More than a Game: Sports-Themed Video Games and Player Narratives

2009 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Garry Crawford ◽  
Victoria K. Gosling
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Audience Research ◽  
Research Perspective ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
Social Narratives ◽  
The Social ◽  
Games Studies ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Social Importance

This article considers the social importance of sports-themed video games, and more specifically, discusses their use and role in the construction of gaming and wider social narratives. Here, building on our own and wider sociological and video games studies, we advocate adopting an audience research perspective that allows for consideration of not only narratives within games but also how these narratives are used and located within the everyday lives of gamers. In particular, we argue that sports-themed games provide an illustrative example of how media texts are used in identity construction, performances, and social narratives.

From crisis to the everyday: Shouldn't we all be writing economies?

2021 ◽  
pp. 0308518X2110680
Author(s):  
Priti Narayan ◽  
Emily Rosenman
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Economic Geography ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Public Economic ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
Ways Of Thinking

This commentary explores the politics of writing about the economy in a culture, society, and discipline that tends to prioritize masculinist (and white) theories and definitions of economy over embodied experiences of people living their everyday lives. Inspired by Timothy Mitchell's problematization of the economy as an object of analysis, we press further on the seemingly singular unit of “the” economy and who is allowed to define it as such. We are animated by questions of who is considered an expert on the economy and how, or by whom, crises in the economy are recognized. Drawing from our own writing experiences during the pandemic and from social movements we research, we argue for alternate ways of thinking about experiences of and expertise on the economy. In reckoning with how social movements speak to power in a bid to transform economies, we consider the role of economic geography in the economy of writing and knowledge production surrounding “the economy” itself. We make the case for a more public economic geography grounded in the social and economic embeddedness of knowledge production, the material consequences of who gets to define what is economically “important,” and the potential for this expertise to be located anywhere.

scholarly journals Rethinking the social role of nursing through the work of Donzelot and Foucault  

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-58
Author(s):  
Evy Nazon ◽  
Amelie Peron ◽  
Thomas Foth
Keyword(s):  
Social Role ◽  
Healthy Life ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
The Social ◽  
Helping Others ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
History Of ◽  
Role Of Nursing ◽  
The Individual

The history of nursing is often perceived as the history of a profession with charitable and philanthropic objectives of helping others live a healthy life. Many historians have celebrated the major role played by charitable women in nursing. Moving beyond this charitable and dedicated image of nurses, we argue that nursing, through “the social,” became a pivotal component of the governance of the everyday lives of populations. As such, nursing became part of the evolving idea that all areas of life must be managed through a process of normalization that seeks to maximize the life of both the individual and the population. Populations thus became the focus of governmental projects. Jacques Donzelot’s notion of invention of the social and Michel Foucault’s concept of govenmentality make possible a reassessment of the conventional image of nurses, and in particular, that of charitable nurses.

scholarly journals Accursed Play: The Economic Imaginary of Early Game Studies

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 765-783 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seth Giddings
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Game Studies ◽  
Academic Field ◽  
Consumer Capitalism ◽  
Cultural Form ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
Games Studies ◽  
Critical Responses

Revisiting early critical responses to computer and video games as a cultural form—before the establishment of games studies as an academic field in the early 2000s—reveals a consistent fascination with games as economic phenomena. Not just as a new commercial competitor in the established popular media marketplace but as models of economies in their own right, models that mesh with player’s everyday lives, constraining, facilitating, and forming gameplay. This article will identify and explore some of the most salient themes and phenomena in this early games scholarship and will follow them through subsequent enquiry into games as economies either isomorphic with the systems of consumer capitalism and neoliberalism from which they issue or metamorphic—phantasmagorical or ironic inversions of prevailing social and industrial conditions.

Embodied refusals and choreographic criticalities

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 415-428
Author(s):  
Beth Krone
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
White Female ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Social Narratives ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Ethnographic Data

Purpose This paper aims to describe the work of a group of seventh-grade boys in a middle school superhero storytelling project. In this project, the boys, one of whom identified as Latino and five of whom identified as Black, created a voiceless, faceless, raceless superhero named “Mute.” Using a Black feminist theoretical framework, the author considers how the boys authored embodied moments in the construction of their character and in a basketball scene. The author argues that within the narrated space of the story, embodiment functioned as a critical tool for authoring spaces that thwarted and bypassed dominant social narratives. Design/methodology/approach The white, female, university-affiliated author was a participant-researcher in the “Mute” group’s ten storytelling sessions. The ethnographic data set collected included fieldnotes, recordings and copies of all the writing and images of the group. The author uses this data to conduct a narrative analysis of the Mute story. Findings The author suggests that the group’s authoring of embodiment and choreography in their story makes space outside of the binary stances often available in traditional critical analyses. Instead, the group’s attention to embodied aspects of their character(s) allowed them to refuse either/or positions of such stances and construct a textured reality that existed beyond these bounds. Originality/value Black feminist theorists have warned that critical readings are potentially essentializing, risking a reification of the same systems they hope to overturn. The Mute group’s invention of a superhero character and their use of authored embodiment deflected such essentializing readings to imagine a new, more just (story) world. Thus, the author recommends an increased attention to how students are writing and reading embodiment to fully see the everyday ways they are critically working both against and beyond the social narratives that organize their lives.

scholarly journals Thinking through lines: locating perception and experience in place

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Booth
Keyword(s):  
Focus Groups ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Natural Phenomenon ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
Line Analysis ◽  
Bilbao Effect

How one conceptualizes place in research matters. I offer a ‘line analysis’ informed by Ingold’s idea that places are ‘tissues of lines’ and argue that this enables reflexivity with regards to what counts as ‘place’, adds legitimacy to the claim that places really do matter in research, and assists in representing places as a socio-natural phenomenon that cannot be compartmentalized or reduced to a humanist understanding of the social. I trial this analysis by drawing upon interviews and focus groups with people living in the vicinity of the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona). I use references made about lines of various kinds to create a narrative that locates Mona within the everyday lives of local residents. I conclude that this museum’s impact of is more mundane than the social transformation envisaged in the Bilbao Effect as this ‘effect’ relies upon a problematic and unexamined conceptualisation of place.

Everyday Worlds of Young Refugees in London

2003 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mano Candappa ◽  
Itohan Igbinigie
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
Leisure Activities ◽  
Refugee Children ◽  
Social Lives ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Depth Interviews

This article examines the everyday lives of a sample of young refugees living in London, based on a study of the social roles and social networks of refugee children undertaken under the ESRC Children 5–16 Programme. It draws on findings from a survey of refugee and non-refugee children aged between 11 and 14 in two London schools, complemented by data from in-depth interviews with refugee children. The article focuses on the children's responsibilities towards home and family, friendships, and leisure activities. It highlights the experiences of the refugee children in the sample, and explores some gender differences between the social lives of refugee boys and girls, and between the lives of refugee children and those of their non-refugee peers.

scholarly journals i - Deciphering the Binary Code “Egyptian versus Foreigner” in Egyptian Cinema

1970 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 368-384
Author(s):  
Delphine Pages-El Karoui
Keyword(s):  
Key Words ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Binary Code ◽  
Social Imaginary ◽  
Transnational Cinema ◽  
The West ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Egyptian Cinema

In 2016, emigration is more than ever a massive phenomenon in Egypt which both strongly affects the everyday lives of Egyptians and is central in Egyptian cultural production. This article aims to explore how the Egyptian cinema contributes to forging a binary code that differentiates between “Egyptian” and “For-eigner”. It argues that Egyptians who live abroad may also be perceived as potential foreigners for those left in Egypt. After briefly describing the corpus of seven emigration films, the article sketches a cartog-raphy of the geographic imaginaries of migration, which is paradoxically more oriented toward the West, while in fact the majority of Egyptians abroad are in the Gulf. Finally, it demonstrates how movie directors have produced a very pessimistic vision of emigration, in a manner that is equally critical of the countries of arrival as of Egyptian society. Their discourse on the theme of the migrant’s identity, on the personal, familial and national levels, resonates with the social imaginary concerning migration, which is dominated by a nationalist paradigm. Are we nevertheless witnessing the emergence of a transnational cinema, that is, one that envisages the possibility of an identity that is simultaneously of here and elsewhere?Key words: Egypt, cinema, migration, transnational, foreigner

Video Games and Emotion Regulation

GeroPsych ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 205-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn L. Ossenfort ◽  
Derek M. Isaacowitz
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Video Games ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Interactive Media ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Media Usage ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Media Preferences

Abstract. Research on age differences in media usage has shown that older adults are more likely than younger adults to select positive emotional content. Research on emotional aging has examined whether older adults also seek out positivity in the everyday situations they choose, resulting so far in mixed results. We investigated the emotional choices of different age groups using video games as a more interactive type of affect-laden stimuli. Participants made multiple selections from a group of positive and negative games. Results showed that older adults selected the more positive games, but also reported feeling worse after playing them. Results supplement the literature on positivity in situation selection as well as on older adults’ interactive media preferences.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Hopkins
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Short Note ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
Early Settlement ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Initial Research

The chapters in this collection explore the everyday lives, experiences, practices and attitudes of Muslims in Scotland. In order to set the context for these chapters, in this introduction I explore the early settlement of Muslims in Scotland and discuss some of the initial research projects that charted the settlement of Asians and Pakistanis in Scotland’s main cities. I then discuss the current situation for Muslims in Scotland through data from the 2011 Scottish Census. Following a short note about the significance of the Scottish context, in the final section, the main themes and issues that have been explored in research about Muslims in Scotland.

The Political and Aesthetic Power of the Everyday in Beckett's Happy Days

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-66
Author(s):  
Julie Bates
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
First Century ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Algerian War ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Last Man ◽  
Second World

Happy Days is contemporaneous with a number of seminal contributions to the concept of the everyday in postwar France. This essay suggests that the increasingly constrained verbal and physical routines performed by its protagonist Winnie constitute a portrait of the everyday, and goes on to trace the affinities between Beckett's portrait and several formulations of the concept, with particular emphasis on the pronounced gendering of the everyday in many of these theories. The essay suggests the aerial bombings of the Second World War and methods of torture during the Algerian War as potential influences for Beckett's play, and draws a comparison with Marlen Haushofer's 1963 novel The Wall, which reimagines the Romantic myth of The Last Man as The Last Woman. It is significant, however, that the cataclysmic event that precedes the events of Happy Days remains unnamed. This lack of specificity, I suggest, is constitutive of the menace of the play, and has ensured that the political as well as aesthetic power of Happy Days has not dated. Indeed, the everyday of its sentinel figure posted in a blighted landscape continues to articulate the fears of audiences, for whom the play may resonate today as a staging of twenty-first century anxiety about environmental crisis. The essay concludes that in Happy Days we encounter an isolated female protagonist who contrives from scant material resources and habitual bodily rhythms a shelter within a hostile environment, who generates, in other words, an everyday despite the shattering of the social and temporal framework that conventionally underpin its formation. Beckett's play in this way demonstrates the political as well as aesthetic power of the everyday in a time of crisis.

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