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Mycelium Is the Message: Open Science, Ecological Values, and Alternative Futures with Do-It-Yourself Mycologists

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Mycelium Is the Message: Open Science, Ecological Values, and Alternative Futures with Do-It-Yourself Mycologists University of California Santa Barbara Mycelium is the Message: open science, ecological values, and alternative futures with do-it-yourself mycologists A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology by Joanna Beth Steinhardt Committee in charge: Professor Mary Hancock, Chair Professor Casey Walsh Professor Ann Taves September 2018 The Dissertation of Joanna Steinhardt is approved. ______________________________________ Professor Casey Walsh ______________________________________ Professor Ann Taves ______________________________________ Professor Mary Hancock, Committee Chair September 2018 Mycelium is the Message: open science, ecological values, and alternative futures with do-it-yourself mycologists Copyright © 2018 by Joanna Beth Steinhardt !iii To my parents !iv Acknowledgements Thank you to everyone who made this undertaking possible: first and foremost, my advisor Mary Hancock, for supporting me even as my project wandered into unplanned territory; my committee members, Casey Walsh and Ann Taves for helpful advice and feedback along the way; to my mother, who jumped wholeheartedly onto the mushroom train and even promised to read my dissertation; my sister, who gave me a place to crash in Portland and shared her Cascadian local knowledge with me; Larry and Louise, who hosted us in Eugene and shared their love of mushrooms and medicinal herbs; and all of my friends in Santa Barbara and the Bay Area that made the life of a toiling graduate student a little more tolerable, especially Miriam and Tak (who have fed me more times than I can count), the Blanket Fort buddies (whose love of shrombies kept me inspired), Mark Deutsch, Mia Bruch, Leslie Outhier, Francis Melange, Shayla Monroe, Patricia Kubala, Phil Ross, as well as many others whom I met in the last few years through the shared acquaintance of Kingdom Fungi and fascination with interspecies relationships. Lastly, this dissertation draws on two and a half years of field work in a community that was (lucky for me) warm, open, and welcoming. Without their willingness to share their stories, thoughts, and time with me, this dissertation would not have been possible. !v Curriculum Vitae Joanna Steinhardt EDUCATION 2018 PhD (expected) in Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara 2007 M.A. in Cultural Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem 2003 B.A. in Asian Studies and Urban Studies (dual major), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor PUBLICATIONS 2018 “Psychedelic Naturalism and Interspecies Alliance: Views from the Emerging Radical Mycology Movement,” a chapter in Plant Medicines, Healing and Psychedelic Science: Cultural Perspectives. Beatriz Caiuby Labate & Clancy Cavnar (Eds). Springer, 2018. 2010 “American Neo-Hasids in the Land of Israel,” Nova Religio: the Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions. Vol.13, No. 4, May 2010. !vi Abstract Mycelium is the Message: open science, ecological values, and alternative futures with do-it-yourself mycologists by Joanna Beth Steinhardt This dissertation looks at do-it-yourself (DIY) mycology with an ethnographic focus on the Fungal Alliance of the Bay (FAB), in the SF Bay Area, and addition field work with the Pacific Northwest Mycelial Collective (PNMC) (both pseudonyms). DIY mycology is an amateur technoscientific practice that builds on the home cultivation of mushrooms. It emerges out of North American ecology movement and draws on the long tradition of amateur mycology as well as innovations in the psychedelic underground. This form of engagement with fungi necessitates minimal fluency with modern lab techniques, basic knowledge of microbiology, and familiarity with fungal taxonomy and genetics. Teachers and authors are self-taught, their knowledge disseminated through books in the 1970s and 1980s and online media since the 1990s. DIY mycologists speak about the “wisdom” of fungi and promote the idea of an “alliance” with the fungal kingdom. Considering its animistic and often spiritualized language, alongside their scientific practices, DIY mycology raises questions about how modern science is practiced today among non-experts. My dissertation asks: How are science and technology constituted, or reformulated, and how are fungi enacted, among DIY mycologists? More broadly, does modern scientific practice outside of normative institutions produce different kinds of knowledge (Strasser, et al, 2018)? Drawing on recent anthropological inquiries into the nature of ontology (Descola, 2005; Mol, 2002) !vii and the role of nonhuman life in the creation of meaning and value (Paxson, 2012; Tsing, 2015), to explore this question. Reflecting the historical entanglement of ecological movements, radical politics, and psychedelia, DIY mycologists share ecological values and lifestyles and critical views of industrial capitalism. One overarching trait is what I refer to as “alter-ecology”: discourses and practices that extrapolate logics from scientific ecology to other domains as a resource of imagining the future. DIY mycology coopts technoscientific practices to build capacity but forgoes the conventions of normative science, especially the affective and discursive norms of mechanistic naturalism. Rather, they act within a post-humanist frame: they encounter and work with fungi, in both instrumental and intersubjective modes. Participants acknowledge and celebrate this mutuality and co-constitution and valorize the traits and capacities of fungi. In the process, science is coopted, shrunk, mobilized, and vernacularized, reflecting contemporary movements and trends toward citizen science and dispersed de- institutionalized science (Kelty, 2008; Strasser, et al, 2018; Delfanti, 2013, 2017). Overall, this vernacularization of scientific practice allows for the possibility and growth of syncretic forms of post-humanist amateur science, or what I call undisciplined science. !viii Table of Contents Abstract………………………………………………………………………..vii Chapter One Do-it-yourself mycology: the Pacific Northwest Mycelial Collective and the Fungal Alliance of the Bay …………………………………………………………….1 Chapter Two Lay experts, hobbyists, and open science: on the porous borders and border-crossers of mycology..…………………………………………………………………..79 Chapter Three The cultural landscapes of DIY mycology……………………………….…..134 Chapter Four The fruits of an underground network: the history of DIY mycology…….…216 Chapter Five Whoa!: The texture and value of mycological wonder………………………310 Chapter Six Captive Allies, Alien Kin: control, agency, and domestication………………373 Chapter Seven Conclusion: from generative networks to ontological horizons..…………….411 Appendix Cast of Characters……………………………………………………………426 Bibliography……………………………….………………………………..432 !ix Chapter One Do-it-yourself mycology: the Pacific Northwest Mycelial Collective and the Fungal Alliance of the Bay I first heard about the Fungal Alliance of the Bay (or FAB for short) when I met Ben through an acquaintance at Occupy the Farm, a land occupation just north of Berkeley, California that was precipitated by the Occupy movement in the fall of 2011. Clean cut, in his late twenties, with bright blue eyes, Ben had a warm smile and an easy going vibe that bespoke a southern California upbringing. Searching for a new research topic, I was curious to hear more about FAB and wrote him an email asking if he could tell me more about the group. We met him at a cafe in North Oakland one sunny afternoon in the fall of 2014. I knew next to nothing about mushrooms.1 Ben told me that he helped co-found FAB in 2011. The purpose of the group, he explained, was to use fungi to help restore ecosystems and break down toxins. As I asked him questions about what they did and who they were, the conversation turned into a life sketch of Ben and mushrooms. It began with the psychedelic mushrooms that he discovered with friends when they were students at college in Northern California. That grew into a love of Terrance McKenna, the folk hero of psychedelic philosophy whose meandering lectures Ben used to listen to online. And that led to a long period of learning how to cultivate mushrooms: first the psychedelic species and then culinary species, beginning with McKenna’s pseudonymous cultivation manual (Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower’s Guide), then 1 I have changed all the names of my interlocutors except in the case of a few publicly recognizable figures and teachers in the amateur mycology world. I’ve also changed identifying details as much as possible without misrepresenting demographic data. !1 moving on to another more lucid manual by mycologist Paul Stamets (The Mushroom Cultivator), and referencing online forums when necessary. (He told me emphatically to check out shroomery.org if I wanted to learn.) When I asked what books I should read, he recommended Food of the Gods by Terrance McKenna and Mycelium Running by Paul Stamets, and then he told me about local “gurus” like Alan Rockefeller who have put in years learning about fungi so they could teach others in online forums (like Shroomery) and in person. As for himself, Ben said he’s only been doing this for four years, he still has so much more to learn. Before I left, he told me that the next monthly meeting of FAB was happening tomorrow night and I should join. It turned out that the meeting was around the block from my apartment in Berkeley. Leo, the host, was a friendly man in his mid-sixties wearing a screen-printed FAB t-shirt. He brought me into the kitchen to meet the rest of the group
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