Essay 4 - David Speidel - Sense of Place and Identity in the Virtual

           When it comes to senses of place and identity, the virtual worlds of online games are complex and have cultural meaning all their own.  As this culture develops inside the virtual space, players relate to them and take an active role in the environment.  As demonstrated in earlier discussions of economics and growth, these worlds can have effect on the physical world of those players and as such have a connection to the global culture we analyze.  When looking at these developing online cultures it is important to understand how they create senses of identity and place to their users as well as how real world cultures have created hybrids inside the virtual space.

In these worlds that are becoming more intricate every day, there can be flows similar to those found when discussing real world cultural identities.  They discussion of flows through different ?scapes? by Appadurai are felt in these worlds.  For example, movements of people and ideas take form of users subscribing to the different worlds and quitting them so that there are new influxes of people and ideas into and out of the individual game cultures (Appadurai, 1990, p. 296).  Also inside these virtual cultures like Second Life, there are feelings of commonality yet a connection to the outside that give it a specific place.  All of the players share an experience in their particular virtual worlds, encountering similar, if not the same, obstacles and information, as well as limitations.  Yet these users connect to their outside worlds much differently from each other, using the game environment as their common space.  This has a strong correlation to Massey?s idea of place being ?particular constellation of [global] relations, articulated together at a particular locus? (Massey, 1993, p.66).  Much like a city atmosphere where there are large populations that create somewhat anonymous interactions but still hold a common connection to the population center they are a part of (Donath, 1997).  With these connections the virtual worlds demonstrate their own development of cultural space and identity that connect to our global culture.

            Although the idea that there are unique virtual cultures has strong support, how Western and Asian culture mesh inside these places is a more difficult relationship to identify.  There are obstacles that still create some separation between the two cultures inside the online cultures in the form of language.  While these characters experience the world together, they don?t always speak the same language and as such find new ways to communicate.  The players may use gestures or emotions to try to converse, out of which grow learned behaviors with shared meanings inside the community.  In communities as complex as Second Life, there are areas in many languages, but the interface to the world itself is in the language the player understands.  There are unique aspects of these cultures that are spread, from clothing ideas to architecture, that can be sold and then spread around peoples of both Asian or Western heritage.  Companies that are based in Japan, China, or America, can all have virtual representations inside of Second Life that take form as ?we see the increasing 'technologization' and commodification of urban and public spaces? (Galloway, 2006), allowing the spread of information and media among the community but without limitations of geographic separation.  While the individuals may react differently, the world remains and the community created by these intermingling of cultures grows into a unique entity.

            The existence of these virtual cultures allows an interesting view into another hybridization of culture.  While the culture is still taking form as the capabilities of virtual worlds increase, it is evident that the players inside these environments share a sense of place, at least while together in that world.  These growing entities will see more changes as they allow greater freedom and control to their population base.

References:

Appadurai, Arjun. (1990). Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Economy. Public Culture 2 (2):1-24.

Donath, J. S. (1997). Part I: The virtual society. In Inhabiting the virtual city: the design of social environments for electronic communities (pp. 15-42) Ph.D. Dissertation. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved June 13, 2007 from http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/

Galloway, A., & Ward, M. (2006). Locative media as socialising and spatializing practice: Learning from archaeology. Leonardo Electronic Almanac, 14 (3). Retrieved June 13, 2007, from http://leoalmanac.org/journal/vol_14/lea_v14_n03-04/gallowayward.asp

Massey, Doreen (1993). ?Power-geometry and a Progressive Sense of Place.? Ch. 4. in Bird, John, et al. (editors), Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change. London: Routledge. Pp.59-69.

Posted at 06:41AM Jun 15, 2007 by SPEIDEL, DAVID in General  |  Comments[2]