Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Boellstorff, Tom

Titel

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

Auflage

Revised edition.

Ort / Verlag

Princeton: Princeton University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2015

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• 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. Coming of Age in Second Life is 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.