Games & Activities

How do we reconcile a videogame industry's insistence that games positively affect human beliefs and behaviors with the equally prevalent assumption that games are “just games”? How do we reconcile accusations that games make us violent and antisocial and unproductive with the realization that games are a universal source of human joy?
In Games are not, David Myers demonstrates that these controversies and conflicts surrounding the meanings and effects of games are not going away; they are essential properties of the game's paradoxical aesthetic form. Games are not focuses on games writ large, bound by neither digital form nor by cultural interpretation. Interdisciplinary in scope and radical in conclusion, Games are not positions games as unique objects evoking a peculiar and paradoxical liminal state – a lusory attitude – that is essential to human creativity, knowledge, and sustenance of the species.

In this new anthology, the editors of the widely acclaimed The Political Interests of Gender (1988) make a compelling case for reconstructing feminist theory in critical-realist terms, fostering more robust, multi-dimensional approaches to analyses of the political interests of gender.

Leading gender studies’ scholars utilise different research traditions to investigate topics including human rights, women’s movements, gendered labour markets, international monetary policy, equality policy, and queer politics. This unique anthology includes theoretical and empirical work, illustrating how to build bridges between materialist and discursive theoretical frameworks for understanding the politics of gender. It will be a trend-setting text for advanced gender studies political science, and sociology courses, as well as for professionals in these fields.