INTRODUCTORY TEXTS FOR COURSE
Boellstorff. T. Coming of Age in Second life (Princeton
2008)
Cameron, F. & Kenderdine, S., Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage:
A Critical Discourse (MIT 2007)
Horst, H. and Miller, D. The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of
Communication (Berg 2006)
Kalay, Y.E. et al, New Heritage: New Media and Cultural Heritage
(Routledge, 2008)
Ito. M et. al. Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out: Living
and Learning with New Media. (MIT Press: forthcoming
Kelty, C. Two Bits: the cultural significance of free software.
(Duke 2008)
Macdonald, S. & Basu, P., Exhibition Experiments (Blackwell
2007)
Miller, D. and Slater, D. The Internet: an Ethnographic Approach
(Berg 2001)
Parry, R., Recoding the Museum: Digital Heritage and the Technologies
of Change (Routledge, 2007)
Tilley, C., Keane,W. Kuchler,S. Rowlands, M. Spyer, P. Handbook
of Material Culture.(Sage 2006)
Were, G. 'Out of touch? digital technologies, ethnographic objects
and sensory orders'. In Chatterjee, H. (ed.) Touch in Museums
(Berg 2008)
Trapper Callender on 24 Feb 09Millions 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 Lifeis 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 Lifeshows 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.
