Our new Anthropology catalog includes a gripping account of the Russian visionaries who are pursuing human immortality; an exploration of frequently neglected aspects of Iranian spirituality and politics; an examination of the revolution in game live streaming and esports broadcasting; and a vivid look at how India has developed the idea of entrepreneurial citizens as leaders mobilizing society.
If you’re attending the American Anthropological Association meeting in San Diego this weekend, visit Booth 307 to browse our anthropology titles and more!
As long as we have known death, we have dreamed of life without end. In The Future of Immortality, Anya Bernstein explores the contemporary Russian communities of visionaries and utopians who are pressing at the very limits of the human. Along the way, she draws out the ethical and philosophical implications of an end to human mortality. As vividly written as any novel, this is a fascinating account of techno-scientific and religious futurism—and the ways in which it hopes to transform our very being.
Since the late nineteenth century, modernizing intellectuals, religious leaders, and statesmen in Iran have attempted to curtail occult practices and appeals to saintly powers as “superstitious,” instead encouraging the development of rational religious sensibilities and dispositions. However, these rationalizing processes have multiplied the possibilities for experimental engagement with the immaterial realm. The Iranian Metaphysicals shows that this metaphysical experimentation lies at the center of some of the most influential intellectual and religious movements in modern Iran.
Every day thousands of people broadcast their gaming live to audiences over the internet using popular sites such as Twitch, which reaches more than one hundred million viewers a month. In these new platforms for interactive entertainment, big esports events featuring digital game competitors live stream globally, and audiences can interact with broadcasters—and each other—through chat in real time. What are the ramifications of this exploding online industry? Taking readers inside home studios and backstage at large esports events, Watch Me Play investigates the rise of game live streaming and how it is poised to alter how we understand media and audiences.
Can entrepreneurs develop a nation, serve the poor, and pursue creative freedom, all while generating economic value? In Chasing Innovation, Lilly Irani shows the contradictions that arise as designers, engineers, and businesspeople frame development and governance as opportunities to innovate. Irani documents the rise of “entrepreneurial citizenship” in India over the past seventy years, demonstrating how a global ethos of development through design has come to shape state policy, economic investment, and the middle class in one of the world’s fastest-growing nations.