ABSTRACT
The idea of collaboration has much appeal, but some of us wondered if collaboration is always desirable. Perhaps ethnographic echolocation is one of many new kinds of senses that can be cultivated through multi-sited, strong collaborations. The mushroom hid and prospered in cool mountain forests, where deer and squirrels followed its delicious scent. Satsuka offers examples of how translation between Japanese, North American, and Chinese projects for managing nature challenges the terms for studying each. According to Tomoya Akimichi, the workshop convener, the English commons and iriai differ for several reasons. Matsutake yama, or matsutake-growing landscape in Japan, can be translated as 'matsutake forest', thus lending commensurability with forests in Oregon and Yunnan. The politics of translation is striking in the translation of iriai, the practice of communal land use in Japan, as 'the commons.
