Suchergebnisse

This project investigates how players of digital games apply their own play with the intent to transmit political messages to other players. Acts of activism are collected from a sample of commercial multiplayer online games; three taxonomies are proposed of which one is used to present the findings, and popular patterns or structures of activism are identified. It is found that in-game activism often takes its cue from activism in everyday life, but that some original topics emerge, for example, the ownership of virtual worlds and practices of in-game political activism such as novel forms of rallies. Current political activism often appears to utilize generic and widely-shared game mechanics, rather than mechanics specific to individual games or genres. Games are therefore selected for their topics, availability, and costs, and popularity with the target audience ; This project investigates how players of digital games apply their own play with the intent to transmit political messages to other players. Acts of activism are collected from a sample of commercial multiplayer online games; three taxonomies are proposed of which one is used to present the findings, and popular patterns or structures of activism are identified. It is found that in-game activism often takes its cue from activism in everyday life, but that some original topics emerge, for example, the ownership of virtual worlds and practices of in-game political activism such as novel forms of rallies. Current political activism often appears to utilize generic and widely-shared game mechanics, rather than mechanics specific to individual games or genres. Games are therefore selected for their topics, availability, and costs, and popularity with the target audience

'Keeping silent' can be a meaningful political event, a form of political activism that generates new political subjectivities and alters existing realities by reconfiguring power relations. To flesh out this argument, this paper attends to a particular silent protest and affirms it as a tactic employed by an emergent political collectivity to make itself perceptible, declare an injustice and challenge institutional power. As such, the silent event under scrutiny does not merely invite a turning of our attention to a practice that breaks the association of the political subject with the speaking subject; it also invites a reconsideration of what we are accustomed to accept as political activism. 'Keeping silent' is a critical practice, indeed, because it manifests an alternative possibility of being and acting; in so doing, it disrupts established patterns of thought and practice, and more specifically the rigid distinction between speech and silence.

A positive r between intellectual ability & leftist ideology has been empricially documented. S. M. Lipset has argued that activism itself is positively related to intelligence. To test this, a sample of student pol'al activists at the U of Minnesota was compared with the general student pop there. The 39 campus pol'al groups were classified into 4 broad ideological categories--Right, Right Center, Left Center, & Left. Data on 84 F & 156 M pol'al student activists are used. 9 measures of intellectual ability in the R's were also utilized. It is found that the activists, taken together or separately by sex on each of the various ability & achievement tests, are more capable than a large majority of either beginning freshmen or all U students. Overall, the data offer moderate support for Lipset's argument, but further res with samples of activists from other types of U's, particularly highly selective public & private Sch's where activism has been relatively more extensive, is needed. In addition, there is a definite need for res with samples of adult activists so that the conclusion reached here may be tested to see if it may be extended beyond student activists to include pol'al activists in general. 1 Table. M. Maxfield.

In this autobiographical essay, Josef Ehmer reflects on his academic career. As a starting point, Ehmer describes his family background as well as the socio-political milieu and the (political) influences of his upbringing and schooling in the context of Austrian contemporary history. Subsequently, the author recalls his years of study and describes the Institute for Economic and Social History in Vienna as a "social place." Shaped and supported by dedicated mentors, such as Michael Mitterauer, Ehmer reflects on his path into "science as a vocation" and its various stages, especially his professorships in Salzburg and Vienna. Additionally, this essay elaborates on how Ehmer developed his stable research focuses: the social history of the 18th to 20th centuries in a European comparative perspective, specifically the history of the family, workers and craftsmen, migrations, aging, and popu-lation history and historical demography.

France, Social Capital and Political Activism deals with the theme of political participation in France, focusing on conventional and unconventional forms of political activism over the last three decades. The French model of political activism supports the interpretation that countries do not necessarily need to focus on the development of social capital (that is the involvement in groups and associations as the basis for political engagement) to increase people's political involvement and consequently the quality of their participatory democracies. The French style of action has become a source of inspiration for other countries trying to increase political involvement, but lacking the attendant levels of social capital.