Media, Children and Play: New Practices in a New (and Complex) Ecosystem

The relationship between media and play has been the subject of my research during the last ten years. Along that period, the research has obtained a common conclusion: children are related to media as consumers, as audiences, as producers and as reproducers of what is shown on them. From the moment in which children are born a new ecosystem composed by different screens and devices becomes their home. I argue that play is a key dimension to analyze contemporary childhoods and their relationship to media culture. When children talk about their games, their favorite shows and computer interactions, they are presenting themselves to others. The objective of this paper is double. Firstly, I aim to present a characterization of the media addressed specifically to children in order to identify continuities, stereotypes, differences and basic characteristics. The key concept in this phase is the one of representation. Secondly, I work with the interviews that I made during 2012 to thirty children who were between six and ten, inhabitants of the City of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The objective was to listen to children and the meanings the built around their everyday lives. Play and games were approached not only as meaningful cultural practices but also as a way of analyzing the productions that children made from the available discourses in their everyday lives. Desires, preferences and games as children name them are going to be the organizers of the second part of the paper. The relationship between children, media and play is complex, but it is a very interesting way to build some knowledge about the contemporary culture and the ways through which children establish different relationships with it. Both objectives will allow us to build a complex approach to children, media and play in the communicative ecosystem in which they are growing.Fil: Duek, Sara Carolina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentin

Childhoods and play: Facebook, exhibition and competition

L'objectif de ce document vise à explorer les relations entre le jeu et les enfants dans le contexte contemporain. L'article considère le jeu d'enfants comme pratique significative à partir des nouvelles technologies de l'information et de la communication. Comme les enfants associent Facebook aux jeux, Facebook représente le point central de cet article. Nous traitons les jeux auxquels les enfants jouent, les articulations les plus appropriées entre les enfants, la socialisation et Facebook. Nous proposons d'entrer dans l'univers où les enfants, les représentations, les médias et les adultes entrent en relation. Nous analysons Facebook comme la plate-forme contemporaine la plus importante à partir de laquelle la socialisation, l'exposition et la concurrence sont construites par les enfants.The objective of this paper is to explore the relationship between games, play and children in the contemporary context. The article begins with the consideration of children’s play as a meaningful practice focussing on new technologies of information and communication. Along the research, Facebook was identified as the most important place that children associated with games. That is why, the role that Facebook “plays” is one of the most important focusses of this paper: the uses that our informants report of the most used social network, the games they play and the most relevant articulations between children, socialization and Facebook. It is not our objective to analyse games thoroughly (we will analyse “Farmville” briefly), but to enter the universe in which children, representations, media and adults are related and intertwined. And in this path, we will analyse Facebook as the most important contemporary platform from which socialization, exhibition and competition are built by children as the main subjects of our research.Fil: Duek, Sara Carolina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Université Catholique de Louvain; Bélgic

Towards the construction of new audiences: ‘Fictions’ in contemporary media

In this paper I aim to work with a concept that I defined as “fictions” or better, “Hegemonic fictions”. The concept of fiction is based not on a “lie”, but on a hegemonic representation that media produce and reproduce in every show, game, interaction or presentation. That is why I chose to call them fictions: the ways through which media build hegemonic representations about everything that should matter in a specific moment of time and history. I identified four different fictions and, through them, I propose to analyze different aspects of both the contemporary media and their audiences. The first one is the fiction of choice. The analysis that I made of this fiction is based on the diversity of available electronic devices and the real possibilities that audiences have to choose. The second one is the fiction of participation. The emphasis in the so called “decision of the audience” is built upon a new fiction: we do not get to choose who participates on a show, a survey or a contest but we are summoned to “vote” or answer questions in order to construct a feeling that we are participating. The third fiction is the one of the objectivity. The aim of this fiction is to analyze the operations through which media present their sayings, images, news and opinions as “objective”. In the same line, the fourth fiction is about the reception stage. I do not sustain that reception is a fiction but I will analyze the variables and the mediations that exist between media messages and the audiences who receive, read, write and listen to those messages. New audiences and new media seem to be changing and developing at the same time in the same space. We aim to question the naturalization of the different and varied relationships between media and audiences in order to present possible new approaches that might lead to new questions and researches.Fil: Duek, Sara Carolina. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

The deconstruction of the concept of classes : postmarxism and non-class collective identities

La centralidad de los conceptos de clase y lucha de clases, que comienza con la tradición clásica marxista y prosigue con fuerza en la teoría del siglo XX, fue disminuyendo en las últimas dos décadas de ese siglo, incluso en las filas del “pensamiento crítico". Después de la llamada “crisis del marxismo", el reflujo de la izquierda se manifestó, a nivel de la teoría social, mediante un desplazamiento de sus conceptos fuertes -en particular, del análisis en términos de clases- y un reemplazo por “nuevas" nociones. Partiendo de este contexto, en este trabajo analizamos la propuesta conjunta que Laclau y Mouffe hacen en Hegemonía y estrategia socialista, pues constituye una de las primeras y más importantes aportaciones a la deconstrucción posmarxista. Examinamos críticamente sus tesis sobre el antagonismo, la nueva lógica de constitución de lo social, la pluralidad e indeterminación, la contingencia, sus reproches a la concepción marxista de la sociedad y, en particular, su esfuerzo por “deconstruir la noción misma de clase social" y de “intereses de clase", ante el diagnóstico de la emergencia en el capitalismo maduro de “identidades colectivas no clasistas". También analizamos el correlato que este planteo tiene en términos de estrategia política.The centrality of concepts of class and class struggle, which begins with the classical marxist tradition and continues strongly in twentieth-century theory, was declining in the last two decades of that century, even in the ranks of "critical thinking". After the so-called "crisis of marxism," the receding of the left was manifested, at the level of social theory, by a displacement of its strong concepts - in particular, analysis in terms of classes - and a replacement by "new" notions. Starting from this context, in this work we analyze the joint proposal that Laclau and Mouffe make in Hegemony and socialist strategy, since it constitutes one of the first and most important contributions to the postmarxist deconstruction. We critically examine its theses on antagonism, the new logic of social constitution, plurality and indeterminacy, contingency, its reproaches to the marxist conception of society and, in particular, its effort to deconstruct the very notion of “social class" and “class interests", given the diagnosis of the emergence in mature capitalism of “non-class collective identities". We also analyze the correlation that this approach has in terms of political strategy.Fil: Duek, Celia. Universidad Nacional de Cuy

Demanda de agua por parte del sector agrícola en la cuenca de los ríos Mendoza y Tunuyán inferior

El objetivo de este trabajo es conocer la demanda de agua por parte del sector agrícola en la cuenca de los ríos Mendoza y Tunuyán Inferior. Los cultivos son agrupados en cinco categorías: vid, frutales, hortalizas, olivo y otros cultivos. Se utiliza información recolectada en fuentes de información secundaria. Las necesidades netas de agua de los cultivos y las eficiencias de riego interna y externa son ajustadas mediante entrevistas a informantes calificados. Se estima la demanda actual de agua y se construyen tres escenarios de uso sostenible del recurso hídrico, en base a eficiencias de riego potenciales. La demanda actual de agua es de 2.767,4 hectómetros cúbicos al año, donde el 67,0% corresponde a agua demandada de origen superficial y el 33,0% a origen subterráneo. Los volúmenes de agua estimados para cada escenario son 2.415,8; 2.326,8 y 2.031,2 hectómetros cúbicos anuales, lo que implica reducciones del 13,0%; 16,5% y 27% respectivamente en relación a la demanda actual.Fil: Duek, Alicia Elena. Instituto Nacional del Agua (Argentina

Lectura de Marx : tras el concepto de clases sociales

A pesar de que toda la teoría de Marx tiene por centro y corazón la lucha de clases, Marx no formuló con la sistematicidad que se ocupó de otros temas una «Teoría» de las clases sociales, en tanto sistema de conceptos rigurosamente definidos. El propósito de este artículo es recomponer algunas cuestiones centrales en la definición marxista de las clases sociales, así como demostrar la enorme significación teórica del descubrimiento de Marx. Se pretende por último señalar la distancia respecto de toda concepción subjetivista, economicista, voluntarista, distributiva y socio-profesional de las clases.Although the whole theory qf Marx has for heart the class struggle, Marx didn't formulate a systematic Theory of the social classes, meaning by Theory a system of concepts rigorously defined, as he did with other topics. The purpose of this article is to recompose some central questions in the Marxist definition of social classes, as well as to demónstrate the enormous theoretical significance of Marx's discovery. It is sought lastly to point out the distance regarding all subjective, economicist, voluntaristic, distributive and socio-professional conceptions of classes.Fil: Duek, Celia. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y SocialesFil: Inda, Graciela. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociale

La concepción del Estado moderno del joven Weber (1890-1910): nacionalismo y crítica del absolutismo burocrático

Haciendo foco en la problematización del Estado moderno, en este artículo analizamos la producción teórica y política de Max Weber correspondiente al lapso 1890-1910 y la relación que mantiene con la problemática característica de sus obras e intervenciones posteriores, correspondientes a su período de madurez intelectual. El nacionalismo, la búsqueda de una definición de la relación entre el Estado y las clases sociales, entre el poder económico y el poder político, el tópico de la hegemonía política de la burguesía como proceso truncado, la cuestión de la represión estatal como resultado de la impotencia de clase, los efectos anticapitalistas del despotismo burocrático, son los síntomas que definen en su especificidad la concepción weberiana del Estado en sus años de juventud

El día que los intelectuales decretaron la muerte de las clases : un diagnóstico del momento teórico actual

En este artículo se pone en evidencia el viraje conceptual que ha tenido lugar en las ciencias sociales, desde los años 60 y 70 a esta parte. Específicamente se señala el abandono del concepto de clases sociales y del análisis de lo social en términos de lucha de clases, y el consiguiente desplazamiento del interés teórico hacia otras nociones que adquieren primacía en los estudios: ciudadanía, movimientos sociales, sociedad civil, espacio público, pobreza, exclusión, condición humana, posmodernidad, sociedad mediática. La crisis del marxismo y la revitalización del humanismo teórico -se dice- han sido decisivas en este desplazamiento.Fil: Inda, Graciela. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y SocialesFil: Duek, Celia. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociale

La Argentina agroexportadora : contradicciones de la clase dominante

A fines del siglo XIX se constituye en la Argentina una clase dominante con alcance nacional y relativamente unificada bajo la hegemonía de la fracción terrateniente. Este trabajo se propone identificar los diferentes componentes o fracciones de esta burguesía, y explicar las contradicciones y coincidencias que tienen entre sí desde su conformación hasta la fractura marcada por la crisis del treinta.At the ends of the XIX Century it is constituted in the Argentina a dominant class with national reach and relatively unified under the hegemony of the fraction landowner. This work intends to identify the different components or fractions of this bourgeoisie, and to explain the contradictions and coincidences that have to each other from its conformation until the fracture marked by the crisis of the thirty.Fil: Inda, Graciela. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y SocialesFil: Duek, Celia. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociale

Crianças, telas digitais e família: práticas de mediação dos pais e gênero

Este artigo tem como objetivo explorar as características de gênero da parentalidade digital e da mediação parental através de um estudo qualitativo desenvolvido com famílias e crianças na Argentina. Recentemente, diversas tipologias foram elaboradas para entender melhor a mediação dos pais em relação às telas digitais. Estudos quantitativos correlacionaram diferentes estilos de mediação parental com variáveis sociodemográficas e também avaliaram a sua eficácia na prevenção de vários riscos online. Neste artigo, usamos dados qualitativos de um estudo que recorreu à técnica de tecnobiografias para construir uma abordagem aprofundada das práticas e representações das crianças com várias vozes envolvidas (pais, professores, autoridades da escola). Como mostramos, diferentes tipos de mediação parental estão associados a mães ou pais, seguindo ideologias e estereótipos de gênero mais amplos. Através de dados provenientes de famílias diferentes, construímos a hipótese de que existe uma divisão de gênero na parentalidade digital.The objective of this article is to explore the gendered characteristics of digital parenting and parental mediation through a qualitative study developed with families and children in Argentina. Diverse typologies have recently been elaborated to better understand parental mediation of digital screens. Quantitative studies have correlated different styles of parental mediation with sociodemographic variables and have also assessed their effectiveness in preventing several online risks. In this paper we use qualitative data from a research developed using the technique of technobiographies to construct an in-depth approach to children’s practices and representations with multiple voices involved (parents, teachers, school authorities). As we show, different types of parental mediation are associated to mothers or fathers, following more broader gender ideologies and stereotypes. With insights from different families, we built research questions that state that there is a gendered division of digital parenting