Anthropologist: Deep Bonds Forged in Second Life

In a Podcast with The Chronicle, Tom Boellstorff, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of California at Irvine, talks about, among other things, how people bond and change genders in Second Life. Mr. Boellstorff spent two-and-a-half years exploring the culture of the virtual world through a digital character he created named Tom Bukowski. The professor has written about his experience in a book, due out in April, called Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human (Princeton University Press).—Andrea L. Foster