THE CHANGING CONTEXT OF CARD PLAYING ON MALO,VANUATU

The paper examines data from Malo Island (Natamambo), Vanuatu on the playing of Last Card, a form of Crazy Eights that was widely enjoyed there prior to Independence. It argues that card games can serve as a foil for events in society-at-large and that, in the present case, Last Card acted as a vehicle for tensions about the insecure land tenure situation and local politics. Since Independence, in 1980, the nature of many interpersonal tensions has changed and the game does not resonate to these new conflicts. The role of kava drinking in this new situation is discussed.     

Football in post-Conflict Sierra Leone

Abstract

As in all African nations, football is very popular in Sierra Leone. While there is a constant lack of equipment and the fields are far from perfect, boys and girls are practising the game with great motivation and dedication. Training starts with warming up. This warming up is characterised by rhythmic exercises, done in perfect synchrony. These rhythmic activities need to be acquired by practice. Young boys watch the older football players and try to imitate them. Also for the amputee football team, rhythm is an important aspect of the warm-up. Football in Sierra Leone is more than just a game. Football can be seen as a tool for rehabilitation and reintegration. It makes the footballers forget about the war. For the amputee players, football also brought back their human dignity and sense of recognition, making them feel part of society again. The rhythmic aspects during the warm-up can intensify this effect, increasing a sense of belonging to a group.     

Energy and water resource simulations for U.S. geography undergraduates

This paper describes environmental systems games developed for energy and water resource use designed to be adaptable from high school to undergraduate use. Two of the games are computer simulations with adjustable levels of difficulty that can be done in a computer lab or as a homework assignment. The third is a peer-to-peer roleplayer game designed for an immersive in-class simulation. For the energy and the peer-to-peer water games, we describe (1) the overall strategy or story line adopted, (2) the manner in which the game is played by students in a classroom setting, (3) the use of scientific literature in conceptualizing and parameterizing the game, and (4) possible game extensions. Preliminary data from use at the undergraduate level shows that the games are very well-received by students and, consistent with other research on quasi-experimental simulations, likely enhance learning outcomes.     

Facilitating Interaction: Board Games as Social Lubricants in the Ancient Near East

This re‐evaluation of existing data on board games from the Near Eastern Bronze Age demonstrates their function as social lubricants in cross‐cultural interaction. Board games are situated theoretically as liminoid practices, which lie outside the bounds of normative social behaviour and allow for interaction across social boundaries. Utilizing double‐sided game boards, with an indigenous game on one side and a newly introduced game on the other, the games of senet, mehen and twenty squares provide evidence for social interactions. Cypriots had adopted Egyptian mehen and senet by the third millennium BC, and indigenized the games. This lies in contrast to the game of twenty squares, which had a particular role among elites in the Late Bronze Age interaction sphere. This anthropological discussion of evidence relating to gaming seeks to inspire further research on the role of board games in society.     

Longitudinal Evidence of the Changing Socio-Economic Profile of a State Lottery Market

This longitudinal study of Indiana lottery expenditures tracks that market from a time when all play was in games offered by other states until the state offered a full portfolio of games. Both the socio-economic characteristics of players and the nature of their play have changed. Participation doubled when the Indiana games began, and it continues to increase, albeit more slowly. Lottery play is regressive, and has become increasingly regressive over time. An increasing proportion of lottery revenues comes from low-income players and heavy bettors, although small bets are still the norm. While college graduates play the lottery less than do other individuals, the initial large gap in play rates for these two groups is diminishing as college graduates increase their participation in the lottery. Similarly, women and individuals between the ages of 44 and 65 are continuing to increase their participation in lotteries. Patterns associated with increased regressivity, with increased play among low-income players, and with higher reliance on heavy bettors, suggest a need for special policy vigilance as the games mature.     

‘Turning Sex into a Game’: Gogodala Men's Response to the AIDS Epidemic and Condom Promotion in Rural Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT Rugby league is the national sport of Papua New Guinea and the game's huge popularity and international profile has been used in recent condom promotion campaigns in the nation's fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In this paper, I argue that the promotion of condom use through rugby league requires a national campaign strategy that includes understandings of condom use and masculinity at the rural level. I demonstrate this through a study of Gogodala men's understandings of the epidemic and condom use in Western Province. The Gogodala are a Christian‐based society and many blame the national condom promotion strategy for an increase in promiscuity and for ‘turning sex into a game’. Condom availability in this rural area continues to be restricted to a family planning program that promotes Christian values and excludes unmarried men. I explore the male condom dilemma where young men are more concerned with avoiding accusations that their sexual behaviour puts them at risk of contracting HIV despite acknowledging the preventative value of using condoms. In this context young men disassociate themselves from the disease and condom use through a process of calculated risk or risk minimisation.     

Playing with digital gender identity and cultural value

In cyberspace, anything is possible. Playing with digital gender identity has particularly flourished in digital dating games. Women can become the ‘masters,’ while men are the ‘pets’ when fabricating and manipulating digital gender identity to develop alternative heterosexual relationships. This implies that the breaking down of social and cultural barriers in cyberspace is possible if the digital dating game is seen as playful or a potential liberation from the barriers of digital gender identity to challenge the existing masculine power base. The current study attempts to fill the gap in knowledge related to challenging heterosexuality as the masculine dominant norm in cyberspace by examining Taiwanese online heterosexual relationship developments between gender identity and cultural value while playing a ludic digital dating game. The study employs netnography and recruits 40 people total, including Taiwanese workers and full-time university students, for participation in this research. The results highlight that the digital dating game is in some ways liberating, enabling Taiwanese users to present themselves as they want to express emotions, establish online heterosexual relationships in a nontraditional way, and engage in alternative digital gender play. These ‘ludic gaps’ allow for a fleeting, but unsustainable escape from traditional Taiwanese gender cultural values and practices. It is suggested that culture is inescapable, regardless of whether we are in the real world or cyberspace.     

Hotelling Games with Three,Four, and More Players*

Abstract. This paper extends the interval Hotelling model with quadratic transport costs to the n‐player case. For a large set of locations including potential equilibrium configurations, we show for n > 2 that firms neither maximize differentiation—as in the duopoly model—nor minimize differentiation—as in the multi‐firm game with linear transport cost. Subgame perfect equilibria for games with up to nine players are characterized by a U‐shaped price structure and interior corner firm locations. Results are driven by an asymmetry between firms. Interior firms are weaker competitors than their rivals at the corners. Increasing the number of firms shifts even more power to the corner firms. As a result, there is too much differentiation from the social perspective if n ≤ 3, while adding firms leads to a level of differentiation in equilibrium below the social optimum.     

Playing war

This paper argues that war video games are transitional spaces that connect players to the ‘war on terror’. It explores the pervasive influence of militarism in video games and how the US Army is enlisting play as an active force in blurring the distinctions between civilian and soldier. The paper begins by theorizing what exactly it means to ‘play’, and settles on the concept of ‘transitional space’ provided by psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott. It then investigates the ‘military entertainment complex’, an assemblage of institutions and sites that produce military video games for commercial release. Next, the paper looks at the aesthetics of video games, revealing an entrenched colonial logic instrumental for military recruitment and consent. The final section pulls all of this together to argue that video games are transitional spaces instrumental to understanding the everyday geographies of violence, terror, and warfare.     

CLAIMING PLACE: THE PRODUCTION OF YOUNG MEN'S STREET MEETING PLACES IN ACCRA, GHANA

This article discusses the social significance of the street to young men through a case study of their street meeting places, 'the bases' in Accra, Ghana. Drawing on field research in a suburb of Accra, the paper explores how such meeting places are produced, claimed and defended. The aim is to contribute to discussions of the relationship between the marginalization of young men in Africa, the appropriation of street space and the production of youth identities. The article illuminates how bases are produced in an urban landscape characterized by rapid change, in which young men are excluded from meaningful work and influence, and tend to be represented as a problem. Describing how these meeting places are interpreted both from the outside and from within, the article illustrates the heterogeneous character of such places and the multiple meanings ascribed to them. While hordes of young men hanging out on the street tend to be viewed by the surrounding world as either potentially dangerous or as a sign of marginalization and immobility, the paper stresses that for the young men themselves, these places are also full of motion and serve to orient their lives socially and materially.     

The Pen and the Plough: Balanta Young Men in Guinea‐Bissau

Up until the late 1990s, the Balanta of Guinea‐Bissau constituted what could be described as a ‘deep rural society’, whose central identity was linked with rice production and cattle accumulation. At the same time, it could be argued that even in the early days after Independence in 1974, the social aspirations of Balanta young men matched those of other Guinean youths in their shared desire to get away from the strictures of gerontocracy and of rural life. Surprisingly, however, this study documents the agency of many rural Balanta young men in changing oppressive social rules, and in using agriculture as a means to fund their education, to feed their families and as a route to prosperity. The authors conclude that the persistent political instability in the country (most acutely felt in the capital city) and the national and global economic crises, together with the Balanta agricultural ethos and the softening of gerontocratic power, are at the root of this revaluing of rural livelihoods. This article challenges current dominant narratives about the crisis of young men in contemporary Africa and highlights the need to study the aspirations and achievements of youth in their rural–urban nexus from a historical and holistic perspective.     

Mamihlapinatapai: Games People (Might) Play

With a focus on Melanesia, game theory is used to model the logical structure of strategic interactions between actors who engage in exchange transactions and to identify paradoxes, opportunities and uncertainties that confront those actors. It is argued that these exchanges are of three types which are named sharing, barter‐trade and prestige‐service. The first has the form of the classic game known as Prisoner's Dilemma and the expectation of non‐cooperation inherent in this game is resolved by trust. The second has the form of a game known as Chicken and the high risk inherent in this game is resolved by social manipulations that transform the payoff structure into Prisoner's Dilemma. The third is always an n‐person game. It has the form of a prestige game with an unconventional logical structure that is contingent on the existence of a parallel set of service games, each having the form of Chicken. The paper concludes by attempting to restore some realism to models that were over‐simplified abstractions. Some reinterpretations of conventional understandings are suggested.     

从宋代陶模造型管窥宋代游戏风俗

宋代陶模是由偶像信仰和生产工具演化而成的民俗玩具,具有信仰、启蒙、益智、娱乐与游戏等多种有益于受众身心健康发展的功能.作为普及性的节令玩具,陶模中有一定量的表现宋代游戏风俗的造型,这类图示化的造型直观再现了各种游戏风俗的场景,对宋代游戏风俗和体育史研究有较高的学术价值.     

Domesticating online games for preteens – discursive fields,everyday gaming,and family life

This article examines families’ everyday practices connected with online games played by children ages seven to eleven in the USA. Based on interviews in homes with children and parents, the article employs domestication theory to account for social experiences and symbolic meanings of games and game devices within private and public contexts of children’s game play. The analysis focuses on the social process through which online games are brought into home environments and incorporated into families’ daily routines. Games are analyzed as both impacting on everyday practices of the family and being shaped by the histories, values, and relationships within the households. The article contributes to an understanding of preteens’ online gaming and highlights the strength of using domestication theory to investigate children’s media practices.     

Public game funding in the Nordic region

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we explore the policies related to support structures surrounding national game industries, with focus on the three Nordic countries Finland, Norway and Sweden, and investigate what kind of context the Nordic welfare state model has provided for game development. The three cases illustrate how Nordic welfare state measures have interacted with the games industry over time. While the political ideals have been fairly similar, our study demonstrates how the objectives and practical means of state engagement have differed significantly. We argue that although the three countries all have support schemes of which game companies can take advantage, there are significant differences in the degree to which each individual country has organized government interventions and support. While the Finnish state has treated game development as an endeavour in business development, the regional Nordic game program and the Norwegian state has developed a cultural policy that primarily aims to protect the cultural heritage. The Swedish state has not established a tailormade policy directed towards game development but has a broad spectrum of general policies for supporting research and business development. We suggest that future research should investigate how the public funding is structured and how discourses are formulated around appeals for more public funding for the games industry.     

《周礼》中所记交通礼仪研究

<周礼>虽是一部讲官制的书,但其中有许多关于交通礼仪的记载,总结为以下几点:祀行与祖道;轼礼;男女有别;吉丧之别;交通的等级.     

Bowling Regions of North America

The five indoor bowling games of the Anglo-American culture realm and French Canada—tenpins, fivepins, duckpins, candlepins and rubberband duckpins— all occupy specific regions. Tenpins is played everywhere except in the Canadian Maritimes. Fivepins is an exclusively Canadian game, strongest in western Canada. Candlepins is restricted to Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire and parts of the Maritimes. Duckpins occupies two regions, one around Baltimore/Washington and the second in southern New England. Rubberband duckpins is the dominant game in Quebec and dying out in its region of origin around Pittsburgh. The four small-ball games developed in the late 19th and early 20th century as innovators in Worcester, Massachusetts (candlepins), Toronto (fivepins), Pittsburgh (rubberband duckpins) and an unknown location (duckpins) changed the equipment and rules of tenpins to find a less strenuous and technically more challenging game. All the games quickly won local converts and some succeeded in expanding their region of play as population moved and organizations were founded to spread the games. Today tenpins and fivepins dominate bowling in the United States and Canada, but in the East small-ball games still exist as a case of persistent regional variation within a national popular culture.     

‘A Most Manly and Amusing Game’: Australian Football and the Frontier Wars

Formed in the 1850s frontier contact zone, Australian Football owes more to the experiences of the skirmishes between white settlers and Indigenous Australians than is usually recognised. If we reassess the historical sources from a Deleuzo-Guattarian perspective, we observe that the ‘Game of Our Own’ is a mix of British and Indigenous styles of warfare. The four men who drafted the rules of this new ‘most manly and amusing game’ were misfits from British society who were seeking new lives on the frontier. Their code contained ‘striating’ features played across ‘smooth’ spaces. The football teams adopted totemic plants and animals in their nomenclature; the players were bedizened in costumes that spoke of Empire; the bloody Frontier Wars were in living memory of the players and their ‘barrackers’.     

Returning home: the return of Irish-born football migrants to Ireland’s football leagues and their cultural re-adaption, 1945–2010

This article examines a number of Irish professional soccer players’ career trajectories subsequent to their return to Ireland from the United Kingdom. More specifically, we explore their experiences following termination of their careers there, their adjustments to life after their professional football careers as well as the options and challenges in relocating into alternative professions and migratory positions. Moreover, how players cope and deal with the considerable difficulties in adapting to post-professional football career transition and termination is highlighted. Prior experience of League of Ireland or Irish League football does not impact on career duration in English League football. The majority of players that return following a career there stay in the game through participation as players with Irish professional clubs. This article also identifies the lack of structures, at many clubs in England and Ireland, for facilitating players’ adaptation to alternative careers following a career in professional football.