Hector Amaya, "The Economy of Anonymity: Power in the Age of Identification" (Stanford UP 2026)
New Books in SociologyShow Notes
We use avatars to play video games. We use pseudonyms on social media. We use VPNs to mask our identities and activities. In the digital realm, anonymity is everywhere, a persistent option for those who wish to hide, experiment, and deceive. But we are anonymous in more contexts than the digital. In urban settings, we routinely experience the anonymity of the crowd, and routinely use anonymity to participate in political life and social protests. Anonymity matters. This book is a wager that we can learn much about society, humanity, and power by analyzing the structural tensions and possibilities of anonymity, and by analyzing how the economy of anonymity is changing in a modernity defined by computation.
While many have explored the connections between surveillance, datafication, and privacy, relatively little has been done to theorize anonymity and its critical role in our lives. The Economy of Anonymity: Power in the Age of Identification (Stanford University Press, 2026) rebalances our intellectual investments by expanding our understandings of anonymity. Putting the work of Gloria Anzaldúa and Bernhard Siegert into conversation, Hector Amaya examines the contours of anonymity in different social domains—in relationship to individuals, institutions, and contexts; to epistemology and ontology; and to history and society. As the book shows, anonymity entails paradoxical possibilities—sometimes anonymity is experienced as freedom and other times as powerlessness, or subjugation. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology
More from New Books in Sociology
What happens to foreign aid (and to women’s status) when the global development landscape shifts away from U.S. dominance? In this episode of International Horizons, John Torpey speaks with sociologist Mary-Collier Wilks about her book Reimagining Aid: Foreign Donors, Women’s Health, and New Paths for Development in Cambodia (Stanford UP, 2026). They discuss the contrasting approaches of U.S., Japanese, South Korean, and Chinese donors, the rise of competing regional models of development, and what the changing aid landscape means for gender equality and local actors in Cambodia.
Queer Resistance: Contesting State, Family, and Inequality in Post-Socialist China (U California Press, 2026) by Dr. Susanne Yuk-Ping Choi examines transformations in intimate lives in post-socialist China through the experiences and resistance of LGBTQ+ people.
Who has the “right” to learn Mandarin Chinese? In Multiracial Mandarin: Asian Americans and Impossible Language (U Minnesota Press, 2026), Dr. David Shuang Song examines how matters of race and privilege shape US Mandarin language education and who has access to it. Through a two-year ethnographic study of two Bay Area high schools where diasporic and heritage speakers learn Mandarin alongside Black and Latinx students, Song advances a sociological and educational–linguistic inquiry into how language interacts with our understanding of identity and equity.
How AI is rewiring our social fabric—and how we can better shape our future.
As overdose deaths continue to mount and debates rage over harm reduction, drug policy, and homelessness, Hit Doctors: Care, Harm, and the Art of Survival (U California Press, 2026) offers a crucial on-the-ground perspective pointing to a humane future.