Coming together around, and being divided by infrastructure

Looking back on the past ten weeks, I think that I have understood infrastructure as a force arranging for, or bringing into existence, different groups of people who might be grouped by a common relation to certain aspects of infrastructure. In Harvey and Knox’s study, we see roadside villages and markets form, and road engineers/scientists come together to make expertise. In Timothy Mitchell’s book, coal workers enacted democracy by banding together based on their shared identity and experience around the coal industry infrastructure: “Workers were gradually connected together not so much by the weak ties of a class culture, collective ideology or political organization, but by the increasing and highly concentrated quantities of carbon energy they mined, loaded, carried, stoked an out to work” (Mitchell: 27). Karen Bakker traces different interactions and relationships around water infrastructure, which helps us break down the corporate and community binary: “And the distinction between “corporate” and “community,” it should be emphasized is best viewed as a continuum rather than a binary” (Bakker: 209). In various ways, infrastructure helps challenge understandings about social identity. People are arranged together sometimes because of infrastructure, or divided based on their role or interaction with infrastructure.

I find this theme salient in Anna Tsing’s book as well. I had a hard time tracing exactly what was the infrastructure being talked about here—I think there were several, but the one infrastructure I picked out was the industrialized forest. I’m very excited in Tsing’s experiment in attempting to recreate “indeterminate encounters” for us as readers in her unorthodox book structure. It seemed to me that she did tend to organize chapters by groups or types of people commonly identified by their role/encounter with Matsutake mushrooms. There are the pickers, of course, and there are the Matsutake Crusaders, who disturb the earth to help Matsutake grow. There are also scientists in the U.S. and Japan, who study Matsutake though different questions and goals. There are also those involved in industrial forestry, which allow for Matsutake to flourish. It is interesting to me, in her effort to retrace assemblages, how these actors are given centrality in turns.

For my outside media, I simply wanted to investigate what other groupings and activities have formed around Matsutake, and I found…cooking, of course!

• Grilled Oregon Chinook in Matsutake Ginger Broth
• http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/grilled-oregon-chinook-in-matsutake-ginger-broth-recipe.html
• Spruce, Douglas Fir & Matsutake Mushroom Farrotto Recipe
• http://marxfood.com/farro-risotto-spruce-fir-matsutake-recipe/
• Matsutake Soup
• http://blog.umamimart.com/2012/12/japanify-matsutake-soup/
• Matsutake Pizza
• https://zojirushi.com/blog/?p=1366

There are a variety of recipes that show up in food blogs, online cooking magazines, and local periodicals. These recipes are posted from around the world, and some creations are distinctly location-based, like the “Grilled Oregon Chinook in Matsutake Ginger Broth”. Several blurbs also ring in the Matsutake season: “autumn is here” (Zojirushi.com).

And then there’s this epic Iron Chef “Matsutake Battle”: https://youtu.be/2Yq2ioNmDpk?t=9m20s

Of course, Tsing is analyzing the Matsutake supply chain, and cooking falls more on the consumption side, so I’m not sure how much I can say that these are activities that form via contact with infrastructure, or the ruins of infrastructure. But, it might be interesting to consider how activity around Matsutake as a product might be different as it exits(?) the infrastructure (in whatever form of functionality) that got it from pine tree to plate.