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Winner of the 1998 Distinguished Scholarship Award of the Section on Marxist Sociology of the American Sociological Association Homeless persons find themselves excluded, repressed, and displaced in all sectors of everyday life--from punitive police and city zoning practices to media stereotypes. Wandering through the streets of developing cities, these poorest of the poor have no place to go. More and more, these city developments are not simply accepted passively; rather, resistance by organized homeless groups--civil protests, squatting, and legal advocacy--spread as conditions of everyday life deteriorate for the very poor. Out of Place: Homeless Mobilizations, Subcities, and Contested L...
The study of the reciprocal relationship between the Bible and popular culture has blossomed in the past few decades, and the time seems ripe for a broadly-conceived work that assesses the current state of the field, offers examples of work in that field, and suggests future directions for further study. This Handbook includes a wide range of topics organized under several broad themes, including biblical characters (such as Adam, Eve, David and Jesus) and themes (like Creation, Hell, and Apocalyptic) in popular culture; the Bible in popular cultural genres (for example, film, comics, and Jazz); and "lived" examples (such as museums and theme parks). The Handbook concludes with a section taking stock of methodologies and the impact of the field on teaching and publishing. The Oxford Handbook of the Bible and American Popular Culture represents a major contribution to the field by some of its leading practitioners, and will be a key resource for the future development of the study of both the Bible and its role in American popular culture.
What is a videogame? What makes a videogame "good"? If a game is supposed to be fun, can it be fun without a good story? If another is supposed to be an accurate simulation, does it still need to be entertaining? With the ever-expanding explosion of new videogames and new developments in the gaming world, questions about videogame criticism are becoming more complex. The differing definitions that players and critics use to decide what a game is and what makes a game successful, often lead to different ideas of how games succeed or fail. This collection of new essays puts on display the variety and ambiguity of videogames. Each essay is a work of game criticism that takes a different approach to defining the game and analyzing it. Through analysis and critical methods, these essays discuss whether a game is defined by its rules, its narrative, its technology, or by the activity of playing it, and the tensions between these definitions. With essays on Overwatch, Dark Souls 3, Far Cry 4, Farmville and more, this collection attempts to show the complex changes, challenges and advances to game criticism in the era of videogames.
This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2013. This volume represents the collective visions of twenty-one post-humanist cyberculture scholars. The complimentary and dissenting voices within have been organized into three categories for this work, the first within the general category of Post-Humanism, what it is, why it is important, and what we as ‘pre post-human humans’ currently know about our culture and the direction it is taking us towards the eventual post-human times. Next, venture into the Cultures in Cyberspace which are shaping our future worlds today, for to understand the culture of our interconnectedness is to begin to appreciate the impossibly complex intricacies of the coming age of connectedness. To this end, New Narrativism becomes our gateway to this future.
While many books and articles are emerging on the new area of game studies and the application of computer games to learning, therapeutic, military, and entertainment environments, few have attempted to contextualize the importance of virtual play within a broader social, cultural, and political environment that raises the question of the significance of work, play, power, and inequalities in the modern world. Studies tend to concentrate on the content of virtual games, but few have questioned how power is produced or reproduced by publishers, gamers, or even social media; how social exclusion (based on race, class, or gender) in the virtual environment is reproduced from the real world; and how actors are able to use new media to transcend their fears, anxieties, prejudices, and assumptions. The articles presented by the contributors in this volume represent cutting-edge research in the area of critical game play with the hope of drawing attention to the need for more studies that are both sociological and critical.
Video games are a global phenomenon, international in their scope and democratic in their appeal. This is the first volume dedicated to the subject of apocalyptic video games. Its two dozen papers engage the subject comprehensively, from game design to player experience, and from the perspectives of content, theme, sound, ludic textures, and social function. The volume offers scholars, students, and general readers a thorough overview of this unique expression of the apocalyptic imagination in popular culture, and novel insights into an important facet of contemporary digital society.
Previous ed.: Boston, Mass.: McGraw Hill, 2000.
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