Circling the Cross: Bridging Native America, Education, and Digital Media

Part of the Volume on Learning Race and Ethnicity: Youth and Digital MediaTo paraphrase a Native elder, any road will get you somewhere. The question for Native America is, where will the information highway take them? As Native Americans continue to face challenges from the legacy of colonialism, new media provide both an opportunity and crises in education. Standardized education policy such as No Child Left Behind and funding cuts in social services inadvertently impact Net access and Indian education, yet alternative programs and approaches exist. It is necessary that programs conceptualize new media learning strategies within a historical context by being sensitive to the political and cultural connotations of literacy and technology in Native American communities. By encouraging the use of new media as a tool for grassroots community media and locally relevant storytelling, this chapter asks educators to consider an alternative epistemology that incorporates non-Western approaches to ecology and knowledge

Do we need permission to play in public? The design of participation for social play video games at play parties and ‘alternative’ games festivals

Play is a fundamental to being Human. It helps to make sense of the self, to learn, to be creative and to relax. The advent of video games challenged traditional notions of play, introducing a single player experience to what had primarily been a communal social activity. As technology has developed, communal play has found both online and real-world spaces within video games. Online streaming, multiplayer games and built-in spectator modes within games underpin online communal play experiences, whilst ‘alternative’ games festivals, play parties and electronic sports, provide real world spaces for people to meet, play and exchange knowledge relating to both playing and making video games. This article reports the study of social play events which bring people together in the same space to explore video games making and playing. Expert interviews with curators, and event facilitators provides qualitative data from which design processes are formalised into a ‘model of participation’ of social play. Four key areas of balance are proposed as core considerations in supporting participation in event design. The study of these events also suggests that their design and fostering of participation has the potential to evoke cultural change in game making and playing practices

Why having a Maximum Retail Price on a Product is a Socialist Idea and Bad for the Indian Economy?

In a capitalist society, the market uses the rules of supply and demand to set prices. For instance, a firm that wants to make money would raise prices as the demand for coffee rises. Tea growers would face reduced pricing and a decrease in overall production if society's taste for the beverage decreased simultaneously

Regulating Bodies: Children and Sexual Violence

The interdisciplinary silences on sexual violence and the omission of children and youth from social science research speak volumes of the power of the child as a flexible, cultural signifier. In this article, I argue that dominant frameworks of children and childhood make child sexual assault a discursive impossibility for most young people. The epistemic violence of silencing matters, and it is these erasures that are fundamental to understanding violence and power. I argue it is paramount for feminist researchers to call attention to the undermining qualities of Institutional Review Boards that act as gatekeepers of representation and voice