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Paper short abstract:

Drawing on an engagement with the Finnish producer and cultivator of medicinal mushrooms called Kääpä Biotech, this paper explores medicinal mushrooms as an emerging category at the intersection of medicine and personalized well-being that feeds on an imaginary of “cross-kingdom” relationality.

Paper long abstract:

Medicinal mushrooms, such as chaga, reishi, cordyceps, or lion’s mane, are typically polypore mushrooms that are posited as carrying various therapeutic properties (related to e.g., immune support, neurological health, mood, relaxation) by both complementary, alternative, and traditional medicine (e.g., Chinese) as well as, increasingly, by modern technoscience and its vocal purveyors such as biohackers. Drawing on an ethnographic engagement with the Finnish producer and cultivator of medicinal mushrooms called Kääpä Biotech (kääpä translating as “polypore mushroom”) and an analysis of targeted media texts (e.g., podcasts), this paper explores medicinal mushrooms as an emerging category at the contemporary intersection of medicine, personalized health, and consumer-led well-being that feeds on a (technoscientific) imaginary of “cross-kingdom” relationality.

Highlighting an ideology and procedure of interspecies alliance with the fungal kingdom – Kääpä Biotech manages the world’s largest chaga cultivation network as a responsible form of forest sustainability – the paper analyzes how contemporary discourses on medicinal mushrooms articulate both scientific, environmental, and ethico-moral values while reifying, recirculating, and commodifying certain privileged “somaesthetic” qualia of late modernity (e.g., bodily immunity, adaptability, and energy). More broadly, the paper sheds light on novel entanglements of CAM ontologies of the body with a secular scientific rationality as evidenced by this realm of naturopathic therapy.