[ecrea] CFP: Lifeplay journal - Volume 6: Videogame anthropology

LIFEPLAY JOURNAL. Volume 6.


VIDEOGAME ANTHROPOLOGY


EDITOR (Issue) D. Mario Barranco Navea.

Social and Cultural Anthropology researcher at the Geography and History 
Faculty of the University of Seville.


ISSUE BRIEF


We understand the videogame should be considered an important object of 
study for social sciences, insofar its own peculiarities allow for new 
epistemic frames. Drawing together anthropological concepts and 
videoludic media, it is realized the extent to which classic and 
contemporary ideas of the discipline, some of them seemingly surpassed, 
find a new shelter, spreading its implications to current networks and 
emergencies. This renewed applicability not only allows for the notions 
and difficulties of anthropology to be revisited under the light of new 
media, re-founded on representative terms, but also, as regards to an 
interactive artifact, the videogame achieves a unique execution and a 
social implementation of said concepts and difficulties. If we 
understand, by Gilles Deluze, that philosophy is no other than the 
discipline responsible for the fabrication of concepts, and we agree 
with the definition given by Tim Ingold that anthropology can be viewed 
as a form of philosophy that includes people, i.e., societies and agents 
in interaction with the conceptual, we can state, in summary, that the 
videogame has its own anthropology as well.

Therefore, the present edition will explore the basics for the 
delimitation of an anthropological approach to videoludic media. 
Ideally, this approach pursues, by retroduction, the conditions for an 
anthropological field or subdiscipline, responsible for the validation 
of the representative and constructivist possibilities of the videogame 
as an ethnographic medium. That is, the videogame is not constituted 
only as an object, susceptible of being tackled through ethnography, but 
also as an object constituted of new techniques and representative 
options; qualified, in any case, for the hermeneutic undertakings of 
conceptual and cultural translation. In short, to inquire, on the one 
hand, into the ethnography of the videogame and, on the other hand, into 
the possibility of a videoludic ethnography. An anthropology within the 
videogame that will invite for a speculative rate of the anthropology of 
the videogame.


Based on these considerations, the papers admitted for the Dossier 
section will be grouped under the following sections:


1. Anthropology in the videogame: where investigations based on an 
anthropology focused in practice and the discursive analysis, in close 
rapport with the program of Cultural Studies and which manifest a 
compromise with ontic levels of the program and the deontological 
margins of the investigation, thus fostering a critical epistemology, 
both reflexive and deconstructive. To this line of argument belong the 
works which touch upon any of the central themes of the discipline, such 
as genre, ethnicity, orientalism, colonialism, postcolonialism, 
decolonialism, identity, the concept of race, ethnocentrism, etc.


2. Anthropology of complexity applied to videogames: where will be 
admitted investigations finding in videogames a prominent object of the 
theories and tools of complexity and chaos, theory of networks, 
algorithm analysis and application in the videoludic representation, 
psychosocial experiences of artificial intelligence or its application 
to the medium of cognitive studies.



3. Anthropology and the videogame (or the videoludic): where space will 
be given to those investigations dealing with the relation between the 
videogame as medium, and ethnography as technique as well as formulative 
and representational machinery of cultural and social realities. This 
line of argument makes up a front for ontologic and anthropological 
vocation, akin to the controversial pairing of cinema and ethnography 
that, in the last century, has been happening close to Visual 
Anthropology. Thus, this line will welcome investigations that question 
the syntactic confluence, ergodic and substantive between the videogame 
and anthropology, as regards to expressive media which share a common 
empirical interaction.


FOCUS AND SCOPE (Issue)


As a consequence, LifePlay will accept investigations relating the 
videogame with the other central themes set forth, as well as the 
following descriptives:



1.- The videogame and today's sociological difficulties

2.- Traditional concepts of the discipline in its videoludic translation

3.- The videogame as a means for cultural formalization

4.- The anthropological nature of the videogame



SUBMITTING THE MANUSCRIPT FOR REVIEW


You may send your inquiries to the monographic dossier until *February 
28, 2017*, start date of the construction of the No. 6 LifePlay to be 
published in *June*.

1.­ Counting from that date, you will receive over the next 30 days an 
email stating that your work has been accepted by LifePlay, so will 
start the evaluation process. If the work does not meet publication 
standards required by the magazine, the paper will be refunded.

2.­ After receiving our approval, the evaluation process begins. Your 
paper will be sent to two external referees to assess their relevance 
for publication in LifePlay. The review period is 21 days.

3.­Once received peer review, the magazine will proceed to send the 
document to the author to rush the corrections indicated by the external 
referees, in case any. The deadline to return the paper corrected will 
be 7 days. In the absence of such corrections, the author will receive 
an email indicating the imminent publication of his/her academic paper.

Research for DOSSIER be sent to the address below.

Remember that the other sections are open to your feedback at any time 
and they are not subject to call for papers.

In any case, see Publication 
RULES:[http://lifeplay.es/LifePlay/LP_normativa.pdf].

DOSSIER section: (dossier /at/ lifeplay.es) <mailto:(dossier /at/ lifeplay.es)>

TECHNICAL section: (tecnica /at/ lifeplay.es) <mailto:(tecnica /at/ lifeplay.es)>

MISCELLANEOUS section: (miscelanea /at/ lifeplay.es) 
<mailto:(miscelanea /at/ lifeplay.es)>

REVIEW: (resena /at/ lifeplay.es) <mailto:(resena /at/ lifeplay.es)>



Mario Barranco Navea

Researcher at the University of Seville
	

**

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