ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relationship between ethnography and virtual reality (VR) both in terms of practices and promises. I take as a starting point that both pursuits are animated by claims of immersion and appeal to offering an experience of “being there.” To consider how anthropologists ought to think about the re-emergence of VR, I draw on fieldwork conducted in Los Angeles with members of the community producing high-end, cinematic VR (as distinct from socially networked virtual worlds). The chapter examines how both ethnographers and the VR community define immersion, the ways in which immersion differs between these two domains, and how anthropological ideas might contribute toward a critique of immersion of use to VR creators. Through this approach, an ethnography of virtual reality revealingly places in conversation ethnography and virtual reality.
