Michael J. Hathaway

Michael J. Hathaway is an associate professor of cultural anthropology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. His first book, "Environmental Winds: Making the Global in Southwest China" (University of California Press, 2013), won the Cecil B. Currey Book Award for best book on development studies. The book explores how environmentalism was refashioned in China, not only by conservationists, but also by rural villagers and even animals. His studies of China’s last herd of wild elephants explore how they themselves act to reshape physical and social landscapes as they engage with villagers, scientists, and animal rights activists. His second major project examines the global commodity chain of the matsutake, one of the world’s most expensive mushrooms, following it from the highlands of the Tibetan Plateau to the markets of urban Japan. He works with the Matsutake Worlds Research Group, looking at the social worlds this mushroom engenders in Canada, the United States, China, and Japan.