Participatory video drama research in transitional Vietnam: post-production narratives on marriage,parenting and social evils

Based on two years of participatory video drama (PVD) research with men and women in the city of Hu?, this article explores perspectives on, and experiences of, socio-economic transition and its influence on domestic life in Vietnam. Through a combination of output analysis, group screening sessions and individual interviews, it concentrates on the themes of marriage, parenting and ‘social evils’ which emerged in the PVD. It demonstrates how familial tensions collectively identified in the workshop and told in a single video-narrative are complicated by the more nuanced discourses that emerge from co-produced analysis in the post-production period. These illuminate a greater plurality of voices towards the liberalisation of the Vietnamese economy and the new life choices that this brings.     

Chinese Independent Documentary Films: Alternative Media,Public Spheres and the Emergence of the Citizen Activist

This article argues that contemporary independent documentary filmmaking in China has been used as a tool by Chinese citizens to intervene in the public sphere and to provoke social change. I therefore propose to look at the phenomenon of Chinese video activism under the umbrella of alternative media. In particular, I take into consideration the “rhizomatic” media approach, which focuses on the interaction of alternative media with authority, the market and civil society. The case studies I present consist of several documentary projects completed between 2004 and 2010 that opened up spaces of dialogue between filmmakers and local authority, mass media and civil society. The paper claims that documentary films have an impact on audiences, whose members are consequently motivated to engage in discussion and action. I argue that activist video-making in China is reshaping the identity of urban citizens: through filmmaking, urban citizens claim their right to access information and demonstrate their will to participate and intervene in social issues.     

Trading Shovels for Controllers: A Brief Exploration of the Portrayal of Archaeology in Video Games

Archaeology has been a persistent theme for video games, from the long-running Indiana Jones and Lara Croft franchises to more recent uses of archaeology in games like Destiny and World of Warcraft. In these games, archaeology is often portrayed as a search for treasure among lost worlds that leads to looting and the destruction of cultural heritage. In this article, we review the current state of archaeological video games, including mainstream and educational games. While this is not an exhaustive discussion, it provides an introduction and overview to the current landscape. We propose that an understanding of current popular archaeological video games is important to archaeologists for three reasons: (1) it is a source of potentially dangerous misconceptions about the discipline that must be addressed; (2) it can be a source of inspiration for funding and a means to recruit new students to the discipline; and (3) games can be leveraged as teaching moments in classrooms and public discussions. It is important that archaeologists recognize the ways the discipline is being portrayed in such public contexts, in order to maximize the potential benefit for archaeology and to prevent further misconceptions about the subject.     

What the drone saw: the cultural optics of the unmanned war

The dramatic growth of drone warfare in the last decade has meant the arrival of a new kind of war imagery in civilian life: the view through the drone camera. As such, the drone is not simply a weapon, but also an emerging medium for representing conflict. This article explores the ways this imagery has been selected, interpreted, framed and put to use in public and popular culture. In addition to exploring how these practices of looking fit within the larger history of war imagery, two prominent features of ‘drone vision’ are identified: the promotion of consumer interactivity in the drone war and the militarising of domestic space.     

Safe Places in Domestic Spaces: Two-Year-Olds at Play in their Homes

This paper contributes to the growing research literature on children's ‘intimate geographies’ by focusing on two-year-old children's explorations and play within the domestic spaces of their homes. It draws on video data showing three young girls playing in selected home spaces i.e. a family grocery shop in Peru, the upstairs rooms of a house in America, and the balcony of an apartment in Italy. Through analysis of short video sequences the paper describes the way children use and invest meaning in these spaces. It is argued that the three domestic locations can be seen as ‘safe places’, in both material and personal senses; and that they enable children's sense of belonging, foster their ‘emplaced knowledge’ and build on their confidence to explore spaces further afield.     

Incorporating “virtual” and “real world” field trips into introductory geography modules

The “field trip” is a key pedagogical tool within geographical education to encourage deep learning, though they are increasingly difficult to implement due to reduced budgets, safety concerns and increasing class sizes. We incorporated three field-learning activities into a large introductory module. A traditional staff-led trip was the most effective activity in terms of enjoyment, knowledge, and deep thinking and awareness. Self-paced field activities and video podcasts had less pedagogical value, though can still support lectures and the staff-led field trip. An integrated approach will best maximize deep learning opportunities.     

Securing field learning using a twenty-first century Cook's Tour

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of incorporating digital video into a traditional Cook's Tour as part of a 7-day road trip around the east coast of New Zealand's North Island over a 4-year period. Student-generated video diaries summarized landscape features and processes at fieldsites, empowering students through active learning and small group collaborations. Student response was assessed via pre- and post-fieldtrip questionnaires, focus group and video diary reflection. Marks were analysed before and after the introduction of on-site student video production. Results of this research indicate the positive influence and statistically significant effects of this approach on student learning.     

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.     

‘Dissidence’ in Holocaust Memorials in Literature: Jáchym Topol’s The Devil’s Workshop (Chladnou zemí)

Abstract

Established Czech precedent has made the town of Terezín an important literary symbol of Holocaust memory, used in the 1960s to construct myths of Czech innocent victimhood. Jáchym Topol’s novel, The Devil’s Workshop (2009), returns to the theme with great originality, avoiding such myths by using a compromised first-person Czech narrator, who is involved in setting up ‘dissident’ commemorative museums at Terezín and in Belarus. These draw on documented accounts of real atrocities for their authenticity. Competitive in national terms, commercialized, and ethically compromised, they are finally, arguably inevitably, silenced. Topol’s ‘truth-telling’ is discussed in the context of Theodor W. Adorno’s criticism of committed Holocaust literature, Benedict Anderson’s interpretation of museums as commercialized constructions of nationality, and Timothy Snyder’s historical account of the killings in Eastern Europe; the ambiguous pessimism of his novel stands up well to criticism and, it is argued, has lessons even for historians of the Holocaust.     

Legitimacy and the virtual battlefield: putting the first-person shooter on the witness stand

Although much has been written on the abilities of the first-person shooter to advance neo-orientalist themes and US imperial agendas through its aesthetics and narrative, the author argues that by exploiting the porous institutional boundaries between military planners and the video-game industry, the hyperrealist shooter becomes a formidable and formative middle ground not only in reshaping understanding of and access to the nebulous and furtive world of discreet war, but also in filling its legitimacy gap.