Harbin
Hot Springs’ Actual/Virtual Ethnography
Naked Harbin Ethnography & Coming of Age in
Second Life
Chapter
Titles, Summaries and Table of Contents
"Naked Harbin
Ethnography:
Hippies,
Warm Pools, Counterculture, Clothing-Optional and Virtual Harbin"
Academic Press at World University and School (2016)
Part I: Setting the Harbin Hot Springs Stage
In chapter 1, titled 'The Subject and Scope of this
Inquiry,' I begin by engaging the work of anthropologists Bronislaw Malinowski
and Tom Boellstorff by focusing on arrivals to and departures from Harbin Hot
Springs, as well as everyday life. I next lay out some terms of discussion,
followed by a brief anthropological history of the emergence of actual Harbin
and then virtual Harbin. Next, I characterize Harbin residents, the 150-180
people who live at and near the Harbin property, before describing what this
book does.
In chapter 2, titled 'History,' I examine some prehistories
of Harbin, contextualizing Harbin as a countercultural vision emerging out of
modernity. I then characterize some histories of Harbin followed by a personal
Harbin history. After examining some histories of Harbin research, including
some of the challenges of developing a virtual Harbin and writing this Harbin ethnography,
I explore Harbin's history as a kind of actualized vision, ethnographically.
Lastly I characterize how virtual Harbin emerges out of the 'actual.'
In chapter 3, titled 'Method,' I examine Harbin on its own
terms, engaging an important anthropological, textual tradition. I then
characterize participant observation, particularly in terms of interviews,
fieldwork, and virtual developments, before examining ethics, some anthropological
claims, and the significance of reflexivity. Lastly, I characterize
methodologies for comparing and contrasting actual Harbin and virtual Harbin.
Part II: An Ethnography of Harbin as Counterculture Emerging
from Modernity
In chapter 4, titled 'Place and Time,' I examine
ethnographically the significance of geographical place – the Harbin valley,
its waters, and northern California – in terms of sociocultural processes
there. I characterize, too, the unique buildings such as the Harbin Domes, the
Conference Center, and the Harbin Temple. I then examine the significance of
traveling to and from Harbin. Lastly I explore questions of immersion in the
waters as well as 'oneness,' 'now,' and 'presence' at Harbin, due to the waters
and the hippie New Age ways of thinking, along with the sense of timeliness
there.
In chapter 5, titled 'Personhood,' I characterize aspects of
personhood and 'Self' at Harbin. I then examine Harbin's life course in the
context of its pools, the 1960s, Heart Consciousness Church and counterculture,
and the significance of Harbin's clothing-optionality. In this chapter, I also
address questions of gender and race at Harbin, before examining ways to
contextualize questions of agency, particularly in relation to hippies and the
1960s.
In chapter 6, titled 'Practices and Beliefs,' I examine issues
related to Harbin language, especially New Age, astrology, friendship, long-time
residents, intimacy and cuddling in the pools, sexuality, and Harbin's
openness, love, connectedness, and oneness, vis-à-vis what has emerged at
Harbin in the 40 years since the early 1970s.
In chapter 7, titled 'Community,' I examine issues related
to Harbin residents as 'tribe' or family. I then examine ways in which
workshops and events at Harbin have led to fascinating 'New Age' explorations,
before investigating the role that Heart Consciousness Church and New Age
Church of Being have played in terms of 'Heart Consciousness' and its
expressions at Harbin. Lastly, I examine the significance of Harbin's pool
area, along with the ways in which this has informed and generated a kind of
milieu of openness through the decades. Harbin in some curious ways remains a
kind of hippie, almost-spiritual, New Age center in northern California.
In chapter 8, titled 'Political Economy,' I examine ways in
which Harbin as a business, emerging out of 1960s and early '70s
'counterculture,' co-informs Harbin along with Heart Consciousness Church, making
Harbin sustainable. I contextualize this aspect of Harbin within Lake County
and Northern California, both when it began and today. After investigating the
significance of some of the roles that money and labor have played at Harbin, I
look at questions of property, Harbin governance, and elements of inequality,
in terms of life in the Harbin valley.
Part III: Virtual Harbin
In chapter 9, titled 'The Making of Harbin Hot Springs as
Ethnographic Field Site,' I explore how to create virtual Harbin in a virtual
world environment like Second Life. I also describe ways I have engaged the
actual Harbin family to help with the building of this, as well as its
maintenance and its culture. Finally, I characterize how I, and others, invite
and encourage avatars to visit virtual Harbin to build community.
Scott MacLeod
Summer 2015
Coming of Age in Second Life:
Table of
Contents
Summary of Boellstorff (2008), Coming of Age in Second Life
JULY 13, 2009
tags: anthropology, cyberanthropology, epistemology,
ethnography, ICT studies, internet studies, local politics, media anthropology,
media ethnography, media theory, new media, practice theory, Second Life,
sociality, technology
j8647
Boellstorff, T. 2008. Coming of Age in Second Life: An
Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
NB – See previous blog entries for more detailed notes on
each chapter
PART I: SETTING THE VIRTUAL STAGE
Chapter 1. The Subject and Scope of this Inquiry, 3-31
The book is an ethnography of the virtual world Second Life
(SL) from June 2004 to January 2007. The aim is to rehabilitate the notion of
‘virtual’ by studying virtual worlds in their own terms. Inquiry into both the
historical continuities and changes of this virtual world. The author argues
that the notion of posthuman is misleading, for it is in being virtual that we
are human. Instead he sets out to investigate virtual worlds as ‘techne’ (human
practice that engages with the world and creates a new world as well as a new
person: homo cyber). Second Life is most certainly not a game for its
residents, and we must take residential sociality seriously. Anthropology can
make a contribution to the study of emerging forms of cybersociality.
Chapter 2. History [of Virtual Worlds], pp. 32-59
The crucial historical breakthrough with virtual worlds came
in the 1970s with Krueger’s invention of the first, rudimentary virtual world
which allowed two people to interact virtually in a ‘third place’. This was a
fundamental break from existing forms of telecommunication in which two places
(A and B) are remotely connected but without a third place. Another precursor
to Second Life was first-person perspective of videogames from 1970s onwards.
What is new about virtual worlds like Second Life is that techne now resides
inside this virtual third place, that is, SL residents craft the very objects
of their inworld practices.
Chapter 3. Method, pp. 60-86
The starting point of project was methodological: What can
ethnography tell us about virtual worlds? Undertook almost whole study inside
SL, as avatar Tom Bukowski. Takes issue with previous Internet ethnographies
(eg. Miller and Slater 2000) for insisting on embedding online worlds in actual
worlds. Argues that you cannot explain inworld sociality via actual-world
sociality – must understand it in own terms as it is no recreation or
simulation. Human selfhoods and communities are being remade in SL. Opts for
holistic approach to SL as he did in previous study of Indonesia – overarching
cultural logic is the focus, not subcultures. Adapting Geertz, he sees the
cultures of virtual worlds as being ‘highly particular’. Participant
observation is form of techne: the ethnographer crafts events as they unfold.
This mode of inquiry also shows that we must pay more heed to the mundane in
virtual worlds and less to the sensational.
PART II: CULTURE IN A VIRTUAL WORLD
Chapter 4. Place and Time, pp. 89-117
There is a long tradition in mass media studies in which
virtual worlds seen as antithesis of place-making. Yet virtual worlds are ‘new
kinds of places’; they are ‘sets of locations’. SL residents have strong sense
of place, e.g. when talking about their SL homes: “It’s my place: it’s mine”.
One key feature is 3D visuality, unlike blogs or websites. Although commodity
economy predominates (both persons and things are commodities), it’s not all
neolib consumerism: there is also barter, communal ownership, donations, etc.
That said, ownership is important dimension of SL sociality, non-owners are
socially impaired. Another key aspect of sociality is synchronic interaction
which makes virtual worlds feel like worlds, but this always threatened by
‘lag’ (delayed action) and ‘afk’ (absent from keyboard). Although person and
avatar reunited after afk, users are never completely ‘back’ as physical body
always remains away from virtual world.
In contrast to virtual reality, here what matters is social not sensory
immersion.
Chapter 5. Personhood, pp. 118-150
Aim of chapter is to investigate ‘everyday senses of virtual
personhood’ in SL. Re: life course (Giddens), what is SL course? Many residents
had more than one account so actual and SL selves not necessarily coterminous.
However, time constraints in having several avatars – time resists
virtualisation far better than space. Unlike game worlds, no skill levels here,
although newbies easily recognisable for lack of practical skills. Changes in
actual life could impact on SL, e.g. family member falling ill. Leaving SL could be painful, ‘charted on
blogs and commemorated with farewell parties’. SL embodiment not a simulation
of real life: residents experienced ‘corporeal immediacy’. Contrast between
Haraway’s cyborg corporeality (prosthetic continuity human-machine) and that of
SL’s homo cyber (actual-virtual gap). Race also played a part, but often
tacitly: default avatar race was white.
Chapter 6. Intimacy, pp. 151-178
SL brought about new forms of online intimacy, not just
reflection of actual world. Text was ubiquitous, favouring deaf people but
excluding the blind. Code-switching across textual modalities was common, e.g.
IM and chat in relation to topic and its intimacy aspects. Frienship not sex is
‘foundation of cybersociality’ in SL. Most visible sex subculture was BDSM.
Friendship is all about choice and egalitarianism. Residents felt you could
know people in SL ‘from inside out’; residents wore their souls (opposite to
actual life). SL accelerates friendships and love. As is typical of C20 love in
general, SL love tied to place and belonging. Trust could be internal to SL,
but some newbies didn’t get this, saw people as being far apart rather than
‘copresent in a virtual place’. Virtual kinship also to be found; many child
avatars, their child play a subset of ‘kin play’. Such a hypersocial place as
SL generated widespread emic concerns about addiction not so much to building
or scripting but to socialising. These folk anxieties suggest fear of
‘compromised agency’ of homo cyber who is supposed to be autonomous, creative,
etc.
Chapter 7. Community, pp. 179-201
Virtual worlds are
places, sites of culture where people interact. After a period of time, they
become communities. Linden Lab, however, can use the vague rhetoric of
community for its own goals. For SL residents social places are paramount.
Avatars can be represented as dots on the screen – these dots tend to beget
more dots. SL events are manifold highly varied and take place in real time,
they are ‘a conjunction of place, time and sociality’. Kindness and altruism
are very common in SL; some official recognition/rewards for such behaviour
from Linden Lab but not too significant.
As Manchester School taught us, though, conflict is integral to all
human endeavour. Serious forms of inworld harassment included lag bombs,
physical assault, etc. The old CMC issue of disinhibition present here as well,
though inhibitions not so much obliterated as redefined. Griefers
(troublemakers) not acting in a moral vaccuum, their griefing in fact is
bedrock of own forms of sociality and community. In response to griefing and
Linden’s laissez faire approach to governance, a manner of ‘frontier ethic’
arose among some residents. This chapter also considers the issue of interworld
travel, migration and even virtual diasporas seeking refuge in SL from extinct
virtual worlds. Finally, actual-world meetings of SL residents took place but
exaggerating their importance reveals common assumption that cybersociality not
meaningful in its own right.
PART III: THE AGE OF TECHNE
Chapter 8. Political Economy, pp. 205-236
Economy: SL shaped by Californian Ideology, ‘bizarre fusion’
of Frisco bohemia and Silicon Valley technopreneurialism. SL good example of
‘creationist capitalism’ = labour as creativity, production as creation, so
that consumers labour for free. The motto, embraced by many residents, is “Be
Creative”; selfhood becomes ‘the customisation of the social’. SL part of
internet-wide ‘pronominal logic of customisation’, e.g. MySpace, MyYahoo. Many residents
find SL creative practice to be inherently rewarding. Although time and place
main foundations of SL, money sensationalised, esp. ability to make ‘real
money’ (US$). Linden went from SL as object- to property-based economy. To
build something permanent must own property: again, virtual worlds are places.
By contrast to other forms of digital reproduction, there is virtual
materiality inside SL, e.g. avatars can actually sit on a chair. Social
inequality took on many forms. Governance: Unlike actual worlds, virtual worlds
can be owned, usu. by a corporation. This gives corp unprecedented influence
over residents. Total surveillance, no privacy for avatars, users always aware
of this. Authoritarian, top-down governance but some attempts at devolution to
residents. Some resistance in evidence, e.g. demo to bring back credit cards
checks on new residents, concerns about safety of avatar and property. In sum,
complex governance dialectic binding Linden and residents.
Chapter 9. The Virtual, pp. 237-249
In this final chapter, the author sums up the argument and
explains what SL is and what it is not. SL is not a simulation; it may
approximate aspects of reality for purposes of immersion, but it does not seek
to replicate the actual world. SL is not a social network comparable to
Facebook or MySpace – it is a place. SL is not a posthuman world; in fact, it
makes us more human. SL is not a sensational new world of virtual
Californication, virtual money that can be exchanged for real money, etc; more
often than not it is place where everyday banal forms of interaction take
place. SL does not herald the advent of
a Virtual Age that will sweep aside the actual but an Age of Techne with
continuities as well as changes with what came before. Humans have always crafted
themselves through culture (homo faber). What is truly unique about SL and
other virtual worlds is that they allow the emergence of homo cybers, humans
who can craft and recraft new worlds of sociality in a virtual ‘third place’.
In SL you can find friends and lovers, attend weddings, buy and sell property:
you cannot do that inside a TV programme or a novel. This is why an
ethnographic and holistic approach has worked well, because virtual worlds are
‘robust locations for culture’, locations that are bounded but at the same time
porous. The book ends as it started: with a reference to Malinowski’s
pioneering ethnographic work.
*
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