About the book, from the publisher:
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.Among the early praise for the book:
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.
"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."Read an excerpt from Coming of Age in Second Life, and learn more about the book at the Princeton University Press website.
--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
Tom Boellstorff is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, and Editor-in-Chief of American Anthropologist, the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association. His research projects have focused on questions of sexuality, globalization, nationalism, HIV/AIDS, and cybersociality. His other books include The Gay Archipelago: Sexuality and Nation in Indonesia (Princeton University Press, 2005), winner of the 2005 Ruth Benedict Award from the Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists; and A Coincidence of Desires: Anthropology, Queer Studies, Indonesia (Duke University Press, 2007). He is also co-editor of Speaking in Queer Tongues: Globalization and Gay Language (University of Illinois Press, 2004), and author of publications in American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist, Cultural Anthropology, Annual Review of Anthropology, Journal of Asian Studies, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Games and Culture, Ethnos, and GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies.
Visit Tom Boellstorff's faculty webpage.
The Page 99 Test: Coming of Age in Second Life.
--Marshal Zeringue
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