Join us for the School of Social Sciences Brown Bag lecture series on Monday, April 25th at 12pm with Ben Smith, Associate Professor of Human Development.
Title: How to Become a Gamer in Southern Peru
Description: Digital gaming has become an important site of socialization for indigenous and working class boys in the periurban areas of Southern Peru. In these areas, gaming is a collaborative practice played in large, public internet lounges. It is a practice that is simultaneously "local" and "global" across even the scale of interaction: it creates and sustains local networks of masculine solidarity in these internet lounges and it puts these networks into internet-mediated contact with teams of gamers from around the world. In this talk, I explore how boys come to be recruited into these networks as well as their sense of the social meaningfulness of gaming.
Dr. Smith is a Associate Professor in the Human Development program. His research develops theory on socialization in contexts in which new technologies and non-human animals play a role.
The School of Social Sciences Brown Bag Series is always free, open to faculty, staff, students, and the public, and provides a congenial interdisciplinary forum for the discussion of recent research by School of Social Sciences faculty. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021-2022 Brown Bag Series will take place via Zoom.