Cultures of Virtual Worlds
A conference at the University of California, Irvine
Sponsored by Intel Research, the Intel Digital Home Group,
the Department of Anthropology at UC Irvine,
and the
Center for Ethnography at UC Irvine
April 25 & 26, 2008
Organizers: Maria Bezaitis and Tom Boellstorff
Location: University of California, Irvine,
California Institute
for Telecommunications and Information Technology (CALIT2) Building
Confirmed participants include:
Maria Bezaitis
Tom Boellstorff
Paul Dourish
Mimi Ito
Bonnie Nardi
With astonishing rapidity, virtual worlds have moved from a niche market to an important modality of culture. This means, in theory, that virtual worlds can be amenable to research drawing upon methods from across the social sciences and humanities, and beyond. This conference seeks to bring together scholars, developers, and residents to ask after the character of emerging cultures of a range of virtual worlds. Of key interest is building conversations concerning the theoretical and methodological frameworks that need to be developed and transformed to understand the cultures of virtual worlds. Research in virtual worlds is at a preliminary stage where much of the most important work involves crafting new kinds of questions rather than providing definitive answers.
Topics to be discussed could include (but are not limited to):
- Methods for researching the cultures of virtual worlds
- Ascertaining how cultures of virtual worlds are new, and how they draw from
actual-world cultures
- Similarities and differences between virtual worlds and massively multiple
online games
- Ways in which notions of game and play shape virtual worlds
- Place and time in virtual worlds
- Identity and community in virtual worlds
- Embodiment in virtual worlds, including gender, race, and disability
- Design and creativity in virtual worlds
- Friendship, love, and sex in virtual worlds
- Griefing and conflict in virtual worlds
- Governance and inequality in virtual worlds
- Property, commodities, and capitalism in virtual worlds
- Forms of cultural interchange between virtual worlds
- Forms of cultural interchange between virtual worlds and the actual world
We seek the participation of all who may be interested, including (but not limited to) faculty researchers, industry researchers, graduate students, designers, and practioners.