Game in Society

J'ai le plaisir de vous annoncer la sortie de l'ouvrage Digital Technologies of the Self, coordonné par Yasmine Abbas et Fred Dervin, publié chez Cambridge Scholars.

Résumé US du bouquin :

Inspired by the 'technologies of the self' theorized by Michel Foucault in the early 1980s, this volume investigates how contemporary individuals fashion their identity/identities using digital technologies such as ambient intelligent devices, social networking platforms and online communities (Facebook, CouchSurfing and craigslist), online gaming (SilkRoad Online, Oblivion and World of Warcraft), podcasts, etc. With high-speed-internet access, ubiquitous computing and generous storage capacity, the opportunities for staging and transforming the self/selves have become nearly limitless. This book explores how technologies contribute to the expression, (co-)construction and enactment of identities. It examines these issues from various perspectives as it brings together insights from different disciplines - design, discourse analysis, philosophy and sociology.

J'y ai fait un article sur la construction idéologique de soi dans les jeux vidéo, dont cette intervention est tirée. Je négocie pour mettre une version en ligne de mon papier.

Vous trouverez l'introduction et le premier chapitre ici.

Sommaire

Video games are polymorphic technological objects between audiovisual media, industrial game and computer program.

This technological convergence will be traduced by importation of old speeches from other areas. This profusion of discourses shared by multiple actors tries to define what videogames are in society. Archetypal example, addiction is at the crossroads of speeches on compulsive gaming (gambling), business definitions of addiction to the Internet, and refers to the imagination of drug abuse.

The social and political debates around violence, addiction, economic freedom are based on the speeches accompanying the previous media and games. These speeches are sustained by actors who play on their own and for themselves: some do not care about videogames but will use videogames to exist in the political field, as other will try to produce social demands for curing addiction as so they would offer remedies.

This struggle for definition is a political game that would lead to the social acceptation of their social function. The problematic imposition, as violence and addiction, is a political trick to win the monopole of definition and regulation. The expert who becomes the social and political normative reference would be the one who would regulate them and offer services.

Would videogames suffer from actors strategies and private interests? Who are the competitors, the socializers, the healers? As violence and addiction appear to be a social acceptation of videogames effects, without discussing the genealogy of this conceptions, this special issue n°67 of the French political science review Quaderni, will explore political competition on videogames’ social definition, mainly in USA and Europe. What are at stake are the public policy issues and legislative resolution. This issue should be a political handbook on videogames issues.