Hanging Out in Desi: Straddling Multiple Universes Through Second Life

• In Event: Affordances and Constraints of Virtual Worlds for Formal and Informal Learning

Abstract

As educational researchers interested in learning in virtual worlds it is essential to explore how practices develop organically so as to acknowledge the existing practices and learn from them. This paper describes one such case of use of Second Life (SL) by participants of a virtual café to explore ethnic identity and create a ‘safe place’ (Mitra, 2006).
Placeless-ness, and fractured identity are two major themes that appear in discussion of Diaspora. Immigrants, in spite of the desire for the ‘original’ homeland do not see it as an accessible place, at the same time they find themselves to be foreigners in their current place of living. The struggle is accompanied by sense of loss of cultural identity. Thus, while trying to assimilate in the culture of the current place, there is also a need to enact practices that the group can call their own, which would set them apart from others (Mitra, 2006). One coping strategy to this phenomenon is creation of ethnic enclaves in metropolitan areas. Various researchers have shown (Miller & Slater, 2000; Wenjing, 2005; Mallapragada, 2006; Mitra, 2006) how geographically scattered immigrants turn to virtual places based in websites, discussion boards, and chat rooms to create such cultural enclaves or ‘safe places’ online. SL with its three-dimensional modeling tool allowing building and the avatar based interactions can prove to be an ideal environment to create a safe place.
This paper reports on happenings in an Indian virtual café in SL based on participant observation conducted during two separate four month intervals. The observations focused on how the place portrayed ‘Indian’; how it encouraged enactment of cultural practices and how people appropriated the place to enact Indian-ness. The analysis is based on the field notes, casual chats with participants, semi-structured interviews (through text chat and IM) with creators of the place and visitors, and artifacts like user profiles and notecards.
The data revealed that the visitors to the café were diasporic Indians as well as Indians in India. The presentation will elaborate on how the different groups authored identity in terms of the interlinked aspects of being, becoming, belonging, and behaving (Thomas, 2007) through selective sharing of RL information, attire, gestures (dance steps etc), and other discursive practices. Through the visuals, SL time, and environment settings the participants co-experienced and imagined the café as a place outside of their physical space and time. For the diasporic Indians, it worked as an ethnic enclave they could reach out to from the ‘alien’ place they were part of. For the Indians in India, it allowed explorations of the unknown (eg. exploring sexuality, enacting fantasies) through the familiar landscape and people in the Indian café.
Learning from how this group experienced space with help of visuals and discursive practices can be used to build authentic space based explorations for learning. It can also inform creating collaborative spaces for people across the world to congregate in SL and imagine inhabiting a common space in spite of their geographical and time differences.

Author

• Devayani Tirthali, Teachers College, Columbia University