The Department of Anthropology's Four Field Colloquium Series presents:"The Gift in the Commodity: On Alienation and Assessment" by Anna Tsing

How do things become capitalist commodities? This talk explores the role of assessment exercises in separating things from the social worlds in which they emerge. By following the commodity chains of matsutake mushrooms from forests in the U.S. Pacific Northwest and southwest China to Japanese consumers, the talk considers how sorting and resorting can take the gift out of the commodity--or put it back in.