, and then head to exporters who handle transport to Japan.
What is bulkers field agents? (67)
A system for concentrating wealth, which makes possible new investments, which further concentrates wealth.
What is "capitalism"? (62)
The smell of Matsutake is associated with this season in Japan.
What is Autumn?
In describing "salvage accumulation" Tsing gives us this clever word play to describe the inhumanity within this system.
What are "salvage" and "savage" or "savage and salvage are often twins"? (64)
Sites for salvage that are simultaneously inside and outside capitalist spaces.
What are "pericapitalist spaces"?
The ability of a project to change scales smoothly without any change in project frames.
The precursors to modern unions.
Initially, the matsutake trade was dominated by white men. Eventually refugees from Laos and Cambodia entered the trade. These two groups eventually found common a common vocabulary in this.
What is "Freedom"? (68)
For matsutake pickers, picking is not seen as labor. Rather it is seen as this.
What is "searching"? (77)
An open ended entanglement of ways of being.
What is "an assemblage"? (83)
What is sugarcane?
In Thursday's capitalism talk, Kelsey's example used the exchange of knitted sweaters for this commodity to explain value.
What is a bushel of berries?
According to Tsing, most fungi do not die from disease, injury, or lack of resources, but rather this.
What is "old age"? (47)
Mycologist David Arora description of matsutake's smell.
What is "redhots and dirty socks"? (51)
Tsing uses this musical word to qualify the kinds of assemblages she is looking at in this book.
What is "polyphonic"? (23)
Before cell phone, this was used as the main form of communication between Open Ticket and Japan.
What is a payphone?
Hart and Negari suggest that capitalism cannot be escaped. In our discussion of capitalism seeping into different areas of life, Kelsey used this illustrative example.
What are dating apps?
This ethnic group of mastutake pickers most associates with the identity of "hunter."
What is "Hmong"?
"Everyone carries a history of ________, purity is not an option."
What is contamination?