Worse yet, contaminated diversity is recalcitrant to the kind of “summing up” that has become the hallmark of modern knowledge. Contaminated diversity is not only particular and historical, ever changing, but also relational. It has no self-contained units; its units are encounter-based collaborations. Without self-contained units, it is impossible to compute costs and benefits, or functionality, to any “one” involved. No self-contained individuals or groups assure their self-interests oblivious to the encounter. Without algorithms based on self-containment, scholars and policymakers might have to learn something about the cultural and natural histories at stake. That takes time, and too much time, perhaps, for those who dream of grasping the whole in an equation. But who put them in charge? If a rush of troubled stories is the best way to tell about contaminated diversity, then it’s time to make that rush part of our knowledge practices. Perhaps, like the war survivors themselves, we need to tell and tell until all our stories of death and near-death and gratuitous life are standing with us to face the challenges of the present. It is in listening to that cacophony of troubled stories that we might encounter our best hopes for precarious survival. — 33: 641-650
No, no, you are not thinking; you are just being logical. —Physicist Niels Bohr defending “spooky action at a distance” — 37: 659-661
Rayner challenges us to think with mushrooms, otherwise. Some aspects of our lives are more comparable to fungal indeterminacy, he points out. Our daily habits are repetitive, but they are also open-ended, responding to opportunity and encounter. What if our indeterminate life form was not the shape of our bodies but rather the shape of our motions over time? Such — 47: 810-813
“Salvage accumulation” is the process through which lead firms amass capital without controlling the conditions under which commodities are produced. Salvage is not an ornament on ordinary capitalist processes; it is a feature of how capitalism works.3 — 63: 971-974
This is a performance of competition—not a necessity of business. — 81: 1263-1263
At the heart of the practices I am advocating are arts of ethnography and natural history. The new alliance I propose is based on commitments to observation and fieldwork—and what I call noticing.13 Human-disturbed landscapes are ideal spaces for humanist and naturalist noticing. We need to know the histories humans have made in these places and the histories of nonhuman participants. Satoyama restoration advocates were exceptional teachers here; they revitalized my understanding of “disturbance” as both coordination and history. They showed me how disturbance might initiate a story of the life of the forest.14 — 159: 2350-2356
Perhaps one skill for the Zen arts of managed nonmanagement will be to watch pine’s partners rather than pine. — 176: 2603-2604
future sustainability is best modeled with the help of nostalgia. — 182: 2666-2667
Peasant landscapes, he explained, are the proving grounds for remaking sustainable relations between humans and nature. — 183: 2687-2688
be left alone,” someone explained.2 Resource management — 193: 2836-2837
In postcolonial theory, translation shows us misfits as well as joins. — 217: 3195-3196
“You start getting these groupings that you can only name relative to each other. You can’t call them a species…. In the old taxonomic approach you say, ‘this is my ideal’—it’s completely Platonic—and everything is going to compare as a missed approximation to that ideal. Nobody will be the same as this, but you compare and see how close they are to this ideal…. If it becomes too different—by whatever measure, and the measures are completely arbitrary—you say, ‘oh this must be a different species.’” — 232: 3442-3446
In this last mushroom flush, a final upsurge in the face of varied coming droughts and winters, I search for fugitive moments of entanglement in the midst of institutionalized alienation. These are sites in which to seek allies. One might think of them as latent commons. They are latent in two senses: first, while ubiquitous, we rarely notice them, and, second, they are undeveloped. They bubble with unrealized possibilities; they are elusive. They are what we hear in Brown’s political listening and related arts of noticing. They require stretching concepts of the commons. Thus, I characterize them in the negative: Latent commons are not exclusive human enclaves. Opening the commons to other beings shifts everything. Once we include pests and diseases, we can’t hope for harmony; the lion will not lie down with the lamb. And organisms don’t just eat each other; they also make divergent ecologies. Latent commons are those mutualist and nonantagonistic entanglements found within the play of this confusion. Latent commons are not good for everyone. Every instance of collaboration makes room for some and leaves out others. Whole species lose out in some collaborations. The best we can do is to aim for “good-enough” worlds, where “good-enough” is always imperfect and under revision. Latent comments don’t institutionalize well. Attempts to turn the commons into policy are commendably brave, but they do not capture the effervescence of the latent commons. The latent commons moves in law’s interstices; it is catalyzed by infraction, infection, inattention—and poaching. Latent commons cannot redeem us. Some radical thinkers hope that progress will lead us to a redemptive and utopian commons. In contrast, the latent commons is here and now, amidst the trouble. And humans are never fully in control. Given this negative character, it makes no sense to crystallize first principles or seek natural laws that generate best cases. Instead, I practice arts of noticing. I comb through the mess of existing worlds-in-the-making, looking for treasures—each distinctive and unlikely to be found again, at least in that form. — 255: 3751-3768
“When people say ‘Things were better in the old days,’ what they have in mind, I believe, is the joy of doing things together with many people. We have lost that joy.”3 Pines as well as farmers no longer — 261: 3854-3856
working knowledge. Mutual learning is also an important goal. Groups are candid about making mistakes—and learning from them. One report about satoyama work by a group of volunteers includes all the problems and mistakes of their efforts. Without coordination, they cut down too many trees. Some of the areas they cleared grew back even thicker with undesirable species. In the end, the report’s authors argue, the group developed a “do, think, — 263: 3891-3895
Mutual learning is also an important goal. Groups are candid about making mistakes—and learning from them. One report about satoyama work by a group of volunteers includes all the problems and mistakes of their efforts. Without coordination, they cut down too many trees. Some of the areas they cleared grew back even thicker with undesirable species. In the end, the report’s authors argue, the group developed a “do, think, observe, and do again” principle, elevating collective trial and error to an art. Since one of their goals was participatory learning, allowing themselves to make and observe mistakes was an important part of the process. The authors conclude, “To be successful, volunteers have to participate in the program at all levels and stages.” — 263: 3892-3898
Such privatization of common wealth might characterize all entrepreneurs. — 274: 4037-4037