Gisli Palsson is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Iceland and Visiting Professor at King's College London. He has conducted fieldwork in Iceland, Cape Verde, the Canadian Arctic and the Virgin Islands. Palsson has written extensively on topics relating to social, cultural and biological anthropology, including the new genetics, environmental politics and the politics of language.

• 1. Introduction; Part I. Selves: 2. Spitting image: decode me!; 3. Labouring lives: genomic stuff; 4. What's in a genome? Indigenous encounters; 5. Name talk: technologies of belonging; Part II. Bodies: 6. Human variation: shifting perspectives; 7. Nim Chimpsky et al.: human-animal relations; 8. Lucy in the sky: celestial bodies; Part III. Biospheres: 9. Enskilment at sea: situated knowledge; 10. Environmental relations: political economies; 11. Modernity and beyond: the grand aquarium; 12. Housekeeping: oikos and the anthropocene; 13. Afterword.

'The fruit of more than twenty years' thought, this important collection of Gisli Palsson's essays offers a sustained and invigorating inquiry into the politics, practices, logics, and varied anthropologies of life itself. Written with Palsson's characteristic erudition and care, what emerges is not only a comprehensive accounting of where we've been but a timely and provocative proposal for the development of new concepts, new forms of academic labor, and a new environmental ethics.' Hugh Raffles, New School for Social Research, New York