His principal research interest is in the relationships among institutions, unpredictability, and technology. Other areas of interest include social theory, modernity and institutional legitimacy, and performance theory. His first book, Gambling Life: Dealing in Contingency in a Greek City (University of Illinois Press), explored human attitudes toward risk and chance through an examination of the practice of gambling in Crete. His second book, Making Virtual Worlds: Linden Lab and Second Life (Cornell University Press, 2009), is an ethnographic examination of Linden Lab and its relationship to the virtual world it has created, Second Life.