Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human

by Tom Boellstorff, Tom Boellstorff (Preface by)

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691168340
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	08/25/2015
Edition description:	New
Pages:	348
Sales rank:	1,137,291
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

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!

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

What People are Saying About This

Bartle

Tom Boellstorff describes Second Life warmly and intelligently, highlighting its issues in a thought-provoking manner that is always backed up with evidence. There's an almost tangible depth to his analysis that makes it really stand out. This is just the kind of portrait of a virtual world that I've been waiting to see for years: a full-blooded, book-length tour de force.
— Richard A. Bartle, author of "Designing Virtual Worlds"

Stefan Helmreich

Taking the bold step of conducting ethnographic fieldwork entirely 'inside' Second Life, Tom Boellstorff invites readers to meditate on the old and new meanings of the virtual and the human. He presses the inventive and compelling claim that anthropologists would do well to imagine culture itself as already harboring the notion of the virtual. Boellstorff argues that being 'virtually human' is what we have been all along.
— Stefan Helmreich, author of "Silicon Second Nature"

From the Publisher

"Tom Boellstorff describes Second Life warmly and intelligently, highlighting its issues in a thought-provoking manner that is always backed up with evidence. There's an almost tangible depth to his analysis that makes it really stand out. This is just the kind of portrait of a virtual world that I've been waiting to see for years: a full-blooded, book-length tour de force."—Richard A. Bartle, author of Designing Virtual Worlds

"This is the first book to take a sustained look at an environment like Second Life from a purely anthropological perspective. It is sure to become the basis for a new conversation about how we study these spaces. It is impossible to read this book and not come away asking questions about how our lives are being transformed in very real ways by what is happening in the virtual."—Douglas Thomas, author of Hacker Culture

"Taking the bold step of conducting ethnographic fieldwork entirely 'inside' Second Life, Tom Boellstorff invites readers to meditate on the old and new meanings of the virtual and the human. He presses the inventive and compelling claim that anthropologists would do well to imagine culture itself as already harboring the notion of the virtual. Boellstorff argues that being 'virtually human' is what we have been all along."—Stefan Helmreich, author of Silicon Second Nature

Douglas Thomas

This is the first book to take a sustained look at an environment like Second Life from a purely anthropological perspective. It is sure to become the basis for a new conversation about how we study these spaces. It is impossible to read this book and not come away asking questions about how our lives are being transformed in very real ways by what is happening in the virtual.
— Douglas Thomas, author of "Hacker Culture"

Editorial Reviews

"If you thought a virtual world like Second Life was a smorgasbord of experimental gender swaps, nerd types engaging in kinky sex or entrepreneurs cashing in on real world money making possibilities, think again. . . .Could Boellstorff be right that we're all virtual humans anyway, viewing the world as we do through the prism of culture?"

New Scientist

"Boellstorff's anthropologist's insight into advanced societies helps us to see them anew."

Art Review

"Winner of the 2009 Dorothy Lee Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Ecology of Culture, Media Ecology Association"

Honorable Mention for the 2008 PROSE Award in Media and Cultural Studies, Association of American Publishers

One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2009

From the Publisher

"If you thought a virtual world like Second Life was a smorgasbord of experimental gender swaps, nerd types engaging in kinky sex or entrepreneurs cashing in on real world money making possibilities, think again. . . .Could Boellstorff be right that we're all virtual humans anyway, viewing the world as we do through the prism of culture?"

New Scientist

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.

Social Anthropology - Paula Uimonen

The book is absolutely invaluable for anyone who wants to understand what's happening with virtual worlds. Like the very best of ethnography, it transports; it is classically thick with descriptions of everything from the linguistic and the proxemic to the metaphysical and the erotic.

Current Anthropology - Christopher M. Kelty

One can almost guarantee this book will become one of those contemporary classics in anthropology that travel beyond the discipline as well.

European Legacy - Marilyn Strathern

This is a remarkable book. Tom Boellstorff has successfully achieved the extremely difficult task of writing a book that will appeal equally to the general reader and scholar alike. Coming Of Age In Second Life is well written, very well researched and whilst it does not get bogged down in academic detail and theory, it does provide reference to such theories that undergird the author's research.

Metapsychology - Rob Harle

While it is geared toward anthropologists, the book will be of interest to a wide general audience, with the caveat that it may be helpful to keep a dictionary handy to decode some jargon. . . . [Tom Boellstorff] provides us with a solid foundation for important discussions about he value of technology in our everyday lives.

Centre Daily Times - Peter Crabb

Boellstorff makes important contributions to ethnographic theory and method while providing a fascinating excursion into a virtual world, Second Life, inhabited by graphic manifestations of real-life people who interact with one another in localized parts of a vast virtual landscape that they themselves have largely created. . . . In classic anthropological fashion, Boellstorff entered Second Life, conducted ethnographic research within it as an avatar, and has written a vivid, highly engaging account of that world for real-life readers.

Choice - A. Arno

Where many of his colleagues insist on making a mystery of things that are straightforward (so to neglect mysteries real and pressing), Boellstorff is a likeable, generous, accessible voice. . . . This book, once it gets down to it, does truly offer a detailed and deeply interesting investigation of Second Life.

Times Higher Education - Grant McCracken

Boellstorff's book is full of fascinating vignettes recounting the blossomings of friendships and romances in the virtual world, and musing fruitfully on questions of creative identity and novel problems of etiquette.

Guardian - Steven Poole

Boellstorff applies the methods and theories of his field to a virtual world accessible only through a computer screen....[He] spent two years participating in Second Life and reports back as the trained observer that he is. We read about a fascinating, and to many of us mystifying, world. How do people make actual money in this virtual society? (They do.) How do they make friends with other avatars? The reader unfamiliar with such sites learns a lot—not least, all sorts of cool jargon...Worth the hurdles its scholarly bent imposes.

Scientific American - Michelle Press

The gap between the virtual and the physical, and its effect on the ideas of personhood and relationships, is the most interesting aspect of Boellstorff's analysis. . . . Boellstorff's portrayal of a virtual culture at the advent of its acceptance into mainstream life gives it lasting importance, and his methods will be a touchstone for research in the emerging field of virtual anthropology.

Nature - David Robson

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

The book is absolutely invaluable for anyone who wants to understand what's happening with virtual worlds. Like the very best of ethnography, it transports; it is classically thick with descriptions of everything from the linguistic and the proxemic to the metaphysical and the erotic.
— Christopher M. Kelty

Current Anthropology

One can almost guarantee this book will become one of those contemporary classics in anthropology that travel beyond the discipline as well.
— Marilyn Strathern

European Legacy

This is a remarkable book. Tom Boellstorff has successfully achieved the extremely difficult task of writing a book that will appeal equally to the general reader and scholar alike. Coming Of Age In Second Life is well written, very well researched and whilst it does not get bogged down in academic detail and theory, it does provide reference to such theories that undergird the author's research.
— Rob Harle

Metapsychology

While it is geared toward anthropologists, the book will be of interest to a wide general audience, with the caveat that it may be helpful to keep a dictionary handy to decode some jargon. . . . [Tom Boellstorff] provides us with a solid foundation for important discussions about he value of technology in our everyday lives.
— Peter Crabb

Centre Daily Times

Boellstorff makes important contributions to ethnographic theory and method while providing a fascinating excursion into a virtual world, Second Life, inhabited by graphic manifestations of real-life people who interact with one another in localized parts of a vast virtual landscape that they themselves have largely created. . . . In classic anthropological fashion, Boellstorff entered Second Life, conducted ethnographic research within it as an avatar, and has written a vivid, highly engaging account of that world for real-life readers.
— A. Arno

Choice

Where many of his colleagues insist on making a mystery of things that are straightforward (so to neglect mysteries real and pressing), Boellstorff is a likeable, generous, accessible voice. . . . This book, once it gets down to it, does truly offer a detailed and deeply interesting investigation of Second Life.
— Grant McCracken

Times Higher Education

Boellstorff's book is full of fascinating vignettes recounting the blossomings of friendships and romances in the virtual world, and musing fruitfully on questions of creative identity and novel problems of etiquette.
— Steven Poole

Guardian

Boellstorff applies the methods and theories of his field to a virtual world accessible only through a computer screen....[He] spent two years participating in Second Life and reports back as the trained observer that he is. We read about a fascinating, and to many of us mystifying, world. How do people make actual money in this virtual society? (They do.) How do they make friends with other avatars? The reader unfamiliar with such sites learns a lot—not least, all sorts of cool jargon...Worth the hurdles its scholarly bent imposes.
— Michelle Press

Scientific American

The gap between the virtual and the physical, and its effect on the ideas of personhood and relationships, is the most interesting aspect of Boellstorff's analysis. . . . Boellstorff's portrayal of a virtual culture at the advent of its acceptance into mainstream life gives it lasting importance, and his methods will be a touchstone for research in the emerging field of virtual anthropology.
— David Robson

Nature