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

The intended audience of the work is explicitly scholarly and most likely one that has had little or no direct experience of Second Life or similar worlds. The theoretical trajectory of the book is aimed at those who are already interested in issues of personhood, community and relationship between actors and their environment rather than in the technology and “mechanics” of the world. These readers are presented here with a rich description of what it is to “live” in Second Life as revealed by the deliberate application of an established methodology for examining “real world” communities.

The premise behind the book is that Second Life can be subject to the same ethnographic techniques and analyses as locations and communities in the real world. Indeed, the book is driven by this argument as Boellstorff seeks to persuade the reader of not just the merits but the appropriateness of the approach through an exploration of ethnographical methodology and theory and by repeated analogy with his own field research in Indonesia.

To sustain the ethnographic research method, Boellstorff is forced to construct an understanding of Second Life and Second Life citizens that supports his analogy with the real world. The method demands that he interacts with these avatars as if they were real world informants in a real world setting. Thus, while acknowledging that there are “real people” behind the avatars that his own avatar encounters in Second Life and, furthermore, that the correspondence between an avatar and a person in the real world is often a complex and ambiguous one, Boellstorff does not go much further in his analysis.

The ethnographical premise underpinning the book requires that the people behind the avatars are not approached directly, indeed Boellstorff is quite careful to avoid sullying his research by communicating beyond the avatar. The only time when this fiction is violated is when discussing Linden Labs communications regarding the management of and conduct within Second Life. The response of the community is analysed solely through the “voices” of avatars maintaining the methodological construct that these can be treated as “people”, but this sits rather uncomfortably with the fact that Linden Labs is a “real world” company communicating with real customers who pay in real money.

Boellstorff's approach may well be an interesting contribution to the development of ethnography as an academic discipline, and he certainly makes a concerted case for this. However, for the reader who is not part of or indeed interested in that discourse the repeated justification of the approach can seem a distraction, to the point where the reviewer sometimes felt he was learning more about ethnography and the Indonesia than Second Life. Leaving aside the disciplinary debates and justifications, Boellstorff's choice to focus on the behaviour and interactions of avatars in the Second Life divorced from any exploration or analysis of the real people who choose to spend a small portion of their lives engaged in this discretionary pursuit remained, for this reviewer, deeply troubling. The repeated analogies to people in the Indonesia rang hollow as these people are actually living their whole lives in that environment, whereas the people driving the avatars in Second Life can literally get up and walk away at any time (one wonders if any of Boellstorff's real life informants had ever wished for such a luxury).

One of the recurring themes of the book is an exploration of the significance for humans of the digital environment populated by avatars which project something of the humans driving them into this virtual world. Boellstorff identifies several aspects to this theme, many of them ultimately around the ambiguous and complex relationships between the avatars that Boellstorff's avatar observes and communicates with in Second Life and the humans behind them. However by deliberately eschewing any exploration of the humans behind the avatars in order to subject the avatars “themselves” to his ethnographic method, the real world dimension of this relationship remains clouded. It would be interesting to compare Boellstorff's findings on the human/avatar relationship with those that could be gleaned from an ethnographic analysis of people who participate in Second Life that begins from the person not the avatar. To turn Boellstorff's ethnographical analogies on their heads, it is as if one were to suggest that not only can we better understand the game of chess but also the significance and impact of chess‐playing for the players by analysing the interactions of pawns, rooks, etc. yet without approaching the players who move the pieces around directly.

As an ethnography of Second Life, however, the book offers a rich exploration of the social and “physical” world that the avatars have created. In keeping with the methodology the argument proceeds through anecdotes, examples and discussion rather than surveys and statistics. The themes addressed are grouped under six broad headings; place and time, personhood, intimacy, community, political economy and “the virtual” where Boellstorff returns to his theme of the human/avatar relationship and its implications for the future.

It is in the nature of ethnographical research that the world captured is a snapshot and by the time it is published that world is already to a certain extent lost. All the more so in such a fast moving and ephemeral environment as Second Life. The fieldwork was undertaken between 2004 and 2007, a period of considerable growth and technological change; however, in the three years since the fieldwork ended Second Life has moved on, and so have real world attitudes to virtual worlds. Even more than traditional ethnographies, Boellstorff's work is therefore something of a history of Second Life, albeit one that addresses many current and continuing issues surrounding our relationship with the online world.

Others will judge whether Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human will be accepted as a legitimate exercise in ethnography. From the perspective of those outside that disciple who are interested in the nature and impact of virtual worlds, there is much to be gleaned from Boellstorff's observations, reflections and analysis. Such readers would also endorse Boellstorff's argument that the phenomenon is worthy of a serious academic treatment and structured analysis – whether this particular methodological approach is ultimately successful is more contentious.