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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19787 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 328 pages

Review
The gap between the virtual and the physical, and its effect on the ideas of personhood and relationships, is the most interesting aspect of Boellstorff's analysis... Boellstorff's portrayal of a virtual culture at the advent of its acceptance into mainstream life gives it lasting importance, and his methods will be a touchstone for research in the emerging field of virtual anthropology. -- David Robson Nature Boellstorff applies the methods and theories of his field to a virtual world accessible only through a computer screen...[He] spent two years participating in Second Life and reports back as the trained observer that he is. We read about a fascinating, and to many of us mystifying, world. How do people make actual money in this virtual society? (They do.) How do they make friends with other avatars? The reader unfamiliar with such sites learns a lot--not least, all sorts of cool jargon...Worth the hurdles its scholarly bent imposes. -- Michelle Press Scientific American If you thought a virtual world like Second Life was a smorgasbord of experimental gender swaps, nerd types engaging in kinky sex or entrepreneurs cashing in on real world money making possibilities, think again...Could Boellstorff be right that we're all virtual humans anyway, viewing the world as we do through the prism of culture? New Scientist Boellstorff's anthropologist's insight into advanced societies helps us to see them anew. Art Review Boellstorff's book is full of fascinating vignettes recounting the blossomings of friendships and romances in the virtual world, and musing fruitfully on questions of creative identity and novel problems of etiquette. -- Steven Poole The Guardian Where many of his colleagues insist on making a mystery of things that are straightforward (so to neglect mysteries real and pressing), Boellstorff is a likeable, generous, accessible voice... This book, once it gets down to it, does truly offer a detailed and deeply interesting investigation of Second Life. -- Grant McCracken Times Higher Education

Review
The gap between the virtual and the physical, and its effect on the ideas of personhood and relationships, is the most interesting aspect of Boellstorff's analysis. . . . Boellstorff's portrayal of a virtual culture at the advent of its acceptance into mainstream life gives it lasting importance, and his methods will be a touchstone for research in the emerging field of virtual anthropology.
(David Robson Nature )

Boellstorff applies the methods and theories of his field to a virtual world accessible only through a computer screen....[He] spent two years participating in Second Life and reports back as the trained observer that he is. We read about a fascinating, and to many of us mystifying, world. How do people make actual money in this virtual society? (They do.) How do they make friends with other avatars? The reader unfamiliar with such sites learns a lot--not least, all sorts of cool jargon...Worth the hurdles its scholarly bent imposes.
(Michelle Press Scientific American )

If you thought a virtual world like Second Life was a smorgasbord of experimental gender swaps, nerd types engaging in kinky sex or entrepreneurs cashing in on real world money making possibilities, think again. . . .Could Boellstorff be right that we're all virtual humans anyway, viewing the world as we do through the prism of culture?
(New Scientist )

Boellstorff's anthropologist's insight into advanced societies helps us to see them anew.
(Art Review )

Boellstorff's book is full of fascinating vignettes recounting the blossomings of friendships and romances in the virtual world, and musing fruitfully on questions of creative identity and novel problems of etiquette.
(Steven Poole The Guardian )

Where many of his colleagues insist on making a mystery of things that are straightforward (so to neglect mysteries real and pressing), Boellstorff is a likeable, generous, accessible voice. . . . This book, once it gets down to it, does truly offer a detailed and deeply interesting investigation of Second Life.
(Grant McCracken Times Higher Education )

Review
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.
(Richard A. Bartle, author of "Designing Virtual Worlds" )

Customer Reviews

A Very Important Book
This is one of the most important books written in the last few years. It might seem like simply an exploration of the anthropology of Second Life, but it is much more. As bandwidth become more available, virtual worlds will become standard in a society in a future not far from now. When that happens people will be faced with psychological and sociological issues really new to mankind, issues such as personal identity and your social status and significance. These questions will have profound effects on the question: What does it mean to be a person? When those questions are asked, Coming of Age in Second Life will become a standard reference book of life and meaning in virtual worlds. This is an academic book, but anyone with intelligence will read it and see in it our psychological future. A profoundly important book, it goes way beyond Second Life and is the first really cohesive book on what 50 years from now will be a change in how humans view themselves.

A Future Classic
Writing as an anthropologist, I am deeply impressed by Tom Boellstorff's description of SecondLife "from an avatar's point of view," and by its clear and coherent engagement with theories of self, personhood, and "cyberworlding" generally speaking. I taught this book in a senior seminar on Cultural Identities/Differences, and while it was a reach for some students, it sparked a rich conversation about the ethics of identity-play and its flesh-world consequences, virtual self-enhancement and its relation to self-abnegation, the politics of corporate and individual authorship of persons, the valuation of social memory and purposeful forgetting in online/offline community "bleed through," and how creativity is problematized as a practice of consumptive production.

I can think of no field ethnographer who better writes the contemporary moment. In my view, this book is a future classic.

Debbora Battaglia

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.