"how do your colleagues react to your work?"

[14:32] Tom Bukowski: okay, lemme find the next question - what an audience!
[14:32] Leeorie Alter: lol
[14:32] Riven Homewood: Tom - people are asking about how your colleagues react to your Second Life research
[14:32] Tom Bukowski: Marilena Basevi: I'd like to hear about the reactions of other anthropologists to your work
[14:33] Tom Bukowski: It has been very very interesting
[14:33] Tom Bukowski: It has generally been very positive - the book is already going into a first reprint, and lot of anthropologists are teaching with it
[14:33] Tom Bukowski: but from the beginning there has also been hostility
[14:33] Gabrielle Riel: I bet
[14:33] Tom Bukowski: More than I ever got for studying gay people, which surprised me
[14:33] Siri Woodget: wow
[14:33] Galactic Baroque: weird
[14:33] Tom Bukowski: There are anthropologists how are threatened by technology
[14:34] Tom Bukowski: And there is still a strong emphasis on studying "remote" indigenous cultures in some quarters of anthropology (though certainly not all). So what I sometimes get are reactions like:
[14:34] Tom Bukowski: "aren't those people without a real life"
[14:34] Tom Bukowski: "aren't those just wealthy elites"
[14:34] Tom Bukowski: "isn't it just sex and violence"
[14:34] Tom Bukowski: none of that will surprise most of you
[14:34] Riven Homewood: Yes - I hear that too - " I hardly have time for my first life!"
[14:34] Tom Bukowski: I basically got no research funding for this - all rejections
[14:34] Tom Bukowski: and I purposesly did this after I had tenure
[14:35] Azul Draken: Hooray for tenure
[14:35] Gabrielle Riel: Good idea
[14:35] Gi Tammas: good planning
[14:35] Marilena Basevi: very interesting -- thank you! -- post tenure, no grants
[14:35] Tom Bukowski: So that's one reason why I think it's good I'm Editor-in-Chief of American Anthropologist
[14:35] Tom Bukowski: It makes it a little harder for people to dismiss this kind of research
[14:35] Tom Bukowski: And I have to say, among graduate students and younger anthropologists, there tends to be far less hostility
[14:35] Gabrielle Riel nods
[14:35] Tom Bukowski: And even among the older generation, there's a lot of support too, it's not all dismissive
[14:35] Forelle Broek: same here - my coleagues are perplexed, my students are fascinated
[14:35] Tom Bukowski: But I have been surprised by how often I got a negative reaction
[14:36] Azul Draken: jealousy for not thinking of it?
[14:36] Tom Bukowski: I wonder about that Azul
[…]
[14:42] Tom Bukowski: so just to comment a bit more, I don't want to make it sound like they all roll their eyes. People in my department were all completely supportive, and many others have been.
[14:42] Tom Bukowski: But I can't deny that I have encountered dismissal and rolling of eyes too, more than I expected.