Index

Forewords 
Methods of Culture                                                VIII 
Tom Boellstorff 
Play, community, and history                                      X
Bonnie A. Nardi 
Acknowledgments                                                   XII
I  Play, community and emergency cultures 
1. Communities of Play and the Global Playground                  3 
2. Virtual worlds, Play ecosystems, and the ludisphere            17  
3. Emergence in cultures, games, and virtual worlds               37 
4. Reading, writing, and playing cultures                         51 
II The Uru diaspora 
5. An imaginary homeland                                          69 
6. Identity as Place                                              85 
7. The Inner lives of Avatars                                     111 
8. Communities and cultures of Play                               125 
9. Patterns of emergence                                          137 
10. Productive play: culturaI production, meaning-making, and 
agency                                                            155 
11. Porous magic circles and the  ludisphere                      177 
12. Emergence as design material                                  185 
III Playing ethnography: research methods 
13. Methodology: playing ethnography                              195 
IV The social construction of the Ethnographer 
14. Being Artemesia: my life as an Avatar                         215 
V Beyond Uru: communities of play on their own terms 
15.  Coda:Uru resurrection - applied cyberethnography as 
action research                                                   263 
16. Crafting cultures: emergence as design material               271
17. Global playgrounds and the "play turn" in culture             277 
Games and virtual worlds cited                                    282 
References                                                        285 
Index                                                             301