Dear colleagues,
I'm pleased to share the CFP for a panel on "The Intersection of STS and
Video Game Studies: Exploring Recuperation, Reconfiguration, and
Regeneration within and beyond the Social through Video Games" which my
colleague Stefano De Paoli and me will be chairing at the 10th STS Italia
Conference, taking place in Milan from 11 to 13 June. Deadline for
abstracts is 3 Feb 2025. You can find more information here:
https://stsitalia.org/program-at-a-glance-2/
We look forward to your contributions.
Best regards,
José David Gómez
This panel explores the interactions between STS and video game studies,
focusing on recuperation, reconfiguration, and regeneration case studies
that may encompass socioeconomic, ecological, cultural, and spiritual
dimensions. As a form of digital media and technoscientific practice, video
games and their arenas of creation offer rich sites for examining how
complex socio-technical systems can be reshaped, reimagined, and even
resisted by players, developers, and wider assemblages alike (Gray, 2020;
Jensen & DeWinter, 2021). While traditionally viewed as a form of
entertainment, video games are also powerful tools for social and political
critical engagement, raising questions about who defines ‘good’
technoscience, why video games should be reduced to entertainment, and how
video games can serve as a medium for imagining and triggering processes of
social and ecological transformation (Tudor, 2017; Voorhees, 2018; Shaw,
2014).
This panel invites papers that consider the following questions:
- How do video games and their arenas of creation open opportunities for
social recuperation, where marginalized or excluded groups use digital
spaces for healing, resistance, and reasserting agency?
- How do video games and game development practices facilitate or resist
the reconfiguration of technoscientific norms and values, especially in
terms of ethics, fairness, and inclusivity?
- How do games contribute to social and cultural regeneration by
imagining new worlds and offering frameworks for rebuilding societal
relations and infrastructures in the face of socioecological crises?
By linking STS with video game studies, this panel aims to uncover the
technoscientific potentials and challenges posed by gaming practices and
technology. It will engage with concepts of epistemic justice, making kin,
care, repair, and the politics of artifacts, asking how video games might
offer alternative visions of technoscience, and sociotechnical imaginaries,
or expose the limitations of technoscientific developments that fail to
serve diverse communities (Haraway, 2017; Ruberg & Shaw, 2017; Wagner &
Gałuszka, 2020). This interdisciplinary conversation will draw on
theoretical and empirical studies of gaming, video game communities, and
historical studies of video game clusters, to rethink the role of digital
media in human and non-human processes of recuperation, reconfiguration,
and regeneration.
-Panel Format-
This panel will consist of traditional paper presentations followed by an
open discussion. However, we encourage experimental contributions, such as
interactive demos, short gaming sessions, or collective discussions on how
game mechanics can serve as methodological tools for STS research.
Presentations may include audio-visual materials to enhance engagement with
the medium of video games.
Convenors:
José David Gómez-Urrego, Abertay University (j.gomez@abertay.ac.uk)
Stefano De Paoli, Abertay University (s.depaoli@abertay.ac.uk)
https://stsitalia.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/TfG_10-STS-Italia-Conf_Call-
for-Abstracts_Panels-Description_compressedUpdate.pdf
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