From a children’s book to a business corporation: anthropological optics in practical application (conversation with Anna Huseynova)

Abstract

Pavel Kupriyanov’s conversation with Anna Huseynova is built around her recent children’s book «The City of the Similar and Different» (St. Petersburg: Polyandria Print, 2025), which represents a modern metropolis through portraits and stories of its individual inhabitants and thereby demonstrates the advantages of an «anthropological» view of the world, revealing its cultural complexity, but at the same time avoiding stereotypical categorizations and automatisms perceptions. The specifics of anthropological optics and the issues of its use outside academic research as a publicly available cognitive tool are discussed in interviews on the material of the book, as well as the personal and professional biography of its author, including the experience of applying social anthropology approaches to the field of corporate social responsibility in a large company.