Scott MacLeod's "Naked Harbin Ethnography" and Tom Boellstorff's "Coming of Age in Second Life" offer distinct yet complementary perspectives for a Digital Ethnography course at Oxford. Reading them together would provide a rich understanding of the methodological and theoretical challenges and opportunities in studying virtual worlds.
Here are ways they could best be read together:
1. Contrasting and Complementing Methodological Approaches:
Boellstorff's Immersive Virtual Ethnography: "Coming of Age in Second Life" is a seminal work that argues for the legitimacy and necessity of conducting ethnographic fieldwork entirely within a virtual world. Boellstorff, through his avatar Tom Bukowski, immerses himself in Second Life to understand its culture, sociality, and emergent practices on its own terms, arguing that virtual worlds are "cultures in their own right" and not merely simulations of offline life. He emphasizes "studying virtual worlds in their own terms" and explores how core anthropological concepts like place, time, personhood, intimacy, and community manifest in this digital realm.
MacLeod's Physical-Digital Comparative Ethnography: "Naked Harbin Ethnography" proposes a novel approach: the creation of a "Realistic Virtual Harbin Hot Springs" to enable comparative ethnographic study between the actual (physical) and virtual versions of a specific place and community (Harbin Hot Springs, a countercultural haven). MacLeod's work is driven by the idea of using a virtual twin or replica for research, potentially employing a methodology he terms "ethno-wiki-virtual-world-
graphy." This highlights the potential of digital environments as research tools for understanding and comparing with physical realities.
2. Exploring the Nature of "The Virtual" and "The Actual":
Boellstorff's "Virtually Human": Boellstorff provocatively argues that "in being virtual, we are human" and that human experience has "always been virtual" in some sense due to culture. He distinguishes between "actual" and "virtual" rather than "real" and "unreal," validating virtual experiences as having their own form of reality.
MacLeod's Physical-Digital Continuum: MacLeod's work directly engages with the interplay between the physical and digital, demonstrating how a virtual representation can serve as a site for understanding and preserving aspects of a physical counterculture. This pushes students to consider how digital spaces can extend, reflect, and interact with physical communities.
3. Case Studies in Counterculture and Community Formation:
Harbin as Counterculture: MacLeod's focus on Harbin Hot Springs allows students to explore how countercultural movements, rooted in the 1960s and 70s, adapt and find expression in both physical and potential digital forms. The narrative of "hippies to the hot springs" and the role of "warm water meditations" offer a specific cultural lens.
Second Life as Emergent Culture: Boellstorff's ethnography of Second Life reveals how new forms of community, identity, and social norms emerge organically within a self-governing virtual world. It provides a broad examination of a diverse online population creating its own social structures.
Comparative Community Dynamics: Students can compare how distinct communities (a long-standing countercultural retreat vs. a dynamically evolving virtual world) leverage or are shaped by digital technologies, examining commonalities and differences in social organization, norms, and values.
4. Ethical Considerations in Digital Ethnography:
Both books implicitly and explicitly raise ethical questions. Boellstorff discusses his avatar's role and the ethics of research conducted solely online. MacLeod's creation of a "realistic virtual Harbin" also brings up questions about representation, privacy, and the impact of virtualizing a community. Students can discuss consent, anonymity, and the responsibilities of the digital ethnographer in different virtual contexts.
5. Historical Context of Digital Worlds:
Boellstorff provides a historical overview of virtual worlds, situating Second Life within a broader trajectory of digital environments. MacLeod's work, by focusing on a community with roots in the 1970s and 80s, offers a complementary perspective on how pre-digital countercultures interact with and are potentially transformed by digital tools.
In summary, Boellstorff offers a foundational text on doing ethnography in a virtual world, emphasizing its cultural autonomy, while MacLeod pushes the boundaries by proposing the creation of a virtual twin for comparative study of a physical culture, highlighting the interactive potential of physical and digital ethnographic sites. Together, they invite students to critically examine the evolving landscape of human culture in an increasingly mediated world
Reading Tom Boellstorff's "Coming of Age in Second Life" and Scott MacLeod's "Naked Harbin Ethnography" together in a Digital Ethnography course would create a powerful comparative case study on the foundational questions of the field. The two books, while both seminal works of digital anthropology, offer a direct and productive contrast in their methodologies and theoretical approaches.
Here are the key ways the two books could be read together:
1. The Methodological Debate: From "Virtual-Only" to "Actual-Virtual" Ethnography
The most significant point of comparison is their methodological stance on fieldwork.
Boellstorff's "Virtual-Only" Method: Boellstorff argues for the need to study virtual worlds "in their own terms." His ethnography of Second Life was conducted almost entirely from within the virtual environment using an avatar. He posits that virtual worlds are distinct cultural spaces with their own social norms, and that studying them requires a methodology that acknowledges this separation. His work is a landmark in validating online spaces as legitimate field sites.
MacLeod's "Actual-Virtual" Method: MacLeod's work directly enters into a "direct conversation with" Boellstorff by proposing a comparative methodology. He studies the same community—Harbin Hot Springs—in both its physical location and a proposed "realistic virtual Harbin." This approach, which he calls "ethno-wiki-virtual-world-
graphy," is designed to analyze how a counterculture is expressed and transformed as it moves from a physical place into a digital replica. The key here is not separation, but a comparative analysis of the relationship between the physical and digital.
A course could use these two books to have students debate:
When is a "virtual-only" approach sufficient for fieldwork?
What are the benefits and challenges of conducting a comparative "actual-virtual" ethnography?
How does the researcher's choice of method shape the kind of knowledge produced about a digital community?
2. Contrasting Concepts of "Place" and "Culture"
The books also offer different ways to think about "place" and "culture" in the digital age.
Boellstorff on the Virtual as Place: Boellstorff argues that virtual worlds are "places" in their own right, not just social networks or simulations. He demonstrates how concepts like ownership, sociality, and even the "materiality" of objects and avatars create a sense of place that is distinct from the physical world. He avoids the term "real life," instead using "actual life" to emphasize that both virtual and physical experiences are valid forms of being.
MacLeod on the Digital as an Extension of Physical Place: MacLeod's work, in contrast, explores the ways a physical place's culture—specifically, the "hippies to the hot springs" counterculture—is extended and reinterpreted in the digital realm. His focus on the "warm water meditations" of the physical pool being translated into a virtual Harbin "experience" from home highlights how a digital space can serve as a vessel for a physical culture's core tenets.
This comparison would allow a course to explore how concepts of "place" can be both newly constructed within virtual worlds and also be a continuation or representation of a pre-existing physical location.
3. A Historical and Theoretical Framework for Digital Ethnography
Reading the books in sequence provides a historical narrative of the field. "Coming of Age in Second Life," published in 2008, is a foundational text that helped legitimize virtual worlds as ethnographic field sites. "Naked Harbin Ethnography," published more recently, builds on this foundation by posing a new set of questions about how to study communities that now fluidly exist in both digital and physical spaces. A course could use this pairing to:
Trace the evolution of digital ethnographic thought.
Analyze how new research methodologies emerge to address the changing nature of human sociality in a connected world.
Discuss the ongoing relevance of foundational works like Boellstorff's in light of more recent, hybrid approaches like MacLeod's.
Based on available information, Scott MacLeod's "Naked Harbin Ethnography" argues that creating a "Physical-Digital Realistic Virtual Harbin" is a new methodology for ethnographic fieldwork. The book focuses on establishing a virtual environment of the Harbin Hot Springs as a field site for social science and "wiki-anthropological" research. The available sources do not provide specific details on how the book argues that the Harbin Hot Springs - Heart Consciousness Church has emerged culturally since 1972
If Scott MacLeod's "Naked Harbin Ethnography" argues that, in part, both
'hippies to the hot springs'
and
'soaking warm water meditations as de facto relaxation response meditations in the Harbin warm pool give rise to clothing-optional hippy Harbin as counterculture or Harbin's alternative culture emerging out of the 1960s and 1970s because Harbin's founder Ishvara - Bob Hartley since 1972 is still alive informing Harbin's vision as counterculture; how best to study this ethnographically, both physically and digitally, in a realistic virtual Harbin Hot Springs ... and even with the new theory and method ethno-wiki-virtual-world-
I was unable to access the specific web page you provided to learn about the "ethno-wiki-virtual-world-
Based on previous searches, Scott MacLeod's work does propose creating a realistic virtual Harbin for ethnographic fieldwork, focusing on a comparative study of the physical and virtual spaces. The goal is to develop a new social science research methodology for studying alternative cultures and communities
Based on Scott MacLeod's work, "Naked Harbin Ethnography" argues for the creation of a "Physical-Digital Realistic Virtual Harbin Hot springs" to facilitate comparative ethnographic fieldwork. The central argument is the development of a new methodology for studying both physical and virtual spaces.
The book proposes creating a "realistic virtual Harbin" using technologies like Second Life, Open Simulator, and Street View with a time slider, complete with avatars. This virtual environment is intended to be an ethnographic field site where researchers can conduct "actual-virtual comparative ethnographic research" and "wiki-anthropological research."
This approach allows for a unique form of social science inquiry, enabling the study of topics like alternative culture and "soaking from home." The methodology seeks to bridge the gap between physical and digital spaces for research purposes.
For more information, you can refer to the following sources:
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And see especially -
Friday, June 27, 2025
Oriental darter or Indian darter (Anhinga melanogaster): Re: [Medianthro] Digital Ethnography short course * "The University of Oxford, is offering a summer short course, Digital Ethnography, which will run between 16th July and 5th September" * * an online virtual Harbin Hot Spring for ethnographic study and research, and with an anthropological research group, and for anthropological field site generation, and to study - Virtual Harbin generation (realistic) Realistic virtual earth / cosmos generation, group build-able at atomic/molecular, neuronal/cellular, and streetview/behavioral levels Avatar robotics' design and printing of 3D place / avatar bots Brain chemistry - a) loving bliss and b) consciousness as awareness - research and modeling (re e.g. modeling mouse and fly brains with AI) Wiki ethnography generation Field work to actual Harbin Hot Springs Ethno-Wiki-Virtual-World-Graphy (as a new social science theory and method, as well as STEM-Wiki-Virtual-World-Graphy) https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/ethno-wiki-virtual-world-graphy http://www.scottmacleod.com/research-group.html ~
Re: [Medianthro] Digital Ethnography short course
https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2025/06/oriental-darter-or-indian-darter.html
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbus_aucuparia
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![Oriental darter or Indian darter (Anhinga melanogaster): Re: [Medianthro] Digital Ethnography short course * "The University of Oxford, is offering a summer short course, Digital Ethnography, which will run between 16th July and 5th September" * * an online virtual Harbin Hot Spring for ethnographic study and research, and with an anthropological research group, and for anthropological field site generation, and to study - Virtual Harbin generation (realistic) Realistic virtual earth / cosmos generation, group build-able at atomic/molecular, neuronal/cellular, and streetview/behavioral levels Avatar robotics' design and printing of 3D place / avatar bots Brain chemistry - a) loving bliss and b) consciousness as awareness - research and modeling (re e.g. modeling mouse and fly brains with AI) Wiki ethnography generation Field work to actual Harbin Hot Springs Ethno-Wiki-Virtual-World-Graphy (as a new social science theory and method, as well as STEM-Wiki-Virtual-World-Graphy) https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/ethno-wiki-virtual-world-graphy http://www.scottmacleod.com/research-group.html ~](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/90/IndianDarter.jpg/1600px-IndianDarter.jpg){kind=link}
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