[LINK] Reqiuem Pace Second Life

[Mike Shearer]

The following book by Boellstorff is worth chasing from your local 
library.  I'm not a second lifer and was very sceptical of the very 
idea.  The book has changed my understanding.  Tom's fieldwork was done 
in the early years of Second Life.

Mike Shearer




Coming of age in Second Life : an anthropologist explores the virtually 
human  by Tom Boellstorff.  Princeton University Press, c2008.

ISBN 9780691135281 (hbk.) 316 p.
Contents: Pt. I. Setting the Virtual Stage -- Ch. 1. The Subject and 
Scope of This Inquiry -- Ch. 2. History -- Ch. 3. Method -- Pt. II. 
Culture in a Virtual World -- Ch. 4. Place and Time -- Ch. 5. Personhood 
-- Ch. 6. Intimacy -- Ch. 7. Community -- Pt. III. The Age of Techne -- 
Ch. 8. Political Economy -- Ch. 9. The Virtual.  Includes 
bibliographical references (p. [271]-301)and index

Summary:  "Tom Boellstorff conducted more than two years of fieldwork in 
Second Life, living among and observing its residents in the same way 
anthropologists traditionally have done to learn about cultures and 
social groups in the so-called real world. He applied the 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."--BOOK JACKET.