Anna Tsing on the Patchy Anthropocene

In this episode we are bringing you a recording of a special event we hosted with anthropologist Anna Tsing, whose work has reshaped how we think about capitalism, ecology, and life in a damaged world. Anna Tsing is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Aarhus University. She is the acclaimed author of In the Realm of the Diamond Queen, Friction, and The Mushroom at the End of the World.

In this conversation with journalist Nuria Ribas Costa, she explores the idea of the Patchy Anthropocene: a world of fragmented landscapes shaped by extraction, environmental crisis, and the uneven impacts of global capitalism. Together they discuss how dominant economic systems exhaust ecosystems, communities, and forms of life, while also considering the unexpected forms of coexistence that emerge in the ruins. Drawing on her research into human and more-than-human worlds, Tsing reflects on what it means to live, collaborate, and imagine futures in environments that are already profoundly altered.