Rearing Children of the Market in the “You” Decade: Choose Your Own Adventure Books and the Ascent of Free Choice in 1980s America

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
ELI COOK
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Technological Change ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Previous Literature ◽  
Interactive Narratives ◽  
Market Choice ◽  
Individual Market

Exploring some of the key tenets of neoliberal American culture, this article examines the historical forces behind the meteoric rise of interactive “Choose Your Own Adventure” (CYOA) children's books in the 1980s. Despite selling over 250 million copies worldwide and becoming the fourth most popular children's series of all time, the CYOA phenomenon has yet to be placed in its larger social, economic, historical or cultural context. When explaining the rise of interactive narratives, previous literature has mostly focussed on technological change – namely the invention of video games, computer consoles and hypertext narratives. Moving away from such claims, this article demonstrates how the incredible success of solely text-based CYOA books stemmed largely from the cultural ascent of individual market choice to the heart of American notions of agency, liberty, subjectivity and selfhood in the 1970s and 1980s.

Moses and Popular Culture

2020 ◽  
pp. 30-45
Author(s):  
Linda S. Schearing
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Video Games ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Cultural Artifact ◽  
Religious Meaning

The story of Moses occurs in a plethora of popular culture mediums (fiction, songs, films, television, video games, comics, digital internet sources, etc.). This essay examines three themes in which Moses as a cultural artifact plays a crucial role in contemporary popular culture: visualizing Moses (Moses in film), learning from Moses (Moses as metaphor or analogy), and laughing at or with Moses (Moses in humor). Such a survey shows graphically the elasticity of Moses as a multivalent cultural artifact that has both influenced and continues to influence American culture. Indeed, while some extract religious meaning from the Moses story, others see parallels between Moses’ struggles and their own.

scholarly journals On not researching school leadership: the contribution of S. J. Ball

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen M. Gunter
Keyword(s):  
School Leadership ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
School Leaders ◽  
Interview Data ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public Intellectuals ◽  
Critical Reading ◽  
Educational Professionals ◽  
Starting Point

Stephen Ball's research continues to make a contribution to describing, understanding and explaining the political, social, economic and cultural context in which educational professionals locate their practices. Therefore, Ball engages with issues about school leadership, but he does not set out to present solutions for school leaders. Based on critical reading and interview data, I show how by not researching school leadership he makes a robust and relevant analysis of school leadership for the profession. He makes a contribution to understanding the realities of doing and thinking about leaders doing leadership and exercising leadership, where his starting point is to work with the profession as public intellectuals.

scholarly journals Colonial costuming: representations of playing Indian in photographs, settler Colonialism and the appropriation of native North American culture

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hikka Ingrid Forster
Keyword(s):  
First Nations ◽  
North American ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
North Americans ◽  
Native North American ◽  
Time Period

This thesis examines the cultural significance of “playing Indian” in photographs: the practice of non-Native peoples dressing up in Native North American costumes and posing for photographs. It addresses photographs made both inside and outside the studio of people playing Indian, during both the later part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and looks at the extent to which these photographs reinforce settler colonial ideology prevalent within white society during this time period. Examples from two collections will be explored, portraits from the Notman photography collection at the McCord museum, which includes examples of white Europeans and North Americans dressing up in Native “costumes” and photographs of children playing Indian in the First Nations collection at the Archive of Modern Conflict Toronto. Themes of masculinity, nation-building, “Canadianness,” and childhood in relation to indigeneity are explored by situating the photographs within their historical and cultural context and subsequently relating them to the already existing theories on playing Indian.

Human Rights and Social Work in Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Obie Clayton ◽  
June Gary Hopps
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
First Century ◽  
International Level ◽  
Human Rights Standards ◽  
Rights Issues ◽  
Individual Human

The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) affirms a social worker’s responsibility to social change and social justice on behalf of vulnerable and oppressed peoples (NASW, 2008). Because of this directive around social justice, it is the profession’s responsibility to make connections between individual human rights issues within the broader social, economic, and cultural context that creates conditions where injustice can take place. This article attempts to illustrate how social workers in the twenty-first century must be able to recognize and emphasize human rights in their practice on a local, national, and international level. The article also shows the need for social workers to be the catalyst bringing attention to the need to craft solutions to human rights violations that take into account global human rights standards.

Culture Is Associated With the Experience of Long-Term Self-Concept Changes

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 1047-1056
Author(s):  
Brian W. Haas ◽  
Michelle R. vanDellen
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Adult Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Self Concept ◽  
Family Based ◽  
Moderating Role ◽  
Over Time

Cultural context can affect how changes in self-concepts are either valued or tolerated. However, very little is currently known regarding how culture may differentially confer consequences to people that change their self-concepts over the course of several years. We investigated the moderating role of culture (Japan and USA) on the link between long-term (∼4 years) self-concept changes and a comprehensive set of well-being measures (hedonic, eudaimonic, and family based). We found that American’s self-concept instability was more negatively associated with one’s well-being and emotional support within one’s family than Japanese. Furthermore, Americans were particularly negatively impacted when they became less agentic and conscientious over time. One possible interpretation is that Western, individualistic cultures may discourage people from changing their identities throughout their adult life. Although American culture often espouses the sanctity of freedom, American culture may also limit people’s freedom to change how they see themselves over time.

Religious Vitality in Victorian London

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. M. Jacob
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Sexual Exploitation ◽  
Faith Communities ◽  
Salvation Army ◽  
Education For All ◽  
Thick Description ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
The Rich

This innovative book challenges many of the widely held assumptions about the place of religion in London, the world’s first great industrial and commercial metropolis. Against the background of a ‘thick description’ of the complexities of Victorian London it explores the religiosity of Londoners as expressed through the dynamic renewal of traditional faith communities, including Judaism and the historic churches, as well as fresh expressions of religion, including the Salvation Army, Mormons, spiritualism, and the occult. It shows how laypeople, especially the rich and women were mobilized in the service of their faith, and their fellow citizens. Drawing on research in social, economic, oral, cultural, and women’s history William Jacob argues that religious motivations lay behind concerns that subsequently preoccupied people in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These include the changing place of women in society, an active concern for social justice, the sexual exploitation of women and children, provision of education for all classes and all ages. By examining religion broadly, in its social and cultural context, looking beyond conventional approaches to religious history Religious Vitality in Victorian London illustrates the broader significance of religion in society influencing even the expression of secularism.

Games People Play

2016 ◽  
pp. 364-376
Author(s):  
Sandy Baldwin ◽  
Kwabena Opoku-Agyemang ◽  
Dibyadyuti Roy
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Cross Section ◽  
Computer Games ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
West Virginia University ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Cultural Aspects ◽  
Representational Politics ◽  
Jawaharlal Nehru ◽  
The Relationship

The study of various choices made while producing and playing games allows little opportunity for interrogating video games as a transcultural convergence of multiple subjectivities and institutions. This chapter speaks to this topic by presenting the Computer Games Across Cultures (CGAC) project. CGAC involved humanities researchers from West Virginia University (USA), Bangor University (Wales), and Jawaharlal Nehru University (India) who over a two-year period sought to understand creative and cultural aspects of gaming. CGAC's researchers employed both qualitative and quantitative methodologies to bridge the gap between the academic explorations of gaming in tandem with industry-specific practices within such spaces. This chapter provides an overview of the resultant work through its analysis of a cross-section of games. Examining both Western mainstream games and lesser known games from places like India and Ghana helped interrogate representational politics in videogames and provide a broader view of the relationship between gaming and game making, in a socio-cultural context.

Social, Political, Economic, and Cultural Perspectives

2021 ◽  
pp. 182-202
Author(s):  
Melvin Delgado
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Knowledge Base ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Focus Of Attention ◽  
Gun Violence ◽  
Cultural Perspectives ◽  
Practice Experience ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Economic

Urban gun violence knowledge is evolving and promises to gain steam as it garners more attention. Interventions will necessitate a grounding in the social sciences and the urban practice experience, positioning professions to advance the knowledge base on how best to address gun violence at a neighborhood and social network level. This chapter provides a broad social-economic-political-cultural context for understanding the origins and broad reach of gun violence in the nation and its cities and touches on aspects rarely the focus of attention yet playing a prominent role in helping understand how urban gun violence emerges. Four viewpoints are covered in this chapter (social, political, economic, and cultural), allowing coverage of usual and unusual aspects of urban gun violence. These perspectives are not ranked in order of importance and must be present in any analysis of urban gun violence and search for solutions, more so when seeking a nuanced and localized approach. These perspectives interact in a highly dynamic manner; when one is particularly impacted, the others react accordingly. Gun violence permeates society, with few urban segments escaping its grasp.

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