Sometimes categories employed analytically are drawn from their "lay" use with a lack of further reflection on their appropriateness. The range of categories based in the distinction between technology and society is just an example of these phenomena. This paper brings to attention some issues regarding the analytical value of distinctions such as between culture and technology, taking avatars, virtual bodies employed at social environments in cyberspace, as an example. The ethnography of two aspects of an on-line social group illustrate how users of avatar-related technologies creatively shape those technologies features in order to made them suitable to their local cultural contexts. Furthermore, the relationship between users and developers of such technologies reveal in what extent the boundaries between technology and culture are, indeed, rather blurred.
Anthropology of technology; avatars; cyberspace; personhood and identity in complex societies
