Table of Contents

* Foreword, Ronald E. Rice * Acknowledgments * Introduction: Where Is the Shaman? Jim Parker * Part I: Conceptualizing Electronic Tribes * Chapter 1. "A Tribe by Any Other Name ... ," Tyrone L. Adams and Stephen A. Smith * Chapter 2. Mimetic Kinship: Theorizing Online "Tribalism," Veronica M. Davidov and Barbara Andersen * Chapter 3. Electronic Tribes (E-Tribes): Some Theoretical Perspectives and Implications, Bolanle Olaniran * Chapter 4. Revisiting the Impact of Tribalism on Civil Society: An Investigation of the Potential Benefits of Membership in an E-Tribe on Public Discourse, Christina Standerfer * Part II: Social Consequences of Electronic Tribalism * Chapter 5. Theorizing the E-Tribe on MySpace.com, David R. Dewberry * Chapter 6. Don't Date, Craftsterbate: Dialogue and Resistance on craftster.org, Terri L. Russ * Chapter 7. Guild Life in the World of Warcraft: Online Gaming Tribalism, Thomas Brignall III * Chapter 8. At the Electronic Evergreen: A Computer-Mediated Ethnography of Tribalism in a Newsgroup from Montserrat and Afar, Jonathan Skinner * Part III: Emerging Electronic Tribal Cultures * Chapter 9. "Like a neighborhood of sisters": Can Culture Be Formed Electronically? Deborah Clark Vance * Chapter 10. Gerald M. Phillips as Electronic Tribal Chief: Socioforming Cyberspace, Ann Rosenthal * Chapter 11. Digital Dreamtime, Sonic Talismans: Music Downloading and the Tribal Landscape, Michael C. Zalot * Chapter 12. Magic, Myth, and Mayhem: Tribalization in the Digital Age, Leonie Naughton * Part IV: Cybercrime and Counterculture among Electronic Tribes * Chapter 13. Mundanes at the Gate ... and Perverts Within: Managing Internal and External Threats to Community Online, Steve Abrams and Smaragd Grun * Chapter 14. Brotherhood of Blood: Aryan Tribalism and Skinhead Cybercrews, Jody M. Roy * Chapter 15. Radical Tribes at Warre: Primitivists on the Net, Mathieu O'Neil * Chapter 16. A "Tribe" Migrates Crime to Cyberspace: Nigerian Igbos in 419 E-Mail Scams, Farooq A. Kperogi and Sandra Duhe * About the Contributors * Index

Promotional Information

From MySpace.com to Nigerian e-mail scams, sixteen competitively selected essays inquire into the causes and consequences of the "tribes" that are facilitated by the Internet

About the Author

TYRONE L. ADAMS is the Richard D'Aquin Professor of Journalism and Communications at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette. STEPHEN A. SMITH is Professor of Communication at the University of Arkansas.

Reviews

"The major contribution of this book is that the idea of 'tribe' is fully and robustly explicated in ways that challenge existing wisdom, particularly the idea that Internet users are best understood as communities... The richness of diverse research resources is evident in every chapter. I particularly commend the editors on the international perspective and the inclusion of such a surprising array of subcultures." H. L. Goodall Jr., Director, Hugh Downs School of Human Communication, Arizona State University