Group Roundtable: Queer Tech Futures, Social Justice, and Community-Based Technology Education

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-17
Author(s):  
Kendall Roark ◽  
Ashlyn Sparrow ◽  
Johnny Mack ◽  
Ava Romberg ◽  
Kiernynn Grantham-Crum ◽  
...  

Abstract This essay describes a year-long community-based collaboration between faculty at Purdue University, a game designer at University of Chicago, and MAVEN Youth. Project partners sought to develop a community technology curriculum that centers the lives of LGBTQ and non-binary youth and imagines queer bodies as central to any future we wish to inhabit. Over the year-long project, the partners developed a series of social justice game design workshops for LGBTQ youth and a speculative design Hack-4-Queer Youth Futures. These types of collaborations and “making-and-telling” practices are vital to imagining inclusive and livable futures. This collaboration is an outgrowth of stakeholder engagement for the Big Data Ethics project at Purdue University supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The goal of the group roundtable format is to gain better insight into the potential for embedding critical science and technology studies (STS) and social justice pedagogy into community-based tech diversity initiatives.

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tania Israel ◽  
Alise Cogger ◽  
Kristin Conover ◽  
Audrey R. Harkness ◽  
Jay N. Ledbetter

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-256
Author(s):  
Charles R. Senteio ◽  
Kaitlin E. Montague ◽  
Bettina Campbell ◽  
Terrance R. Campbell ◽  
Samantha Seigerman

The escalation of discourse on racial injustice prompts novel ideas to address the persistent lack of racial equity in LIS research. The underrepresentation of BIPOC perspectives contributes to the inequity. Applying the Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) approach meaningfully engages BIPOC to help guide LIS investigations that identify evolving needs and concerns, such as how systematic racism may contribute to social justice issues like environmental and health inequity. Engaging with BIPOC, using the CBPR approach, can help address racial equity in LIS because it will result in increased racial representation which enables incorporation of the perspectives and priorities of BIPOC. This shift to greater engagement is imperative to respond to escalating attention to social injustice and ensure that these central issues are adequately reflected in LIS research. The discipline is positioned to help detail the drivers and implications of inequity and develop ways to address them. We underscore the importance of working across research disciplines by describing our CBPR experience engaging with BIPOC in LIS research. We highlight the perspectives of community partners who have over two decades of experience with community-based LIS research. We offer lessons learned to LIS researchers by describing the factors that make these initiatives successful and those which contribute to setbacks.


2021 ◽  
pp. JARC-D-20-00032
Author(s):  
Michael J. Millington

This invited article reports and reflects upon the proceedings of a presentation at the NRCA Symposium on Social Justice held on in Memphis Tennessee in 2019. The author posits that a proper understanding of social justice opens the door for a new, international vision for rehabilitation counseling in the context of community. The model reinterprets rehabilitation counseling as social justice counseling within the framework of community-based rehabilitation as currently defined within the established matrix and guidelines. This model augments our understanding of rehabilitation counseling role and function with an emerging practice in advocacy/empowerment. The construct of empowerment is operationalized for development in practice across community settings. The author reflects upon lessons learned in advancing this model of practice in the Asia/Pacific region. In a call for collaborative next steps, he concludes that the way to an empowered international identity for rehabilitation counseling is through an activist, inclusive, international community of practice that advocates for our role as agents of social justice.


Author(s):  
Carina Assuncao

The Pokémon franchise has been targeted and has been successful with males and females (Tobin, 2004). In it, cute-looking creatures with superpowers fight each other for the fame and glory of their masters (the players). The franchise includes a plethora of entertainment media. This essay will focus on the recent release, Pokémon GO. This particular game and its location-based technology will be analysed using cyberfeminism and actor-network theory to explore the play space as a context for kinaesthetic awareness and embodiment. The cyberfeminism herein exploited is that of “the utopian tradition of imagining a world without gender” (Haraway, 2000, p. 292). Actor-network theory, a strong methodological tradition in science and technology studies, sees actors and the networks they create as completely ‘flat’ and non-hierarchical. ANT has been criticised for its lack of concern with politics and gender (Lagesen, 2012) but, in combination with a feminist lens, ANT has the potential to uncover issues that other approaches in game studies cannot. This original framework can help game studies scholars to see gameplay processes in a new light by following the many actors involved in game design and use.


Author(s):  
Gavin Silber ◽  
Nathan Geffen

Brandon Huntley was granted asylum in Canada earlier this year based on the argument that whites are disproportionately affected by crime in South Africa. The decision was generally condemned, but it did receive support from various groups and individuals including Afriforum, the Freedom Front and James Myburgh (editor of Politicsweb). In this article we show the flaws in Huntley's argument by presenting evidence from several sources that demonstrate that black and poor people are disproportionately the victims of violent crime in South Africa. We are concerned that painting whites as the primary victims of South Africa's social ills is unproductive, ungenerous and potentially hampers the appropriate distribution of resources to alleviate crime. Furthermore, in order to move the debate on crime in South Africa into a more productive direction, we also describe the Social Justice Coalition (SJC) – a relatively new community based organisation that aims to mobilise communities around improving safety and security for all in South Africa, regardless of race or income. Campaigning for novel pragmatic and coordinated community and government responses to the broader lack of safety and security in the country, the SJC focuses on the introduction and development of basic infrastructure and services as a means of reducing crime.


2016 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Caplan ◽  
Colleen Loomis ◽  
Aurelia Di Santo

<div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="section"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span>A “rights-integrative approach to early learning” has been </span><span>proposed as a foundation for curriculum frameworks. Building </span><span>on this work we conceptually explored the complementarity </span><span>and compatibility of children’s rights to autonomy, protection, nondiscrimination, and participation, with community-based values of prevention and promotion, empowerment, diversity, and civic participation. We argue that it is necessary to infuse a rights-based approach with community-based values in early childhood curriculum frameworks to promote social justice for children as individuals and as a relational community. </span><span>Our proposed expanded conceptual framework may be useful </span><span>for evaluating early learning frameworks, nationally and internationally, from a rights-based social justice perspective. </span></p></div></div></div></div>


Author(s):  
Italo Felipe Capasso-Ballesteros ◽  
Fernando De la Rosa-Rosero

Machinations Ruleset Generator (MaruGen) is a semi-automatic system for the generation of mechanics, rules, spaces (environments), and missions for video games. The objective of this system is to offer an expression mechanism for the video game designer role based on the definition of rules, and the ability to explore the concepts of progression and emergence in video games by using a formal, usable, and defined tool to design games with innovative and complex elements, and behaviors defined from combinations of basic elements. Based on the expressed designs and with the participation of programmers and video game artists, MaruGen allows the generation of agile video game prototypes in the Unity game engine. These prototypes can be analyzed by the entire workgroup to look for games with diverse complexities that make them attractive to their users. MaruGen is based on the expression of rules on elements of interest in video games and the rewriting mechanism using L-Systems for the generation of procedural content. MaruGen was evaluated in the construction of the Cubic Explorer video game and tested by gamers and video game developers during the Game Jam Ludum Dare 38.


2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 387-409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie de Smale ◽  
Martijn J. L. Kors ◽  
Alyea M. Sandovar

This article reports on a study with 11 bit studios and their game, This War of Mine. Rather than a formal analysis of the game, our objective was to situate the research in game production studies by documenting the design context (gamework) and designer perceptions about the game that inform morally complex gameplay. The research was conducted with four team members of 11 bit studios: a senior game designer, a writer, a senior writer (with stakes in marketing), and a quality assurance lead. We employed reflective interviewing techniques and visual methods to better understand how moral gameplay was designed. Our analysis illustrates the roles underlying narratives in the design process and balancing everyday work negotiations play in the design of moral gameplay, how a designer’s research informs the vision to create emotional realism in the game, and the importance of a player-centered iterative design process to produce morally engaging gameplay.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Marcelo Arêas R. da Silva ◽  
Geraldo Bonorino Xexéo

The process of designing a game involves many phases. We can summarize the work of the game designer as satisfactorily converting the idea in their mind to a digital game, which is not a simple task. Therefore, game designers should have a variety of tools to assist them. However, there are not that many specialized tools to support the game design process. Herein, we describe the experience of using Pegasus to design a part of a game. We propose an environment to simulate progression games based on game design patterns. Thus, we described the interaction of the game designer with Pegasus in such an environment, in order to support the process of creating, testing, and refining game elements before proceeding to the programming phase. Each configuration of the game elements corresponded to a simulation that could be performed multiple times, like in discrete event simulation. The results showed that Pegasus has the potential to support game design. Additionally, we presented some support components that were created to facilitate the use of the tool.


2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 69-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marika Cifor ◽  
Michelle Caswell ◽  
Alda Allina Migoni ◽  
Noah Geraci

Using data gleaned from semistructured interviews with seventeen community archives founders, volunteers, and staff at twelve sites, this paper examines the relations and roles of community archives and archivists in social justice activism. Our research uncovered four findings on the politics of community archives. First, community-based archivists identify as activists, advocates, or community organizers, and this identification shapes their understandings of community archives work and the missions of community archives. Second, community-based archives offer substantial critiques of neutrality in their ethical orientations and thus present new ethical foundations for practice. Third, by activating their collections, community archives play significant roles within contemporary social movements including struggles for racial justice and against gentrification. Finally, community archives are at the forefront of the profession in their engagements with activists. Community archives have much to contribute to practice and scholarship on activism, outreach, and public engagement with the past.


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