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CFP: The Everyday Lives of Videogames (Panel at AAA)
2007-03-27 18:20 | Posted by jpzagal | Permanent Link | Call for PapersVideo games are objects, commodities, things. They are imagined, produced, purchased, unwrapped, played and re-imagined. At home, at work, on the train, video games are a part of everyday lives, as mundane as they are fantastic. It has already been argued that the study of video games as a topic is nearly overwhelming in its timeliness and relevance; games have matured from the high-tech "do-it-yourself" hobby of technophiles to a dominant and pervasive sector of the worldwide entertainment industry, and in the process games have begun their inevitable contribution to contemporary anthropology.
This panel seeks to move beyond the justification for anthropological research on games and to focus specifically on the development of theoretical and methodological frameworks for responsible anthropological scholarship on video games. What ethnographic models are useful for researching this technological, interactive commodity? How do games as things have "social lives" and as Appadurai encourages, what can we learn from "follow[ing] the things themselves" (1986:5)? What can an attention to a gaming cultural field (that insists on the interconnections between games-the visceral practice of play-and marketing, review articles, fan production, blogs, message boards, developer conferences, podcasts, merchandising, technological innovations, game magazines and websites) contribute to research (see Bourdieu 1993)? This panel seeks to emphasize the critical role that ethnographic methodologies can play in research on video games as well as to underscore that by situating games as part of the everyday, we can bring into focus the larger social and political contexts that surround the production, distribution and consumption of videogames.
Appadurai, Arjun, ed. 1986. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre 1993. The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press.
If interested in participating, please contact: carlson@temple.edu
Thank you, Rebecca Carlson