Introduction / Eben Muse and Astrid Ensslin -- Creating second communities. Liberate your avatar: the revolution will be socially networked / Paul Sermon and Charlotte Gould -- An imagined community of avatars : a theoretical interrogation of "Second life" as nation through the lens of Benedict Anderson's imagined communities / Kevin Miguel Sherman -- Programming processes: controlling "second lives" / Elizabeth Burgess -- Creating second identities. Embodiment and gender identity in virtual worlds: reconfiguring our "volatile bodies" / Sonia Fizek and Monika Wasilewska -- The body of the avatar: constructing human presence in virtual worlds / Denise Doyle -- The grips of fantasy: the construction of female characters in and beyond virtual game worlds / Isamar Carrillo Masso -- Creating second spaces. Second chances: depictions of the natural world in "Second life" / Joseph S. Clark -- Avatar needs and the remediation of architecture in "Second life" / Astrid Ensslin -- The event of space: defining place in a virtual landscape / Eben Muse -- Afterword / Tom Boellstorff.