Introduction
Fungi have accompanied societies for millennia. They nourish, heal, intoxicate, transform, ferment, decompose, colour, inspire and unsettle. They inhabit forests, soils, foods, bodies, stories, pharmacopoeias, artisanal practices, imaginaries and belief systems.
Yet their place in cultures often remains fragmented. Fungi are studied as biological organisms, sought as food resources, used as medicinal or technical materials, told through myths, feared through poisonings, celebrated in kitchens and sometimes forgotten in archives. Ethnomycology arises from the need to connect these dimensions.
The Société ethnomycologique de Genève defends an approach capable of studying fungi in their biological reality, but also in the relationships they maintain with societies, gestures, knowledge, territories, objects, narratives and human forms of life.
Defining ethnomycology
Ethnomycology is the study of the relationships between fungi and societies. It is interested in the ways human beings name, gather, cultivate, eat, ferment, heal with, transform, represent, classify, transmit and interpret fungi.
It does not replace mycology. It broadens it. Where mycology identifies species, describes characters, observes life cycles and analyses biological functions, ethnomycology questions the human contexts in which these fungi acquire meaning.
It is situated at the intersection of several disciplines: mycology, anthropology, history, ecology, pharmacology, food studies, arts, techniques, studies of popular knowledge, field practices and the documentation of material cultures.
This interdisciplinary position is not a weakness. It is a requirement. Fungi cannot be confined to a single category. They circulate between the living world, matter, food, remedy, poison, symbol, object, narrative and experience.
Fungi and cultures
In many societies, fungi occupy an ambiguous place. They may be sought as precious foods, avoided as dangers, used as remedies, transmitted as family knowledge, integrated into agricultural practices, associated with local narratives or inscribed within complex medicinal and symbolic systems.
Their presence goes beyond simple consumption. Fungi are involved in fermentation, preservation, food transformation, material production, dyeing, traditional medicine, soil ecology, cultivation techniques, forest practices and the arts.
They also participate in imaginaries. They appear in tales, images, myths, fears, poisoning stories, representations of the forest, visions of the underground world and contemporary forms of creation.
Studying fungi as cultural facts does not mean detaching them from their biological reality. On the contrary, it makes it possible to understand how their concrete properties — rapid growth, strange forms, toxicities, edibility, capacity for transformation and links with decomposition — have shaped the ways humans think about them.
Knowledge, uses and transmission
Knowledge related to fungi is not found only in scientific books. It exists in kitchens, forests, markets, gardens, workshops, families, farms, laboratories, herbaria, notebooks, gestures and memories.
Fungal knowledge may be an identification method transmitted by a parent, a local recipe, a drying technique, a medicinal use, a way of cultivating on wood, a fermentation practice, a vernacular name, a gathering story or an account of poisoning.
These forms of knowledge are not all equivalent, and they must not be confused. Some belong to popular experience, others to scientific research, others again to local traditions, professional practices or systems of care. Ethnomycology must document them without simplifying them.
Transmitting this knowledge requires rigour. It is not a matter of folklorizing practices or turning cultures into scenery. It is a matter of recognizing that fungi stand at the heart of complex relationships between observation, use, caution, technique, memory and interpretation.
Fieldwork and documentation
Ethnomycology cannot be limited to an accumulation of references. It requires fieldwork, listening, observation, documentation and attention to contexts.
Documenting the relationships between fungi and societies means collecting narratives, identifying objects, preserving images, recording practices, observing gestures, consulting archives, comparing sources and connecting dispersed forms of knowledge.
The library, archives, training programmes, audiovisual productions, exhibitions, interviews, publications and festivals are all means of making this knowledge visible and transmissible.
The Société ethnomycologique de Genève wishes to build a framework in which these forms of documentation can coexist: book and film, fieldwork and archive, laboratory and kitchen, indoor cultivation and forest, scholarly speech and transmitted gesture.
Ethics and responsibilities
Studying fungal cultures requires caution. Fungi touch on sensitive domains: health, food, poisoning, traditional practices, medicinal uses, psychoactive substances, beliefs, local economies and forms of knowledge that may sometimes be fragile.
A responsible ethnomycology must avoid shortcuts. It must not exoticize cultures, glorify uses without context, confuse tradition with evidence, or turn living knowledge into spectacular images.
It must also recognize the limits of its own frameworks. Some forms of knowledge are not meant to be extracted, simplified or published outside their context. Others require scientific, medical, historical or legal verification before being transmitted to the public.
Rigour does not oppose curiosity. It makes it possible. A living discipline must be able to welcome the diversity of experiences while clearly distinguishing observation, hypothesis, narrative, use, belief, practice and verifiable data.
Public forms
Ethnomycology should not remain enclosed within a restricted circle. It can take public forms: conferences, training programmes, exhibitions, cinema, journals, workshops, festivals, sound documents, video productions, educational objects and artistic projects.
These forms are not secondary. They allow transmission, open discussions, create encounters and make accessible questions that cross science, culture, ecology, food, traditional medicine, production and the arts.
The creation of a journal, a studio, a library, a workshop and a festival responds to this conviction: fungi must be studied, but also told, shown, discussed, cooked, filmed, preserved and transmitted.
The Société ethnomycologique de Genève sets itself the task of creating these spaces. Not as a decorative end, but as a cultural and scientific infrastructure capable of supporting a discipline still under construction.
Conclusion
The Société ethnomycologique de Genève defends an open, rigorous and living ethnomycology. Open, because it welcomes knowledge from several disciplines and several environments. Rigorous, because it refuses easy simplifications. Living, because it is interested in practices, gestures, narratives, forms and transmission.
Fungi are not only species to be identified. They are also presences that move through societies, kitchens, pharmacopoeias, forests, techniques, arts and imaginaries.
Building ethnomycology means learning to look at these relationships with precision. It means giving fungi a place in the cultural history of the living world. It means creating tools to preserve, transmit and develop the knowledge that surrounds them.
This manifesto sets a direction. It closes nothing. It opens a field of work.