This monograph is devoted to the study of the role of anthropomorphic artifacts in people’s lives and in the history of human culture. Particular attention is paid to the “ideology of anthropomorphism,” which allows the use of anthropomorphic toys for the purposes of “social construction,” that is, for the formation and development of a child’s “personal space” , his awareness of his “I”, opposed to the “Other”, overcoming the age stage of “autism”, the formation of gender, social and ethnocultural affiliation and desirable standards of behavior. The author analyzed a wide range of sources: ritual, magical and religious practices, examples from memoirs, literary and modern sources (press, mass media, advertising, cinema). The research is based on the author’s materials related to the Russian tradition and included in a wide range of cross-cultural parallels. The book is intended for specialists in social and cultural anthropology and will be useful to representatives of related disciplines - from cross-cultural psychology and philosophical anthropology to ethnolinguistics, as well as a wide range of readers.< /p>