Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Performing embodied identity in virtual worlds

  • Research Article
  • Published:
European Journal of Information Systems

Abstract

Embodied identity, that is, who we are as a result of our interactions with the world around us with and through our bodies, is increasingly challenged in online environments where identity performances are seemingly untethered from the user's body that is sitting at the computer. Even though disembodiment has been severely criticized in the literature, most conceptualizations of the role of users’ bodies in virtuality nevertheless reflect a representational logic, which fails to capture contemporary users’ experience of cyborgism. Relying on data collected from nine entrepreneurs in the virtual world Second Life (SL), this paper asks how embodied identity is performed in virtual worlds. Contrasting representationalism with performativity, this study highlights that the SL entrepreneurs intentionally re-presented in their avatars some of the attributes of physical bodies, but that they also engaged in habitual practices in-world, thereby unconsciously enacting embodied identities in both their ‘real’ and virtual lives.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Figure 1

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Anderson TC (2000) The body and communities in cyberspace: a Marcellian analysis. Ethics and Information Technology 2 (3), 153–158.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Austin J (1962) How to Do Things with Words. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bailenson J and Segovia KY (2010) Virtual doppelgangers: psychological effects of avatars who ignore their owners. In Online Worlds: Convergence of the Real and the Virtual (Bainbridge WS, Ed.), pp 175–186, Springer, New York.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Barad K (2003) Posthumanist performativity: toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture 28 (3), 801–831.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bardzell J and Bardzell S (2008) Intimate interactions: online representation and software of the self. Interactions 15 (5), 11–15.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bateson G (1972) Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Random House, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bessiere K, Seay AF and Kiesler S (2007) The ideal elf: identity exploration in world of warcraft. CyberPsychology & Behavior 10 (4), 530–535.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blumer H (1969) Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.

    Google Scholar 

  • Borer MI (2002) The cyborgian self: toward a critical social theory of cyberspace. Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture 2 (3), http://reconstruction.eserver.org/023/borer.htm.

  • Boyd d (2006) Identity production in a networked culture: why youth heart MySpacec. In Mcarthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning – Youth, Identity and Digitial Media (Buckingham D, Ed.), pp 119–142, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brickell C (2005) Masculinities, performativity and subversion: a sociological reappraisal. Men and Masculinity 8 (1), 24–43.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Budgeon S (2003) Identity as an embodied event. Body & Society 9 (1), 35–55.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Butler J (1993) Bodies That Matter. Routledge, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carruthers G (2009) Is the body schema sufficient to for the sense of embodiment? An alternative to De Vignemont's model. Philosophical Psychology 22 (2), 123–142.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chatman CM, Eccles JS and Malanchuk O (2005) Identity negotiation in everyday settings. In Navigating the Future: Social Identity, Coping and Life Tasks (Downey G, Eccles JS and Chatman CM, Eds), pp 116–139, Russell Sage Foundation, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Czarniawska B (2007) Shadowing and Other Techniques for Doing Fieldwork in Modern Society. Copenhagen, Liber.

    Google Scholar 

  • Feldman MS and Pentland BT (2003) Re-theorizing organizational routines as a source of flexibility and change. Administrative Science Quarterly 48 (1), 94–118.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goffman E (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Doubleday, Garden City, NY.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goffman E (1963) Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings. Free Press, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gregson N and Rose G (2000) Taking butler elsewhere: Performativities, spatialities and subjectivities. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 18 (4), 433–452.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hardey M (2002) Life beyond the screen: embodiment and identity through the internet. The Sociological Review 50 (4), 570–585.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hickey-Moody A and Wood D (2008) Virtually sustainable: Deleuze and desiring differenciation in second life. Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 22 (6), 805–816.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ihde D (1990) Technology and the Lifeworld: From Garden to Earth. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ihde D (2002) Bodies in Technology. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ikaheimo H and Laitinen A (2007) Dimensions of personhood. Journal of Consciousness Studies 14 (5–6), 6–16.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ingold T (2000) The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. Routledge, London.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Introna LD (2007) Towards a post-human intra-actional account of socio-technical agency (and morality). In Moral Agency and Technical Artefacts, NIAS. Hague, The Netherlands.

    Google Scholar 

  • Introna LD and Hayes N (2011) On sociomaterial imbrications: what plagiarism detection systems reveal and why it matters. Information & Organization 21 (3), 107–122.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kafai YB, Fields DA and Cook MS (2010) Your second selves: player-designed avatars. Games and Culture 5 (1), 23–42.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • King SA (1996) Researching internet communities: proposed ethical guidelines for the reporting of results. The Information Society 12 (2), 119–129.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kreps D (2010) My social networking profile: copy, resemblance or simulacrum? A poststructuralist interpretation of social information systems. European Journal of Information Systems 19 (1), 104–115.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lakoff G and Johnson M (1999) Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. Basic Books, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Latham A (2003) Research, performance and doing human geography: some reflections on the diary-photograph, diary-interview method. Environment and Planning A 35 (11), 1993–2017.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leary MR and Tangney JP (Eds) (2003) The self as an organizing construct in the behavioral and social sciences. In Handbook of Self and Identity, pp 3–14, Guilford Press, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lee KM (2004) Presence, explicated. Communication Theory 14 (1), 27–50.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leonardi PM (2011) When flexible routines meet flexible technologies: affordances, constraints, and the imbrication of human and material agencies. MIS Quarterly 35 (1), 147–167.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leonardi PM and Barley SR (2008) Materiality and change: challenges to building better theory about technology and organizing. Information & Organization 18 (4), 159–176.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Madge C and O’Connor H (2005) Mothers in the making? Exploring liminality in cyber/space. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30 (1), 83–97.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McKenna KYA (2007) Through the internet looking glass: expressing and validating the true self. In The Oxford Handbook of Internet Psychology (Joinson AN, Mckenna, KYA, Postmes T and Reips U-D, Eds), pp 205–221, Oxford University Press, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mingers J (2001) Embodying information systems: the contribution of phenomenology. Information and Organization 11 (2), 103–128.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morrison C (2010) Who Do They Think They Are? Teenage Girls and Their Avatars in Spaces of Social Online Communication. Peter Lang Publishing, New York.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Mouritsen J (2006) Problematising intellectual capital research: Ostensive versus performative IC. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal 19 (6), 820–841.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nakamura L (2002) Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity and Identity on the Internet. Routledge, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nyberg D (2009) Computers, customer service operatives and cyborgs: intra-actions in call centres. Organization Studies 30 (11), 1181–1199.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • O’Brien J (1999) Writing in the body: gender (re)production in online interactions. In Communities in Cyberspace (Smith M and Kollock P, Eds), pp 75–106, Routledge, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Orlikowski WJ and Scott SV (2008) Sociomateriality: challenging the separation of technology, work and organization. Annals of the Academy of Management 2 (1), 433–474.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pitts V (2003) In the Flesh: The Cultural Politics of Body Modification. Palgrave Macmillan, New York.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Powers TM (2003) Real wrongs in virtual communities. Ethics and Information Technology 5 (4), 191–198.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ramiller NC (2005) Applying the sociology of translation to a system project in a lagging enterprise. Journal of Information Technology Theory and Application 7 (1), 51–76.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schultze U (2010) Embodiment and presence in virtual worlds: a review. Journal of Information Technology 25 (4), 434–449.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schultze U (2011) The avatar as sociomaterial entanglement: a performative perspective on identity, agency and world-making in virtual worlds. In International Conference on Information Systems. Association of Information Systems, Shanghai.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schultze U and Leahy MM (2009) The avatar-self relationship: enacting presence in second life. In International Conference on Information Systems. Association of Information Systems, Phoenix, AZ.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schultze U and Mason RO (2012) Studying cyborgs: re-examining internet studies as human subjects research. Journal of Information Technology 27 (4), 1–12.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schultze U and Orlikowski W (2010) Virtual worlds: a performative perspective on globally-distributed, immersive work. Information Systems Research 21 (4), 810–821.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Scott SV and Orlikowski W (2012) Reconfiguring relations of accountability: materialization of social media in the travel sector. Accounting, Organization and Society 37 (1), 26–40.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Serfaty V (2003) Me, myself, and i: online embodied identity in America. Rechereches Anglaises et Nord-Americaines (RANAM) 36 (3), 35–47.

    Google Scholar 

  • Simpson B (2005) Identity manipulation in cyberspace as a leisure option: play and the exploration of self. Information & Communication Technology Law 14 (2), 115–131.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Strauss AL and Corbin J (1998) Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. Sage, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Strozier RM (2002) Foucault, Subjectivity, and Identity: Historical Construction of Subject and Self. Wayne State University Press, Detroit.

    Google Scholar 

  • Suchman LA (2007) Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Action, 2nd edn, Cambridge University Press, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Suler J (2004) The online disinhibition effect. CyberPsychology & Behavior 7 (3), 321–326.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Talamo A and Ligorio B (2001) Strategic identities in cyberspace. CyberPsychology & Behavior 4 (1), 109–122.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Taylor TL (2002) Living digitally: embodiment in virtual worlds. In The Social Life of Avatars: Presence and Interaction in Shared Virtual Environments (Schroeder R, Ed), Springer Verlag, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tracy SJ and Trethewey A (2005) Fracturing the real-self ↔ fake-self dichotomy: moving toward ‘crystalized’ organizational discourses and identities. Communication Theory 15 (2), 168–195.

    Google Scholar 

  • Trethewey A (1999) Disciplined bodies: women's embodied identities at work. Organization Studies 20 (3), 423–450.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Turkle S (1995) Life on the Screen: Identity in the Life of the Internet. Simon & Shuster, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vaast E (2007) Playing with masks: fragmentation and continuity in the presentation of self in an occupational online forum. Information Technology & People 20 (4), 334–351.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Alphen E (1991) The other within. In Alterity, Identity and Image: Selves and Others in Society and Scholarship (Corbey R and Leerssen TJ, Eds), Edition Rodopi, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Doorn N (2010) The ties that bind: the networked performance of gender, sexuality and friendship in MySpace. New Media & Society 12 (4), 583–602.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vasalou A, Joinson A, Banziger T, Goldie P and Pitt J (2008) Avatars in social media: balancing accuracy, playfulness and embodied messages. Human-Computer Studies 66 (11), 801–811.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Veerapen M (2011) Encountering oneself and other: a case study of identity formation in second life. In Reinventing Ourselves: Contemporary Concepts of Identity in Virtual Worlds (Peachey A and Childs M, Eds), pp 81–100, Springer, London.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Walsham G (2006) Doing interpretive research. European Journal of Information Systems 3 (15), 320–330.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Walther JB (2002) Research ethics in internet-enabled research: human subjects issues and methodological myopia. Ethics and Information Technology 4 (3), 205–216.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Waskul D and Douglass M (1996) Considering the electronic participant: some polemical observations on the ethics of on-line research. The Information Society 12 (2), 129–139.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Waskul D and Vannini P (Eds) (2006) Introduction: the body in symbolic interaction. In Body/Embodiment: Symbolic Interaction and the Sociology of the Body, pp 1–18, Ashgate, Hampshire, UK.

    Google Scholar 

  • Whitley EA (1997) In cyberspace all they see are is your words: a review of the relationship between body, behavior and identity drawn from the sociology of knowledge. Information Technology & People 10 (2), 147–163.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wynn E and Katz JE (1997) Hyperbole over cyberspace: self-presentation and social boundaries in internet home pages and discourse. The Information Society 13 (4), 297–327.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yee N and Bailenson J (2007) The Proteus effect: the effect of transformed self-representation on behavior. Human Communication Research 33 (3), 271–290.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yoo Y (2010) Computing in everyday life: a call for research on experiential computing. MIS Quarterly 34 (2), 213–231.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zimmerman DH and Wieder DL (1977) The diary: diary-interview method. Urban Life 5 (4), 479–498.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

Funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Grant IIS-0848692, made this research possible. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. I am deeply indebted to the research participants for fully embracing this study and sharing their experiences and insights openly. Thanks also go to the reviewers, the EJIS Special Issue Editors, JoAnn Brooks, Magnus Bergquist and Wanda Orlikowski for their suggestions and encouraging feedback on the earlier versions of this paper.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Information Technology and Operations Management, Southern Methodist University, U.S.A.

    Ulrike Schultze

  2. Lund University, Sweden

    Ulrike Schultze

Authors
  1. Ulrike Schultze
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ulrike Schultze.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Schultze, U. Performing embodied identity in virtual worlds. Eur J Inf Syst 23, 84–95 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/ejis.2012.52

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ejis.2012.52

Keywords

Search

Navigation