Yellow Flower: Counterculture as a form of culture in actual and virtual Harbin Hot Springs as place, the Virtual, Place

Harbin ethnography:


... growing literature of virtual worlds in anthropology to contribute to the conversation.

In this book I examine 'counterculture' as a form of culture in actual and virtual Harbin Hot Springs, - in the context of virtuality as instantiated by digital virtual worlds, such as the Second Life and Open Simulator computer programs, especially as place on the World Wide Web. Going from the actual Harbin Hot Springs valley in northern California, and its pool area, to virtual islands and hot springs in Second Life and Open Simulator as representations of place which influence and inform milieu and culture, I define place as space-time coordinates, as well as ideas of permanence, names, representations of boundaries, distinctive social qualities, and representations of physical qualities. In this book the term 'virtual' refers to the world of ideas created by the use of symbols, here and now mediated by digital representations of place online. By way of comparison, Castronova defines 'virtual world' as “any computer-generated physical space … that can be experienced by many people at once” (Castronova 2005: 22). Within this context, ethnographic inquiry into ways in which landscapes as place are culturally constructed is relatively unexamined (Feld and Basso, 1996: ). With Boellstorff (2008: 17) and Castronova, all virtual worlds have three fundamental elements: “they are (1) places, (2) inhabited by persons, and (3) enabled by online technologies. Actual and virtual Harbin here, then, are culturally constructed virtual spaces, informed by place. What makes Harbin unique is the way in which its virtuality is informed by the 1960s to this day, as field work will show.






(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/05/yellow-flower-counterculture-as-form-of.html - May 3, 2010)