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Although commodity economy predominates (both persons and things are commodities), it’s not all neolib consumerism: there is also barter, communal ownership, donations, etc. when talking about their SL homes: “It’s my place: it’s mine”. One key feature is 3D visuality, unlike blogs or websites. SL residents have strong sense of place, e.g. Yet virtual worlds are ‘new kinds of places’ they are ‘sets of locations’. There is a long tradition in mass media studies in which virtual worlds seen as antithesis of place-making. This mode of inquiry also shows that we must pay more heed to the mundane in virtual worlds and less to the sensational. Participant observation is form of techne: the ethnographer crafts events as they unfold. Adapting Geertz, he sees the cultures of virtual worlds as being ‘highly particular’. Opts for holistic approach to SL as he did in previous study of Indonesia – overarching cultural logic is the focus, not subcultures. Human selfhoods and communities are being remade in SL. Argues that you cannot explain inworld sociality via actual-world sociality – must understand it in own terms as it is no recreation or simulation.

Miller and Slater 2000) for insisting on embedding online worlds in actual worlds. Takes issue with previous Internet ethnographies (eg. The starting point of project was methodological: What can ethnography tell us about virtual worlds? Undertook almost whole study inside SL, as avatar Tom Bukowski. What is new about virtual worlds like Second Life is that techne now resides inside this virtual third place, that is, SL residents craft the very objects of their inworld practices. Another precursor to Second Life was first-person perspective of videogames from 1970s onwards. This was a fundamental break from existing forms of telecommunication in which two places (A and B) are remotely connected but without a third place. The crucial historical breakthrough with virtual worlds came in the 1970s with Krueger’s invention of the first, rudimentary virtual world which allowed two people to interact virtually in a ‘third place’. Anthropology can make a contribution to the study of emerging forms of cybersociality.Ĭhapter 2. Second Life is most certainly not a game for its residents, and we must take residential sociality seriously. Instead he sets out to investigate virtual worlds as ‘techne’ (human practice that engages with the world and creates a new world as well as a new person: homo cyber). The author argues that the notion of posthuman is misleading, for it is in being virtual that we are human. Inquiry into both the historical continuities and changes of this virtual world. The aim is to rehabilitate the notion of ‘virtual’ by studying virtual worlds in their own terms. The book is an ethnography of the virtual world Second Life (SL) from June 2004 to January 2007. The Subject and Scope of this Inquiry, 3-31

NB – See previous blog entries for more detailed notes on each chapterĬhapter 1. Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human.