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Paper short abstract:

Medicinal mushrooms are attributed with therapeutic properties by both CAM therapies and modern technoscience. I explore this category at the intersection of consumer-led well-being and neurocentric self-spirituality that sheds light on entanglements of CAM ontologies with scientific rationality.

Paper long abstract:

So-called 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, and mood, by both complementary, alternative, and traditional medicine (e.g., Chinese), as well as, increasingly, by modern technoscience and its purveyors in the health-and-wellness sphere (e.g., biohackers). Drawing on an ethnographic engagement with the Finnish producer and cultivator of medicinal mushrooms called Kääpä Biotech (kääpä translating as “polypore mushroom”) that includes interviews with founding members and an analysis of chosen media texts, this paper explores medicinal mushrooms as an emerging category at the contemporary intersection of consumer-led well-being and neurocentric self-spirituality that feeds on a rhetoric of interspecies alliance with the fungal kingdom.

In particular, I focus on how chaga mushroom as a classic example of Finnish and Siberian folk medicine is re-traditionalized by Kääpä Biotech that manages the world’s largest chaga cultivation network as a responsible form of forest sustainability. By analyzing how the production and consumption of chaga mushroom is formulated by a combination of both scientific, environmental, monetary, medicinal, and spiritual values, and how certain privileged bodily qualia of neoliberal societies (e.g., immunity, adaptability) are simultaneously reified and commodified in the process, the paper sheds light on novel entanglements of speculative CAM ontologies of the body with a secular scientific rationality as evidenced by this realm of naturopathic therapy.