Cybertypes
Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet
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- $77.99
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- $77.99
Publisher Description
First published in 2002. In Cybertypes, Lisa Nakamura turn sour assumption that the Net is color-blind on its head. Examining all facets of everyday web-life, she shows that racial and ethnic stereotypes, or 'cybertypes' are hardwired into our online interactions: Identity tourists masquerade in chat rooms as Asian_Geisha or Alatiniolover. Web directories sharply delimit racial categories. Anonymous computer users are assumed to be white. Lively, provocative, Cybertypes takes up computer relationship between race, ethnicity and technology and offers a candid and nuanced understanding of identity in the information age.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With chapter subtitles such as "Identity Tourism, Avatars, and Racial Passing in Textual and Graphic Chat Spaces" and "Making Race Happen Online," Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet shows the tenaciousness of race categories in cyberspace, despite the Web's touring as a raceless utopia. Lisa Nakamura, associate professor of English at Sonoma State University, argues that "race, as vexed a term as that has come to be, is an indispensable part of the `root' that warrants, anchors and conditions the lives of actual users in cyberspace to the world offline," and that only by paying close attention to race's offline vicissitudes will we understand online life.
