[ecrea] new book Ethnographies of the Videogame

Dear Colleagues,

Just a quick self-promotional email to say that my new book, 'Ethnographies of the Videogame', is now out in print with Ashgate! For those of us who have been arguing that a longitudinal analysis of videogames is needed for game studies, and those of us interested in the lived and embodied engagements with (new) media - here is a starting point (hopefully!)

best wishes,

Helen Thornham

promotional blurb below:

Now available from Ashgate Publishing...

Ethnographies of the Videogame: Gender, Narrative and Praxis Helen Thornham, City University London, UK

‘Helen Thornham’s excellent exploration of video gaming decisively shifts the terrain of game studies. From the solitary screen experience to play in the living room, in Thornham’s work gaming becomes an embodied techno-social relation accounted for in narrative terms. A rich and sustained ethnographic study that also re-theorizes the relation between games and those who play them.’
– Caroline Bassett, University of Sussex, UK

’A welcome corrective to the view that videogaming is dangerously antisocial. Thornham persuasively demonstrates that videogaming is a physical, embodied activity, deeply embedded in everyday domestic routines and relationships. Her theoretical approach reveals important insights into gender relations, and challenges stereotyped concepts of gaming behaviours. Gamers and non-gamers alike, as well as scholars interested in these new, important leisure activities, will find this book of considerable interest.’
– Máire Messenger Davies, University of Ulster, UK

Ethnographies of the Videogame uses the medium of the videogame to explore wider significant sociological issues around new media, interaction, identity, performance, memory and mediation. The book is particularly concerned with issues of agency and power, identifying strong correlations between perceptions of gaming and actual gaming practices, as well as the reinforcement, through gaming, of established power relationships within households. Thornham provides pertinent and reflexive commentary highlighting the relationships of gender and power in gaming practice.

Contents: Introductions: videogames, gender, ethnography; Constructing a gendered gaming identity; Articulating pleasure: gender, technology and power; The practices of gameplay; Bodies and action; Pleasure and the imagined gamer; Conclusions: towards a theory of domestic videogaming; Appendices

Sample pages for published titles are available to view online at: www.ashgate.com
To order, please visit: www.ashgate.com All online orders receive a discount
Alternatively, contact our distributor: Bookpoint Ltd, Ashgate Publishing Direct Sales, 130 Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4SB, UK Tel: +44 (0)1235 827730	Fax: +44 (0)1235 400454 Email: (ashgate /at/ bookpoint.co.uk)
July 2011 218 pages Hardback 978-0-7546-7978-3 £55.00
http://www.ashgate.com/ isbn/9780754679783

Dr. Helen Thornham
D618 Sociology Dept
Social Sciences Building
Northampton Square
EC1V 0HB
020 70404445

Office hours:
Monday: 2-3pm
Wednesday: 1-2pm
Thursday: 2-3pm
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