Online a Lot of the Time ：Ritual, Fetish, Sign ( 1 )

Publication subTitle ：Ritual, Fetish, Sign

Publication series ：1

Author： Ken Hillis  

Publisher： Duke University Press‎

Publication year： 2009

E-ISBN: 9780822392224

P-ISBN(Paperback): 9780822344483

P-ISBN(Hardback):  9780822344346

Subject： C91 Sociology

Keyword： Web 2.0 -- Social aspects., Online social networks., Online identities., Shared virtual environments -- Social aspects., Internet games -- Social aspects.

Language： ENG

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Description

A wedding ceremony in a Web-based virtual world. Online memorials commemorating the dead. A coffee klatch attended by persons thousands of miles apart via webcams. These are just a few of the ritual practices that have developed and are emerging in online settings. Such Web-based rituals depend on the merging of two modes of communication often held distinct by scholars: the use of a device or mechanism to transmit messages between people across space, and a ritual gathering of people in the same place for the performance of activities intended to generate, maintain, repair, and renew social relations. In Online a Lot of the Time, Ken Hillis explores the stakes when rituals that would formerly have required participants to gather in one physical space are reformulated for the Web. In so doing, he develops a theory of how ritual, fetish, and signification translate to online environments and offer new forms of visual and spatial interaction. The online environments Hillis examines reflect the dynamic contradictions at the core of identity and the ways these contradictions get signified.

Hillis analyzes forms of ritual and fetishism made possible through second-generation virtual environments such as Second Life and the popular practice of using webcams to “lifecast” one’s life online twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Discussing how people create and identify with their electronic avatars, he shows how the customs of virtual-world c

Chapter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction - Rituals of Transmission, Fetishizing the Trace

1 Rituals

2 Fetishes

3 Signs

4 “Avatars Become /me” - Depiction Dethrones Description

5 So Near, So Far, and Both at Once - Telefetishism and Rituals of Visibility

Afterword - Digital Affectivity

Notes

Works Cited

Index

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