Tom Boellstorff's Coming Of Age In Second Life

From reading this book we can understand that the author Tom Boellstorff grew up playing video games with that interest he went beyond and got an interest in virtual worlds and he became an member of the "Second life", as an anthropologist he decided to apply the ethnographic methods which he gained from previous research where he did his studies in Indonesia to this online life and interviews in the subculture of Second life. "Coming of age in Second Life: An anthropologist explores the virtually human" is an ethnography book by Tom Boellstorff, this book Boellstorff argues between two worlds which is the virtual world and the world of anthropology. From reading this book you can understand that Boellstorff has spend years doing an traditional

Chapter three is called the " Method" this chapter follows the usual repertoire of most monographs which are in the social sciences like a description of the ways that the material was collected in this case like the observations, interviews ,group discussions and the information on ethics and the researcher's own position towards his subjects. This chapter is more for those who are interested in conducting ethnographic research in the virtual environments. In this chapter we can see that once inside a virtual world the practice of conducting research while having challenges it is not that different from researching any other cultural sites where you learning a new language, its culture/ traditions , practices and the formal and informal behavior that particular culture does. In this chapter Boellstorff approach the virtual worlds "in their own terms" ( 60-64) that is conducting his research exclusively online. In this chapter Boellstorff question the relationship between the two worlds where he suggest that studying only the virtual world somehow can be