Urte Undine Frömming Livres

Virtual reality is no longer an issue that we can avoid or ignore. It is an essential part of our experience, influencing cultures and individuals all over the world. This book presents a collection of ethnographic research in the virtual world of Second Life, and can be seen as an attempt to discover the challenges and limits of social anthropological research with an avatar in virtual cultures and environments. The contributions in this book demonstrate that the development of «digital codes» has meanwhile gone so far that anthropologists have started to conduct fieldwork inside digital user-generated worlds. This volume investigates the challenges facing a reality that is strongly and maybe irrevocably entangled with virtual reality. This development holds disadvantages and dangers but advantages as well - such as freedom of expressions for minority groups, social online activists, religious communities or artists. All research is based on qualitative methods, with group and single interview situations and participant observation over a period of between three and ten months.

Digital technology permeates the physical world. Social media and virtual reality, accessed via internet capable devices - computers, smartphones, tablets and wearables - affect nearly all aspects of social life. The contributions to this volume apply innovative forms of ethnographic research to the digital realm. They examine the emergence of new forms of digital life, such as political participation through comments on East Greenlandic news blogs, the personal use of video broadcasting applications, the rise of transnational migrant networks facilitated by social media, or the effects of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram on global conflicts.

Seit Jahrtausenden erschüttern Naturkatastrophen die kulturellen Weltbilder sozialer Gemeinschaften. Urte Undine Frömming zeigt an Beispielen aus Island und Indonesien, wie die Bewohner betroffener Gebiete sich durch Maßnahmen wie etwa Rituale vor der Gefahr schützen und wie sie Naturgewalt mythologisch deuten. Die Auswirkungen des Seebebens von 2004, des Krakatau-Ausbruchs von 1883 und des Ausbruchs des isländischen Laki 1783 belegen die globale Bedeutung von Naturkatastrophen und deren Einfluss auf gesellschaftliche Umwälzungen. Schrecken und Faszination entstehen durch die Erkenntnis, dass die Trennung zwischen Natur und Kultur ein allzu kühnes Konstrukt ist.