[Air-L] CfP: special issue Social Justice and Digital Gaming - journal gamevironments - 1. Feb. 2022

Lisa Kienzl kienzl at uni-bremen.de
Tue Dec 7 06:28:00 PST 2021 

Dear colleagues,

if you are interested in Games and Social Justice, please check out the 
Call for Papers for the upcoming Special Issue “This Time it’s for all 
the Marbles. Towards Social Justice in Digital Gaming” edited by Patrick 
Prax in the peer-reviewed open access journal GAMEVIRONMENTS 
(https://www.gamevironments.uni-bremen.de/).

Best wishes,

Lisa

==================================================

CALL FOR PAPERS

Special Issue GAMEVIRONMENTS

------------------------------------------------------

This Time it’s for all the Marbles.Towards Social Justice in Digital 
Gaming.

edited by Patrick Prax

-----------------------------------------------------------

Digital games are a central element of contemporary media ecology both 
in terms of playing and making games, but also as an anchor point for 
communities and cultures. The impact games and gaming have on our 
societies is both hard to define and undeniable. They extend towards 
increased access to cultural production and creativity, allowing people 
to be social in isolation, and to expand the social imaginary. At the 
same time, they are related to exploitation and precarity, isolate 
people under the guise of sociability, and are connected to xenophobic 
and bigoted movements that threaten democratic values and civic liberties.

While these are not issues that are exclusive to game it can be argued 
that gaming as a culture, community, and environment warrant attention 
here because of their central role for contemporary culture, creative 
industries, and digital platforms. The gaming community has regrettably 
been the training ground for alt-right politics that are successfully 
being used globally to de-stabilize democratic discourses and it is 
still a central recruitment pool for said radical movements. This makes 
it important to investigate the environment of games and gaming for 
understanding the current political changes towards xenophobia, white 
supremacy, nationalism, and fascism where games and game communities are 
a puzzle piece that should not be left out of the picture. The issue 
does see games here as a part of contemporary political and cultural 
zeitgeist, but also as material media that is produced and consumed in 
specific socio-economic context. This means that also perspectives that 
center on the economic and political conditions of game production and 
marketing are seen as relevant to these questions. That said, games and 
game culture are also spaces that brim with potential for critical and 
inclusive work. Game workers as well as the communities around games can 
be the creative anchor-point, the ground zero, or the staging area for 
organizing towards collective action towards more respectful and 
equitable futures.

This special issue aims to examine the ways in which games and gaming 
are connected to and potentially accelerate undemocratic and bigoted 
movements while high-lighting projects and perspectives from games that 
contribute to social justice.

The special issue has been created based on the submissions to the Game 
Studies Temporary Working Group at the NordMedia 2021 conference. We 
invite diverse, critical, activist, and political work connected to 
games and game culture from a number of perspectives inside the 
ecosystem of games: designers, scholars, journalists, activists, 
workplace agitators, community managers, and player creators.

------------------------------------------------

In this special issue, we want to extend beyond purely academic work in 
order to highlight steps taken towards social justice in gaming, 
wherever they may be found and whatever they may look like. This means 
that in addition to the journal’s traditional formats of peer-reviewed 
articles, we are also including a call for reports of practical efforts 
towards social justice both to share best practices and to learn from 
challenges and mistakes. The precise format for such reports can be 
discussed with the editor.

--------------------------------------------------

Topics for the all forms of contributions may include, but are not 
limited to:

  * Using games for social change, both in changing discourse and practice
  * Empowering facilitators of social change through games or play
  * Gaming as the ecosystem for inclusion or exclusion
  * Exploitation in games and gaming
  * Organizing and political agitation in games and gaming
  * Making visible the structures of bigotry, sexism, and white
    supremacy to be able to fight them
  * Discrimination, toxicity
  * Critical epistemologies for political resistance
  * Gaming and its relation to fascism
  * The military-entertainment complex and ways to resist it
  * Black and indigenous-led perspectives on gaming
  * Game culture and the framing of politics
  * The politics of game production
  * Critical Game literacy
  * Political economy of game production and marketing
  * Gaming and civic society
  * The role of games and gaming in the rise of fascism

----------------------------------------------

GUIDELINES

For all forms of contributions please submit a title and 300-word 
abstract to

Patrick Prax (patrick.prax at speldesign.uu.se)

by 1. February 2022.

--------------------------------------------

Possible formats for submission include:

  * regular academic articles
  * reports
  * interviews
  * book reviews
  * game reviews
  * reports of practical effort

Guideline for “Reports of practical efforts”

For reports of practical efforts, please submit a short description of 
the effort (300 words) as well as a contextualization of where this 
happened. Please explain briefly what you consider to be the take-away 
for future actions, both in terms of what can work or what does not. The 
editors are prepared to discuss questions regarding anonymity.

---------------------------------------------

Please include pictures and media if you have them. Keep your language 
clear and concise.

All articles submitted will be subject to double-blind peer-review. 
There is no article processing charge.

-------------------------------------------

Here you find more information on submission formats and guidelines:

https://www.gamevironments.uni-bremen.de/

https://www.gamevironments.uni-bremen.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/gamevironments-style-sheet.pdf 


-----------------------------------------------

TIMELINE

Title and abstract submission: 1. February 2022

Full text submission: 1. June 2022



-- 
Dr. Dr. Lisa Kienzl

(sie/ihr | she/her)

Literaturen und Medien der Religion | Institut für Religionswissenschaft und Religionspädagogik
http://www.religion.uni-bremen.de

Lab "Media and Religion" | ZeMKI, Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research
https://www.uni-bremen.de/en/zemki/labs/media-and-religion

Managing editor gamevironments
https://www.gamevironments.uni-bremen.de/

Universität Bremen
Sportturm (SpT)
Postfach 330 440
28359 Bremen
T. +49 (0)421 218 67912

-- 
Dr. Dr. Lisa Kienzl

(sie/ihr | she/her)

Literaturen und Medien der Religion | Institut für Religionswissenschaft und Religionspädagogik
http://www.religion.uni-bremen.de

Lab "Media and Religion" | ZeMKI, Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research
https://www.uni-bremen.de/en/zemki/labs/media-and-religion

Managing editor gamevironments
https://www.gamevironments.uni-bremen.de/

Universität Bremen
Sportturm (SpT)
Postfach 330 440
28359 Bremen
T. +49 (0)421 218 67912

More information about the Air-L mailing list