Virtual Environments and Cultures ― A Collection of Social Anthropological Research in Virtual Cultures and Landscapes

This collection anthropologically analyzes aspects of the virtual world of Second Life during the years 2010-2013, a period marked by economic decline in the virtual world, but ongoing projects of art, culture, and education. Eighteen contributions have been organized by editor Fromming (visual and media anthropology, Freie U. Berlin, Germany) into sections on: appropriation, construction, and imagination of landscape, space, and place in a virtual world; gender, belonging, and motherhood in virtual cultures; religiosity in the virtual world; and art production and artists in Second Life (with each section preceded by introductory overview by Fromming). Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Urte Undine Fromming, born 1970 in Eutin (Germany), is junior professor at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology and the head of the Master’s Program in Visual and Media Anthropology at Freie Universitat Berlin. She has completed several visual anthropological fieldwork studies in Eastern Indonesia, in East-Africa (Tanzania), in Iceland and in the virtual world of Second Life. She is a member of the work group ?Visual Anthropology? at the German Anthropological Association (DGV) and member of the European Forum for the Study of Religion and the Environment.