As a professor of Anthropology and Sociology at startup WUaS (e.g. accrediting on CC MIT OCW in 7 languages and CC Yale OYC) and exploring how I'd teach a course entitled "The Anthropology of Harbin Hot Springs, Tourism Studies and Virtual Reality: Students building their own ethno-wiki-virtual-world-graphy interpretations of Harbin," and having published recently my Actual / Virtual Harbin Hot Springs' ethnography - http://www.scottmacleod.com/ActualVirtualHarbinBook.html - which should be available in paper this summer, here's a beginning syllabus with readings based on the chapter titles in my book to be interspersed with readings from Tom Boellstorff's "Coming of Age in Second Life" and building projects:
"The Anthropology of Harbin Hot Springs re Tourism Studies and Virtual Reality: Students building their own virtual world interpretations of Harbin"
Each chapter corresponds to a week in a semester (and I'll later intersperse chapter by chapter reading from Tom's book, as well as building assignments):
Part I: Setting the Harbin Hot Springs' Stage
Chapter 1: The Subject and Scope of this Inquiry
Arrivals and departures – Everyday Harbin – Terms of discussion – The emergence of actual Harbin – The emergence of virtual Harbin – Harbin Residents – What this, a book, does.
Chapter 2: History
Prehistories of Harbin: From modernity to counterculture, from actual to virtual – Histories of Harbin – A personal Harbin history – Histories of Harbin research - Challenges of Developing a Virtual Harbin and Writing this Harbin ethnography - Harbin as dream, ethnographically, in actuality
Chapter 3: Method
Harbin on its own terms - Anthropology and ethnography – Participant observation – Interviews, Pool work and virtual developments – Ethics – Claims and reflexivity – Actual Harbin and virtual Harbin compared and contrasted
Part II: Harbin as Counterculture emerging from Modernity
Chapter 4: Place and Time
Visuality and Harbin – The Harbin Valley – Traveling to and from Harbin – Immersion - Presence
Chapter 5: Personhood
The self – Harbin's life course – Harbin personhood – The pools, the 1960s and clothing-optionalness as milieu – Gender and race – Agency
Chapter 6: Practices
Language – Friendship – Intimacy - Sexuality – Love – Family – Connectedness - Oneness
Chapter 7: Community
Events at Harbin – The group – Heart Consciousness Church and New Age Church of Being - Heart Consciousness and its Expressions - The Pool Area - Milieu of Openness
Chapter 8: Political Economy
A Business emerging out 1960's and early 70's counterculture – Northern California as Political Economy - Money and labor – Property – Governance – Inequality – Life in the Harbin Valley
Part III: Virtual Harbin
Chapter 9: Harbin as a Virtual World
Virtual Harbin residents – Harbin culture in virtual Harbin – Simulation – Fiction and design – Many Harbin residents in-world – Toward an anthropology of actual and virtual Harbin
Virtuality and Harbin – Harbin as unfolding hippie vision apart form history
(and re: http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/02/slender-loris-harbin-ethnography.html)
*
Glad to revisit this Stanford Open Office Hours by Stanford Professor Emeritus, Philip Zimbardo, partly on planned hedonism (re Stanford students) ...
Stanford Open Office Hours: Philip Zimbardo, Part 1
https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=614090435683*
and re this blog post from 2010 ...
Keralan Egrets: Would like to create FREE CULTURE at World Univ & Sch, Hippies Feel Ambivalent About Modernity, Learning from my Father
http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/03/kerala-egrets-would-like-to-create-free.html*
...