Awards

• Commended for Association of American Publishers Award for Best Professional/Scholarly Book in Media and Cultural Studies 2008 (United States)
• Commended for Choice Magazine Outstanding Reference/Academic Book Award 2009.
• Short-listed for Choice Magazine Outstanding Reference/Academic Book Award 2009
• Short-listed for Choice's Outstanding Academic Books 2009 (United States)
• Shortlisted for Choice Magazine Outstanding Reference/Academic Book Award 2009.
• Winner of Media Ecology Association's Dorothy Lee Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Culture 2009
• Winner of Media Ecology Association: Dorothy Lee Award 2009.

Overview

Millions of people around the world today spend portions of their lives in online virtual worlds. Second Life is one of the largest of these virtual worlds. The residents of Second Life create communities, buy property and build homes, go to concerts, meet in bars, attend weddings and religious services, buy and sell virtual goods and services, find friendship, fall in love--the possibilities are endless, and all encountered through a computer screen. At the time of its initial publication in 2008, Coming of Age in Second Life was the first book of anthropology to examine this thriving alternate universe. Tom Boellstorff conducted more than two years of fieldwork in Second Life, living among and observing its residents in exactly the same way anthropologists traditionally have done to learn about cultures and social groups in the so-called real world. He conducted his research as the avatar ""Tom Bukowski,"" and applied the rigorous methods of anthropology to study many facets of this new frontier of human life, including issues of gender, race, sex, money, conflict and antisocial behavior, the construction of place and time, and the interplay of self and group.Coming of Age in Second Life shows how virtual worlds can change ideas about identity and society. Bringing anthropology into territory never before studied, this book demonstrates that in some ways humans have always been virtual, and that virtual worlds in all their rich complexity build upon a human capacity for culture that is as old as humanity itself. Now with a new preface in which the author places his book in light of the most recent transformations in online culture, Coming of Age in Second Life remains the classic ethnography of virtual worlds.

Full Product Details

Author:   Tom Boellstorff ,  Tom Boellstorff
Publisher:   Princeton University Press
Imprint:   Princeton University Press
Edition:   Revised edition
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.510kg
ISBN:  

9780691168340

ISBN 10:   0691168342
Pages:   348
Publication Date:   25 August 2015
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Language:   English

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix Preface to the New Paperback Edition xi Acknowledgments xxix PART I: Setting the Virtual Stage 1 CHAPTER 1: The Subject and Scope of This Inquiry 3 Arrivals and departures--Everyday Second Life--Terms of discussion--The emergence of virtual worlds--The posthuman and the human--What this, a book, does. CHAPTER 2: History 32 Prehistories of the virtual--Histories of virtual technology--A personal virtual history--Histories of virtual worlds--Histories of cybersociality research--Techne. CHAPTER 3: Method 60 Virtual worlds in their own terms--Anthropology and ethnography--Participant observation--Interviews, focus groups, and beyond the platform--Ethics--Claims and reflexivity. PART II: Culture in a Virtual World 87 CHAPTER 4: Place and Time 89 Visuality and land--Builds and objects--Lag--Afk--Immersion--Presence. CHAPTER 5: Personhood 118 The self--The life course--Avatars and alts--Embodiment--Gender and race--Agency. CHAPTER 6: Intimacy 151 Language--Friendship--Sexuality--Love--Family--Addiction. CHAPTER 7: Community 179 The event--The group--Kindness--Griefing--Between virtual worlds--Beyond virtual worlds. PART III: The Age of Techne 203 CHAPTER 8: Political Economy 205 Creationist capitalism--Money and labor--Property--Governance--Inequality--Platform and social form. CHAPTER 9: The Virtual 237 The virtual human--Culture and the online--Simulation--Fiction and design--The massively multiple--Toward an anthropology of virtual worlds. Glossary 251 Notes 255 Works Cited 271 Index 303

Reviews

The monograph is an elegant tribute to the relevance and strengths of anthropology in the study of virtual worlds, a field of growing social significance that younger generations in particular are keen to investigate more fully. This was evident when I introduced the book to students in a recent course on digital anthropology, who could relate it to their own online every day experiences. As one of the early Internet ethnographers, I can but appreciate Boellstorff's efforts in strengthening this important domain of research, while crafting analytical tools with which to better understand the virtual essence of the human condition, as exposed to us through Internet-mediated virtual worlds. --Paula Uimonen, Social Anthropology

Author Information

Tom Boellstorff is professor of anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. He is the coauthor of Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Method (Princeton), and coeditor of Data, Now Bigger and Better!

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