Along with Bill Maurer, I am Series Editor for the Princeton Studies in Culture and Technology.
Since the early 2000s, new communities of social scientists have arisen—including but not limited to anthropologists—who extend classic ethnographic methods and questions into areas of pressing interest in domains of technology and economics. Of particular interest are phenomena like infrastructures and communications technologies old and new, virtual sociality, reconfigured forms of finance and money, and the pervasiveness of online interaction in offline life. This ethnographically- and historically-informed research is built on strong interdisciplinary connections, often to fields as remote from anthropology as design and engineering. However, such work is sometimes still assumed to lie at the margins of what “anthropology” represents in terms of fieldsites and research goals.
In response to this state of affairs, this series will present innovative, interdisciplinary work that examines the varied ways new technologies combine with older technologies and cultural understandings to shape novel forms of subjectivity, embodiment, knowledge, place, and community. The series will afford the occasion for work that incorporates attention to continuity and change—promises and perils—through book-length inquiries into nascent modes of finance, value, online sociality, and related areas.
The series is intended to showcase the best work in this exciting new field of anthropological inquiry. It will thus demonstrate the relevance of anthropology to some of the most consequential and cutting-edge social, economic, and technological phenomena of our day—to emerging forms of “digital culture” in the broadest sense.