An interview with Anna Tsing
Channel: The Finnish Anthropological Society
Date: 2015-11-12

Unfortunately we are not able to stream the interview of Anna Tsing any more, but an edited version of the interview can be read from the Suomen Antropologi journal (OA): https://journal.fi/suomenantropologi/article/view/65083

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Anthropologist Anna Tsing's interview in Helsinki on the 22nd October, 2015, during the Biennial Conference of the Finnish Anthropological Society. In the interview Anna Tsing talks about her research and focus on environmental matters, marginality and capitalism's frontiers, as well as her latest projects on multi-species worlds and the Anthropocene. Her latest book "Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins" has just been released by Princeton University Press.

Interview by Maija Lassila.

1. 0:43  Beginnings of  Anna Tsing’s ethnographic research, talk about writing and anthropology’s ’interesting moment’ that was going on when Anna Tsing began her career.

2. 4:50 Anthropology’s interesting moment and the change in ethnographic writing at the time when Anna Tsing was writing her research on the Meratus Mountains.

2. 7:34 Friction and environmental focus, and the strength of the ethnographic method in understanding and seeing the landscape. Meratus mountains and the transition from historical continuities into landscape transformations.

3. 12:07 Marginality and frontiers in Anna Tsing’s research. Messiness and misunderstandings are present in all social interaction. How do people come to any understanding with each other?

4. 19:00  The multi-species focus. More than human landscapes, and human being as an inter-species connection.  

5. 22:00 The concept of the Anthropocene and how it sparks an interdisciplinary conversation.

6. 25:05 The challenge for anthropology in the Anthropocene.

7. 29:20 The Aarhus University Anthropocene project. Can anthropologists and biologists work together? 

8. 32:43 Post-colonial and de-colonial critical thinking in terms of the Anthropocene and tension between post-colonial theory and Anthropocene. Anthropology’s and social sciences’ contribution in being inside the description of the Anthropocene. 

36:49 Political economy belongs in the heart of Anthropocene, the concepts of Capitalocene and Plantacionocene

9. 38:49 Anthropology’s ability to notice multi-species connections, plants and animals in addition to human relations. 

10. 44:35 Personhood in non-humans, other living beings as subjects. 

11. 48:02 With the human-caused 6th wave of extinction, how to approach the loss of other species? How anthropologists should begin by noticing and ’staying with’ loss, catastrophy and mourning. Is there anything to do? 

12. 53:12 Matsutake mushrooms as inter-species connections and their hopefulness in the disturbed landscapes.

13. 57:22 What are ’Eco-Modernists’ and what is wrong with them?

14. 59:20 About writing, and the influence of oral stories Anna Tsing heard as a child 

15. 1:02:19 What does Anna Tsing love about anthropology and how would she advice starting anthropologists? The relation between ethnography and theory, and the strength of anthropology.