Princeton Studies in Culture and Technology¹⁷

Tom Boellstorff and Bill Maurer, Series Editors

This series presents 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. Through inquiries into topics ranging from finance and online sociality to social and technological infrastructure, the series provides a forum for work that incorporates attention to intersections of technology and value. The goal of the series is to showcase the best work in this exciting new field of anthropological inquiry and thereby demonstrate the relevance of anthropology to emerging forms of digital culture in the broadest sense.

Middle Tech: Software Work and the Culture of "Good Enough" Paula Bialski
Contrary to much of the popular discourse, not all technology is seamless and awesome; some of it is simply “good enough.” In Middle Tech, Paula Bialaski offers an ethnographic study of software developers at a non-flashy...
Code Work: Hacking across the US/México Techno-Borderlands Héctor Beltrán
In Code Work, Héctor Beltrán examines Mexican and Latinx coders’ personal strategies of self-making as they navigate a transnational economy of tech work. Beltrán shows how these hackers apply concepts from the code worlds to their...
An Internet for the People: The Politics and Promise of craigslist Jessa Lingel
Begun by Craig Newmark as an e-mail to some friends about cool events happening around San Francisco, craigslist is now the leading classifieds service on the planet. It is also a throwback to the early internet. The website has barely...
Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age Ayala Fader
What would you do if you questioned your religious faith, but revealing that would cause you to lose your family and the only way of life you had ever known? Hidden Heretics tells the fascinating, often heart-wrenching stories of...
The Government of Emergency: Vital Systems, Expertise, and the Politics of Security Stephen J. Collier and Andrew Lakoff
From pandemic disease, to the disasters associated with global warming, to cyberattacks, today we face an increasing array of catastrophic threats. It is striking that, despite the diversity of these threats, experts and officials...
Prototype Nation: China and the Contested Promise of Innovation Silvia M. Lindtner
How did China’s mass manufacturing and “copycat” production become transformed, in the global tech imagination, from something holding the nation back to one of its key assets? Prototype Nation offers a rich transnational analysis...
Hacking Diversity: The Politics of Inclusion in Open Technology Cultures Christina Dunbar-Hester
Hacking, as a mode of technical and cultural production, is commonly celebrated for its extraordinary freedoms of creation and circulation. Yet surprisingly few women participate in it: rates of involvement by technologically skilled...
Hydropolitics: The Itaipu Dam, Sovereignty, and the Engineering of Modern South America Christine Folch
Hydropolitics is a groundbreaking investigation of the world’s largest power plant and the ways the energy we use shapes politics and economics. Itaipu Binational Hydroelectric Dam straddles the Paraná River border that divides the...
The Future of Immortality: Remaking Life and Death in Contemporary Russia Anya Bernstein
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...
Chasing Innovation: Making Entrepreneurial Citizens in Modern India Lilly Irani
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...
Watch Me Play: Twitch and the Rise of Game Live Streaming T. L. Taylor
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...
Biomedical Odysseys: Fetal Cell Experiments from Cyberspace to China Priscilla Song
Thousands of people from more than eighty countries have traveled to China since 2001 to undergo fetal cell transplantation. Galvanized by the potential of stem and fetal cells to regenerate damaged neurons and restore lost bodily...
Disruptive Fixation: School Reform and the Pitfalls of Techno-Idealism Christo Sims
In New York City in 2009, a new kind of public school opened its doors to its inaugural class of middle schoolers. Conceived by a team of game designers and progressive educational reformers and backed by prominent philanthropic...
Everyday Sectarianism in Urban Lebanon: Infrastructures, Public Services, and Power Joanne Randa Nucho
What causes violent conflicts around the Middle East? All too often, the answer is sectarianism—popularly viewed as a timeless and intractable force that leads religious groups to conflict. In Everyday Sectarianism in Urban...
Democracy's Infrastructure: Techno-Politics and Protest after Apartheid Antina von Schnitzler
In the past decade, South Africa's "miracle transition" has been interrupted by waves of protests in relation to basic services such as water and electricity. Less visibly, the post-apartheid period has witnessed widespread illicit acts...
Digital Keywords: A Vocabulary of Information Society and Culture Edited by Benjamin Peters
In the age of search, keywords increasingly organize research, teaching, and even thought itself. Inspired by Raymond Williams's 1976 classic Keywords, the timely collection Digital Keywords gathers pointed, provocative short essays on...
Sounding the Limits of Life: Essays in the Anthropology of Biology and Beyond Stefan Helmreich
What is life? What is water? What is sound? In Sounding the Limits of Life, anthropologist Stefan Helmreich investigates how contemporary scientists—biologists, oceanographers, and audio engineers—are redefining these crucial...