<nettime> "text-based virtual worlds" "The Words That Took Us There: Not An Ethnography" Thesis online

["Lessard, George" <GLessard@gov.nu.ca>]

-----Original Message-----
From: FTS [mailto:architext@cable.a2000.nl]
Sent: Sunday, March 26, 2000 11:20 AM
To: architext@cable.a2000.nl
Subject: [OnlineRsch] Thesis online


From: FTS <architext@cable.a2000.nl>

My thesis is finished and I've defended it succesfully, and consequently
I've graduated :)

"The Words That Took Us There: Not An Ethnography" is an ethnography,
based on three years of research on/in online role-playing games, aka
"text-based virtual worlds" or MUDs. In this text I try to accomplish two
main goals. The first is an analysis of how the players of MUDs "perform"
or "enact" a convincingly gendered character. I have chosen gender as an
"entry point" or "handle" on role-playing and a discussion of the
"virtual" and the "real," but that is not to say that this text is an
exhaustive rehearsal in gender theory (although there's some of that too).
The second goal I try to achieve is to give the reader an impression of
the experience of playing a character in a text-based virtual environment.
This more ethnographic goal I pursue by not just writing in a scientific
prose, but by incorporating pieces of text and prose of different
"persuasions" on the same level as the scientific text. This slightly
unorthodox use of both form and content eventually leads to a (mostly
anthropological) discussion of the ethnography as an (un)attainable form
of representation.

You can find my thesis online, on my website:

http://people.a2000.nl/fschaap/thesis/index.html


Feel free to pass this message along to anyone/any list you think might be
interested. Apologies for the cross-posting.


Frank.


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