"Tom Boellstorff conducted more than two years of fieldwork in Second Life, living among and observing its residents in the same way anthropologists traditionally have done to learn about cultures and social groups in the so-called real world. He applied the methods of anthropology to study many facets of this new frontier of human life, including issues of gender, race, sex, money, conflict and antisocial behavior, the construction of place and time, and the interplay of self and group."-- Original book jacket.