Boellstorff, T. (2008). Coming of age in Second Life: an anthropologist explores the virtually human. Princeton, Princeton University Press.
This book is based on an in-depth ethnographic field study of Second Life, a virtual world that is owned and managed by the company Linden Lab. The anthropologist Tom Boellstorff conducted research for more than two years in Second Life using the avatar 'Tom Bukowski', employing traditional methods of anthropology-- including participant observation and interviews-- to study the virtual world through his virtual home and office 'Ethnographia'. He describes in rich detail the various dimensions of life in the Second Life, including virtual jargon, money and economic life, friendship, identity, gender, race, sex, conflict, the individual and society. He argues that people are virtually human, in the sense that humans in virtual worlds are real and that human experience is always mediated by culture and thus 'virtual', but also in the sense that in the virtual world, humans are 'almost' human: 'our humanity is thrown off balance, considered anew, and reconfigured through transformed possibilities for place-making.' (p. 5) This book reads well in conjunction with other studies of virtual communities, including Kendall*and Rheingold*.