Review of M. Auger's book "No-places. Introduction to the anthropology of hypermodernity"

The article offers the reader a thesis introduction to the content of the book by the French anthropologist Marc Auger “No Places. An introduction to the anthropology of hypermodernity” and reflections on this work. Marc Auger is an ethnographer specializing in the study of the indigenous peoples of Africa and South America. In addition, among his scientific interests are topics related to significant changes in the culture of everyday life in modern Western type societies. He is best known for introducing the concept of non place into scientific cultural discourse, which is given additional weight by the fact that Auger uses it in conjunction with the concept of hypermodern. The focus of Marc Auger’s attention in this book is to trace the connection of the constantly multiplying “non places” of hypermodernity with the three transformations of modernity the transformations of time, space and the individual. The anthropological analysis of these transformations in itself is of great cultural interest. Based on the scientific traditions of ethnography and anthropology, Auger creates a coherent, but not dogmatic, theoretical system in which there is a place for both descriptive and analytical segments. Using classical anthropological optics, he argues that modern man feels most lonely in “non places”, being in a crowd of his own kind, and at the same time he experiences a positive experience of a true return to himself. In the review, we focus on the main structural elements of the book, give a thesis description of their content, dwelling on especially significant moments of the work. Auger’s book, translated into major European languages, has had a wide influence on the work of modern economists, sociologists, political scientists, researchers of culture and art.