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


by Tom Boellstorff

List Price: $29.95
Price: $23.96
You Save: $5.99 (20%)
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Sales Rank: 19892
Studio: Princeton University Press
Binding: Hardcover
Number Of Pages: 328
Publication Date: May 11, 2008
Publisher: Princeton University Press


EDITORIAL REVIEWS

Product Description

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.

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.



CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 4 reviews)

A Serious Academic Study of SecondLife  
It was a joy to read a book about SecondLife where I kept nodding my head instead of gnashing my teeth. The chapters describing SL activities and social conventions rang true to me and focused on the things I love about SL - it's culture of community, sharing, and friendship. The author obviously knows SL well and loves being here.

It was also a joy to find a serious academic study about SecondLife. There aren't many of them out there yet, and a lot of the existing ones seem to be written by people who have only a nodding acquaintance with SL.

This book should be required reading for anyone who is considering using SecondLife as a platform for social research. The author draws heavily upon his knowledge about ethnographic traditions and his previous fieldwork in Indonesia, in order to place his fieldwork in SL into proper perspective. He does a good job of describing how his study was conducted and the ethical principles he employed while doing it.

If you are looking for sensational stories about genderbending or online sex, you probably won't find them here. If you need help learning how to use SecondLife or how to make money there, buy a different book. But if you would like to take a thoughtful look at the way people behave online during the early days of virtual worlds, this is the book for you.
August 14, 2008

Yes, academic, but very good  
I felt obliged to respond after reading prior reviewers who gave this average ratings. Fair enough to be disappointed in this if, for some reason, you expected it to be an light-weight page-turner intended for Second Life residents.

This *is* an academic book by a professor of anthropology who uses plenty of footnotes. The target audience does *not* consist of those already well familiar with the intricacies of social customs in Second Life. And yes, there are references to anthropological thinkers throughout. Some of us actually like that kind of thing.

For its target audience, this is a great book. There are a limited number of academic books that treat the subject of contemporary virtual worlds carefully, thoughtfully, and well. This one really stands out as a study based on extensive ethnographic research and a firm grasp of the available literature. In my opinion, the audience is not just anthropologists, but anyone with a college degree and a serious interest in Second Life as a novel medium for social interaction. The style is educated, but accessible, and it is full of entertaining anecdotes and observations.
July 10, 2008

Important for anthropologists; patience required from everyone else  
I have really mixed feelings about this book.

On the positive side, I think it will, in time, become an important book. While the title is a take-off on Margaret Mead's book about Samoa, this is quite different in the sense that while Samoans had been around for a long time before Margaret Mead arrived on the scene, the author of this book was a very early resident of Second Life and therefore was an eye witness as it developed. I think that's going to make his first person account valuable as virtual worlds evolve into something very different from what they are today.

There are also some important insights in the book that are well-known to Second Life participants, but probably have not received the external attention that they deserve. Two examples that come to mind are his points about the kindness SL residents routinely extend to one another and the extent of multi-channel communication.

Regarding the former point, the media gives a lot of attention to the more salacious aspects of virtual worlds, but what participants know is that those things are the exceptions. What doesn't get enough attention is the fact that virtual worlds are full of people helping one another -- whether that's to learn new skills or cope with some real life problem.

With respect to the latter point, as the book explains and SL participants know, it's really common for multiple conversational threads to be happening in SL simultaneously -- sometimes via the same method (e.g., all in local chat) and other times not (e.g., a speaker giving a presentation using voice with attendees having multiple conversations about the presentation as it is happening using local chat, group IMs, or individual IMs). Edward Castronova's Book "Exodus to the Virtual World" argues that habits and expectations that are formed in the virtual world will eventually find their way to the real (or actual) world, and I believe those changes in patterns of communication are an example of where that's very likely.

On the negative side, I have to agree with the person who observed that the book seems very much targeted toward other anthropologists. That's true in terms of the content as well as the writing style. A lot of space is devoted to justification of the phenomena being studied and the method being used. While that's certainly appropriate in a scholarly article, in book form it felt pretty tedious (particularly given that anyone who buys the book probably already accepts that virtual worlds are a valid thing to study and ethnography is a valid means of studying them).

The writing is also hard work. In my opinion, it's unnecessarily verbose, and distracts from the content rather than helping to elucidate it. I suspect a lot of people will lose patience with it, and that's a shame because, as mentioned previously, there are some important insights in the book.


June 13, 2008

theoretical  
The book is written, though not marketed, to students of anthropology. The main line of argument is that online worlds _can_ be described with "ethnographic" techniques. What little actual information there is, though, will be obvious to players and pointless to nonplayers. Here's an example of the style:

"Lag is nothing less than an interruption in the thrownness of temporality, a breakdown of time made possible by the gap between virtual and actual."

"Lag" is in fact a term employed by Second Life users to mean their computers are sluggish.
June 10, 2008


SIMILAR PRODUCTS

I, Avatar: The Culture and Consequences of Having a Second Life (New Riders)
by Mark Stephen Meadows

The Making of Second Life: Notes from the New World
by Wagner James Au

Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Fun Is Changing Reality
by Edward Castronova

Creating Your World: The Official Guide to Advanced Content Creation for Second Life
by Aimee Weber, Kimberly Rufer-Bach, Richard Platel

Second Life: The Official Guide
by Michael Rymaszewski, Wagner James Au, Cory Ondrejka, Richard Platel, Sara Van Gorden, Jeannette Cézanne, Paul Cézanne, Benjamin Batstone-Cunningham, Aleks Krotoski, Celebrity Trollop, Jim Rossignol
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