March 1, 1999

The Breeze is the student newspaper of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia

A Player’s Sense of Place: Computer Games as Anatopistic Medium

This project works to understand how open-world computer games help generate a sense of place from the player. Since their development over a half century ago, computer games have primarily been discussed in terms of space. Yet the way we think about space today is much different than how those scientists calculated space as a construction of time, mass, and location. But as computer games have evolved, the language has failed to accommodate the more nuanced qualities of game spaces. This project aims at articulating the nuances of place through phenomenological methods to objectively analyze the player experience as performed through various behaviors. Using a conceptual model that partially illustrates sense of place, I demonstrate how players create out of place—or anatopistic—places through play. After a historical survey of play as it is manifested through interaction with miniaturized environments, I turn to computer games as they have helped embody their creators’ sense of place. The third and fourth chapters offer a pair of case studies that reflect upon the experiences of the individual player and player groups. First, I compare virtual photography with tourism to reveal an array of sensibilities suggestive of the pursuit of place. This is followed with a look at Niantic’s Pokémon Go and how player groups use the game to act out ritualistic forms of play. Positioning the player as a “ludopilgrim,” I demonstrate how players perform individual or intersubjectively meaningful places as a form of transgressive placemaking

Urban Agriculture and Sustainability in Chicago

Sustainability is increasingly informing the organization of urban life. In the past 15 years, cities have sought to alleviate the dual effects of environmental degradation and a changing economy by introducing sustainable development initiatives. Policy makers and environmental activists have often praised these efforts, pointing to the enhancement of quality of life, the mitigation of industrial pollution, and these initiatives\u27 capacity to address poverty in a post-welfare state. Most popular depictions of the experiences of sustainability come from the perspective of white, middle class, college-educated volunteers and, increasingly, social entrepreneurs such as artisans, farmers, and other producers connected to local foods movements. Yet what is missing is the experiences and perspectives of low-wage earners, job trainees, and black youth who participate in various urban sustainable development initiatives. This is important because sustainability initiatives have historically benefitted white middle class people often at the expense of poor people of color. In other words, sustainable development has reproduced and exacerbated existing inequality. This research provides answers to debates in urban and environmental sociology about how to achieve more equitable distributions of power in order to make the production of urban environments more inclusive

Bowdoin Orient v.135, no.1-25 (2005-2006)

https://digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu/bowdoinorient-2000s/1006/thumbnail.jp

Getting the Measure of It: Radiation Knowledge Construction in Japan since 2011

Since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant meltdown in March 2011, in which environments, foods and bodies were contaminated with radioactive isotopes, many devices have made knowledge about radiation. This thesis overlays concepts such as assemblages, qualculations, comparisons, and syncretism to provide a multidimensional, layered way of thinking about scientific knowledge making in contamination emergencies. Based on ethnographic data from Japan gathered between 2018 and 2022, including two periods of fieldwork in Japan in 2018 and 2019, I demonstrate multiple heterogeneous socio-material entities come together to construct radiation knowledge in different places, times and for different purposes. I contend that human and nonhuman actors are active in the process of radiation knowledge creation, performing different roles and functions in the assemblage. I argue these actors influence what else is in assemblages, where and when they operate, and what happens when they come into contact with alternative assemblages operating in the same spaces and times. However, not all actors have equal agency in this. I highlight tensions between knowledge- making communities – the questions they seek to answer, the resources they have access to, and the extent to which they seek to align their practices with others. I also assert that nonhuman actors, such as emergency plans, legislation, standards, thresholds and guidance documents simultaneously stabilise and constrain knowledge making opportunities. Stabilisation and constraint occur across multiple dimensions – spatially (where knowledge is made), temporally (when it is made) and practically (how it is made). As well as contributing to social science debates about the sociality and materiality of collective knowledge making practices in general, my findings are directly relevant to professionals charged with planning for and responding to contamination events. It suggests a new way of thinking about knowledge making in emergencies which acknowledges the multiplicity of knowledge making assemblages, their opportunities and limits in different places and times, and how they operate alongside other knowledges and practices