Serious Games provides a thorough exploration of the claim that playing games can provide learning that is deep, sustained and transferable to the real world. "Serious games" is defined herein as any form of interactive computer-based game software for one or multiple players to be used on any platform and that has been developed to provide more than entertainment to players. With this volume, the editors address the gap in exisiting scholarship on gaming, providing an academic overview on the mechanisms and effects of serious games. Contributors investigate the psychological mechanisms that take place not only during gaming, but also in game selection, persistent play, and gaming impact.

The work in this collection focuses on the desirable outcomes of digital game play. The editors distinguish between three possible effects -- learning, development, and change -- covering a broad range of serious games potential impact. Contributions from internationally recognized scholars focus on five objectives:

• Define the area of serious games
• Elaborate on the underlying theories that explain suggested psychological mechanisms elicited through serious game play, addressing cognitive, affective and social processes
• Summarize the empirical evidence on the effectiveness of serious games,
• Introduce innovative research methods as a response to methodological challenges imposed through interactive media
• Discuss the possibilities and limitations of selected applications for educational purposes.

Anchored primarily in social science research, the reader will be introduced to approaches that focus on the gaming process and the users experiences. Additional perspectives will be provided in the concluding chapters, written from non-social science approaches by experts in academic game design and representatives of the gaming industry. The editors acknowledge the necessity for a broader interdisciplinary study of the phenomena and work to overcome the methodological divide in games research to look ahead to a more integrated and interdisciplinary study of digital games.

This timely and singular volume will appeal to scholars, researchers, and graduate students working in media entertainment and game studies in the areas of education, media, communication, and psychology.

Taking us on an ethnographic journey into the spatially transgressive practice of parkour and freerunning, Parkour, Deviance and Leisure in the Late-Capitalist City: An Ethnography attempts to explain and untangle some of the contradictions that surround this popular lifestyle sport and its exclusion from our hyper-regulated cities. While the existing criminological wisdom suggests that these practices are a form of politicised resistance, this book positions parkour and freerunning as hyper-conformist to the underlying values of consumer capitalism and explains how late-capitalism has created a contradiction for itself in which it must stoke desire for these lifestyle practices whilst also excluding their free practice from central urban spaces. Drawing on the emergent deviant leisure perspective, this book takes us into the life-worlds of young people who are attempting to navigate the challenges and anxieties of early adulthood. For the young people in this study, consumer capitalism's commodification of rebellious iconography offered unique identities of 'cool individualism' and opportunities for flexibilised employment; while the post-industrial 'creative city' attempted to harness parkour's practice, prohibitively if necessary, into approved spatial contexts under the buzzwords of 'culture' and 'creativity'. This book offers a vital contribution to the criminological literature on spatial transgression, and in doing so, engages in a critical reappraisal of the evolution of the relationships between work, leisure, identity and urban space in consumer capitalism.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. In 'Japanese Women and Sport', Robin Kietlinski sets out to problematize the hegemonic image of the delicate Japanese woman, highlighting an overlooked area in the history of modern Japan. Previous studies of gender in the Japanese context do not explore the history of female participation in sport, and recent academic studies of women and sport tend to focus on Western countries. Kietlinski locates the discussion of Japanese women in sport within a larger East Asian context and considers the socio-economic position and history of modern Japan. Reaching from the early 20th century to the present day, Kietlinski traces the progression of Japanese women's participation in sport from the first female school for physical education and the foundations of competitive sport through to their growing presence in the Olympics and international sport.

Fathering is a highly contested concept in popular, media, academic and policy discourses, yet in the areas of family studies and men's studies the leisure component of family life is under-played. This book provides a long overdue and thorough investigation of the relationship between fatherhood, sport, and leisure. Fathering Through Sport and Leisure investigates what fathers actually do in the time they spend with their children. Leading researchers from the fields of sport, leisure and family studies examine the tensions men encounter as they endeavour to meet the new expectations of fatherhood, and the central role that sport and leisure play in overcoming this. Analyzed in relation to social trends and current policy debates, this unique collection examines fathering in a wide range of contexts including: parental expectation and youth sports fathers and daughters leisure time and couple time in dual earner families divorce, fatherhood and leisure. The book shows how contemporary fathers use sport and leisure to engage with their sons and daughters, achieve emotional closeness and fulfil their own expectations of what it means to be a 'good father'. Drawing on research carried out in the UK, Australia, Canada and the United States, this is a crucial text for anybody with an interest in leisure studies, family studies or fatherhood.

This book offers conceptual and practical insights into the complex interactions between ecotourism and the natural environment, with consideration given to government policy, marketing by suppliers, consumer behaviour and visitor/environmental management. Illustrated by international case studies the roles of and interplay between tour operators, their clients, resource managers and local communities are examined. This creates a comprehensive and insightful overview of the factors that work for and against the achievement of environmental sustainability in and through ecotourism. The result is a critical examination of ecotourism and environmental sustainability that highlights ideas for best practice and proposes new directions for future research

This groundbreaking work explores masculinity and the body within sports. Sports continue to retain expectations for presentations of specific forms of masculinity. The body is central to these presentations. These everyday bodily performances are rehearsed and performed either successfully or unsuccessfully - and the consequences of these actions play a significant part in the ability of the individual to continue to take part. Through participant observations, sporting life-history interviews (with over forty men) and research with children, this book examines the ways in which 'appropriate' sporting masculinities are learned and enacted to varying degrees of success. Wellard highlights the social processes which impact upon individual constructions and formulations of masculine identity and reviews these in relation to broader debates on gender, embodiment and sporting participation. This book contributes not only to the academic fields of sport and gender, but also to the efforts to confront continued forms of 'accepted' gender discrimination.

Despite the fact that there are around 1.2 million powered two wheelers (PTWs) within the United Kingdom, riders are often misconceived as living at the edge of society; however, this is often far from the truth. Riding a PTW is a high-risk activity and those who ride are often perceived as being 'risk junkies', but through an in-depth exploration of this leisure activity, Motorcycling and Leisure explains that riders ride because they enjoy it and do not necessarily enjoy the risk involved. The book presents a range of contemporary research on riders and how they find enjoyment. The book further explores the rider goal of enjoyment and utilises Fuller's task homeostasis theory along with Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow to develop an understanding of the interaction between risk and goals. In conclusion it develops principles of interventions with the aim of guiding intervention design and reducing the number of motorcycle crashes.

Most sociological work on football fandom has focused on the experience of men, and it usually talks about alcohol, fighting and general hooliganism. This book shows that there are some unique facets of female experience and fascinating negotiations of identity within the male-dominated world of men's professional football.

It is increasingly acknowledged that an analysis of emotions is necessary to fully understand the social world, and recent research on transport, travel and mobilities has begun to consider the gendered nature of public and personal life in relation to this sphere. A The focus of this multidisciplinary and auto/biographical volume is the emotional relationship that individuals and groups have with different means of travel. Attention is given to a variety of travel experiences, including travelling in trains, planes, cars, buses and ships, as well as biking, cycling, running and walking, from the perspective of travellers and those who earn their living in assisting these experiences of others. Imaginary travel and the relationships between art and travel are also considered. A Adopting innovative approaches to experiential material ranging from personal memories to empirical research, Gendered Journeys, Mobile Emotions opens up and illuminates an interdisciplinary debate about the gendered, emotive and emotional nature of travelling.

Overuse of the internet is often characterized as problematic, disruptive, or addictive, with stories frequently claiming that online use interferes with relationships, or that 'excessive' time in front of computer screens is unhealthy. The Multiplicities of Internet Addiction contests the claim that computers - specifically Internet use - are addictive, arguing that use of the Internet is now a form of everyday leisure engaged in by many people in Western society. Offering an analysis of the nature of addiction alongside a detailed empirical study of home computer use, this book will be of interest not only to sociologists of culture and popular culture, but also to scholars of media, ICT and education.

The state of Israel is a home for a widely diverse population from many different ethnic, religious, cultural and social backgrounds; a new society with ancient roots, which is still coalescing and developing today. Israeli sport, maybe more than any other cultural phenomenon, has changed radically since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Over the past six decades, Israeli sport has evolved from an amateur hobby of a few sports freaks, to a passion of the masses. The transformation to a major cultural phenomenon is the result of general developments in Israeli and international society. The aim of the book is to shed light on those processes that shaped the Israeli sport arena.

Following the steps of numerous research perspectives, that considers sports as "text" within a socio-historical context, this book deals with the development of Israeli sports in Palestine and, later, the State of Israel as a text (or a narrative) which was contingent on the socio-historical context.

In seeking to comprehend these processes, this book is divided into three parts. The Palestine period, the early stage of statehood, and the "matured" period which began in and around the early 1980s. Each period is narrated by the major participants and the major political-economical parameters which, as it is argued, shaped Israeli sport.

This book was published as a special issue of the Israeli Affairs.

The cultural ubiquity, political prominence and economic significance of contemporary sport present fertile terrain for its critical socio-cultural analysis. From corporate and media dominated mega-events like the Olympic Games, to state programmes for nation-building and health promotion, to the cultural politics of "race", gender, sexuality, age and disability, sport is so profoundly marked by relations of power that it lends itself to critique and deconstruction. Marxism, Cultural Studies and Sport brings together leading experts on sport to address these issues and to reflect on the continued appeal of sport to people across the globe, as well as on the forms of inequality that sport both produces and highlights. Including a Foreword by Harry Cleaver and Afterword by Michael Berube, this book assesses the impact of this work on the fields of 'mainstream' Marxism and cultural studies. Marxism, Cultural Studies and Sport is centred on three vital questions: Is Marxism still relevant for understanding sport in the twenty-first century? Has Marxism been preserved or transcended by cultural studies? What is the relationship between theory and intervention in the politics of sport? The result is a unique and diverse examination of modern sports culture. The first book published on the relationship between sport and Marxism for over twenty years, Marxism, Cultural Studies and Sport is an invaluable resource for students of sport sociology, Marxism, and cultural studies at all levels.

Disability sport is a relatively recent phenomenon, yet it is also one that, particularly in the context of social inclusion, is attracting increasing political and academic interest. The purpose of this important new text - the first of its kind - is to introduce the reader to key concepts in disability and disability sport and to examine the complex relationships between modern sport, disability and other aspects of wider society. Drawing upon original data from interviews, surveys and policy documents, the book examines how disability sport has developed and is currently organised, and explores key themes, issues and concepts including: disability theory and policy the emergence and development of disability sport disability sport development in local authorities mainstreaming disability sport disability, physical education and school sport elite disability sport and the Paralympic Games disability sport and the media. Including chapter summaries, seminar questions and lists of key websites and further reading throughout, Sport, Disability and Society provides both an easy to follow introduction and a critical exploration of the key issues surrounding disability sport in the twenty-first century. This book is an invaluable resource for all students, researchers and professionals working in sport studies, disability studies, physical education, sociology and social policy. Nigel Thomas is Head of Sport and Exercise at Staffordshire University, UK, where his research focuses on the history, mainstreaming, and media coverage of disability sport. He previously worked for ten years with young disabled people as a sports development officer in local authorities and national governing bodies. Andy Smith is Lecturer in the Sociology of Sport and Exercise at the University of Chester, UK. He is a co-editor of the International Journal of Sport Policy, and a co-author of Sport Policy and Development: A Sociological Introduction, and An Introduction to Drugs in Sport: Addicted to Winning? Both books are published by Routledge (2009).

In these essays, thirty of the leading scholars in sports communication tackle a wide range of subjects, including the ways in which people root for their teams, the consumption of sports information, and the uses of technology to cultivate fan communities. Taking an interdisciplinary approach through the fields of communication, psychology and telecommunications, this collection explores modern fans, their motives and culture, and their identification with sports and individual teams.

Hoop Dreams on Wheels is a life-history study of wheelchair athletes associated with a premier collegiate wheelchair basketball program. The book, which grapples with the intersection of biography and history in society, situates the study in broader context with background on the history and sociology of disability and disability sports. It documents the development and evolution of the basketball program and tells the individual life stories of the athletes, highlighting the formative interpersonal and institutional experiences that influenced their agentive actions and that helped them achieve success in wheelchair sports. It also examines divisions within the disability community that reveal both empowering and disempowering aspects of competitive wheelchair athletics, and it explores some of the complexities and dilemmas of disability identity in contemporary society. The book is intended to be read by a general audience as well as by students in college courses on disability, sports, social problems, deviance, medical sociology and anthropology, and introductory sociology. It also will be of interest to scholars in the sociology of disability, sociology of sports, and medical humanities, as well as life-history researchers and professionals in the fields of physical education, therapeutic recreation, and rehabilitative counseling.

In the last decade lifestyle television has become one of the most dominant television genres, with certain shows now global brands with formats exploited by producers all over the world. What unites these programmes is their belief that the human subject has a flexible, malleable identity that can be changed within television-friendly frameworks. In contrast to the talk shows of the eighties and nineties where modest transformation was discussed as an ideal, advances in technology, combined with changing tastes and demands of viewers, have created an appetite for dramatic transformations. This volume presents case studies from across the lifestyle genre, considering a variety of themes but with a shared understanding of the self as an evolving project, driven by enterprise. Written by an international team of scholars, the collection will appeal to sociologists of culture and consumption, as well as to scholars of media studies and media production throughout the world.

Critical Race Theory provides a framework for exploring racism in society, taking into account the role of institutions and drawing on the experiences of those affected. Applied to the world of sport, this framework can reveal the underlying social mores and institutionalised prejudices that have helped perpetuate those racial stereotypes particular to sport, and those that permeate broader society. In this groundbreaking sociological investigation, Kevin Hylton takes on the controversial subject of racial attitudes in sport and beyond. With sport as his primary focus, Hylton unpacks the central concepts of 'race', ethnicity, social constructionism and racialisation, and helps the reader navigate the complicated issues and debates that surround the study of 'race' in sport. Containing rigorous and insightful analysis throughout, the book explores key topics such as: the origins, applications and terminology of Critical Race Theory the meaning of 'whiteness' the media, sport and racism anti-racism and sport genetics and scientific racism. The contested concepts that define the subject of 'race' in sport present a constant challenge for academics, policy makers and practitioners in the development of their ideas, policies and interventions. This innovative and challenging book is essential reading for anybody looking to fully understand this important subject.

Critical Race Theory provides a framework for exploring racism in society, taking into account the role of institutions and drawing on the experiences of those affected. Applied to the world of sport, this framework can reveal the underlying social mores and institutionalised prejudices that have helped perpetuate those racial stereotypes particular to sport, and those that permeate broader society. In this groundbreaking sociological investigation, Kevin Hylton takes on the controversial subject of racial attitudes in sport and beyond. With sport as his primary focus, Hylton unpacks the central concepts of 'race', ethnicity, social constructionism and racialisation, and helps the reader navigate the complicated issues and debates that surround the study of 'race' in sport. Containing rigorous and insightful analysis throughout, the book explores key topics such as: the origins, applications and terminology of Critical Race Theory the meaning of 'whiteness' the media, sport and racism anti-racism and sport genetics and scientific racism. The contested concepts that define the subject of 'race' in sport present a constant challenge for academics, policy makers and practitioners in the development of their ideas, policies and interventions. This innovative and challenging book is essential reading for anybody looking to fully understand this important subject.

Is the garden a consumption site where identities are constructed? Do gardeners make aesthetic choices according to how they are positioned by class and gender? This book presents the first scholarly analysis of the relationship between media interest in gardening and cultural identities. With an examination of aesthetic dispositions as a symbolic mode of communication closely aligned to peoples' identities and drawing on ethnographic data gathered from encounters with gardeners, this book maps a typology of gardening taste, revealing that gardening - how plants are chosen, planted and cared for - is a classed and gendered practice manifested in specific types of visual aesthetics. This timely and original book develops a new area within cultural studies while contributing to debates about lifestyle and lifestyle media, consumption, class and methodology. A must read for anybody concerned with or intrigued by the cultural construction of identification practices.

Playing with Videogames documents the richly productive, playful and social cultures of videogaming that support, surround and sustain this most important of digital media forms and yet which remain largely invisible within existing studies.

James Newman details the rich array of activities that surround game-playing, charting the vibrant and productive practices of the vast number of videogame players and the extensive 'shadow' economy of walkthroughs, FAQs, art, narratives, online discussion boards and fan games, as well as the cultures of cheating, copying and piracy that have emerged.

Playing with Videogames offers the reader a comprehensive understanding of the meanings of videogames and videogaming within the contemporary media environment.

Despite the importance of sport as a social, economic and political institution, research into sport and social capital has not been extensive. Sport and Social Capital is the first book to examine this increasingly high profile area in detail. It explores the ways in which sport contributes to the creation, development, maintenance and, in some cases, diminution of social capital. Written by an internationally renowned author team who are leading figures in this area of study, this engaging and far-reaching text brings leading research from around the world into one comprehensively edited volume.Themes covered in the book include: education, gender, policy, community, youth sport, diversity and many more. It is essential reading for sport management, sport development and sport sociology students around the globe and offers fascinating and invaluable insight to interested stakeholders from industry, community and government. This is a progressive text which is the first book to explore sport's increasingly important contribution to social capital. It is written by the top authors in this field and comprehensively edited into a unified volume. It analyses the importance of sport and its relationship to social capital within local, national and international communities.

Drawing on a broad range of historical and sociological literature, this book traces the everyday gambling experiences of a diverse group of women. It provides fascinating and original insights into the pleasures afforded to women through their gambling participation and draws on a variety of feminist literature to understand women's motivations and experience of play, and to examine the ways in which women negotiate their right to gamble without reprimand. Since gambling tends to be framed within moral discourses of danger and excess, this book offers a defence of women's decisions to gamble against an often hostile backdrop. It rewrites claims that gambling is 'meaningless' and reckless spending, by pointing instead to the highly complex strategies that women who gamble employ. Importantly, it adds to contemporary feminist debates about women's leisure by showing how women seize control of their lives in order to carve out a time and space for the pursuit of pleasure.

The Meaning of Video Games takes a textual studies approach to an increasingly important form of expression in today's culture. It begins by assuming that video games are meaningful-not just as sociological or economic or cultural evidence, but in their own right, as cultural expressions worthy of scholarly attention. In this way, this book makes a contribution to the study of video games, but it also aims to enrich textual studies. Early video game studies scholars were quick to point out that a game should never be reduced to merely its "story" or narrative content and they rightly insist on the importance of studying games as games. But here Steven E. Jones demonstrates that textual studies-which grows historically out of ancient questions of textual recension, multiple versions, production, reproduction, and reception-can fruitfully be applied to the study of video games. Citing specific examples such as Myst and Lost, Katamari Damacy, Halo, Facade, Nintendo's Wii, and Will Wright's Spore, the book explores the ways in which textual studies concepts-authorial intention, textual variability and performance, the paratext, publishing history and the social text-can shed light on video games as more than formal systems. It treats video games as cultural forms of expression that are received as they are played, out in the world, where their meanings get made.

This book examines and establishes the sociological relevance of the concept of populism and illuminates the ideological use of sport, leisure, and popular culture in socio-political populist strategies and dynamics. The first part of the book - Themes, Concepts, Theories - sets the scene by reviewing and evaluating populist themes, concepts, and theories and exploring their cultural-historical roots in and application to cultural forms such as mega-sports events, reality television programmes, and the popular music festival. The second part - National Contexts and Settings - examines populist elements of events and regimes in selected cases in South America and Europe: Argentina, Brazil, Greece, Italy, and England. In the third part - Trump Times - the place of sport in the populist ideology and practices of US president Donald Trump is critically examined in analyses of Trump's authoritarian populism, his Twitter discourse, Lady Gaga at the Super Bowl, and populist strategy on the international stage. The book concludes with a discussion of the strong case for a fuller sociological engagement with the populist dimensions of sport, leisure, and popular cultural forms. Written in a clear and accessible style, this volume will be of interest to sociologists and social scientists beyond those specialising in popular culture and cultural politics of sport and leisure, as the topic of populism and its connection to popular cultural forms and practices has come increasingly into prominence in the contemporary world.

'Whannel is a foundational figure in the study of sports and the media. ...For 20 years his writing has set a high standard ...and it remains an inspiration to many' - Toby Miller, Professor of Cultural Studies, New York University, USA Garry Whannel's text Blowing the Whistle: The Politics of Sport broke new ground when it was first published in 1983. Its polemical discussion brought sports as cultural politics into the academic arena and set the agenda for a new wave of researchers. Since the 1980s sport studies has matured both as an academic discipline and as a focus for mainstream political and public policy debate. In Culture, Politics and Sport: Blowing the Whistle, Revisited, Garry Whannel revisits the themes that led his first edition, assessing their 1980s context from our new millennium perspective, and exploring their continued relevance for contemporary sports academics. This revisited volume will appeal to undergraduate students and researchers in sports and cultural studies. Garry Whannel is Professor of Media Cultures and Director of the Centre for International Media Analysis at the University of Bedfordshire. His previous books include Media Sports Stars: Masculinities and Moralities, Fields in Vision: Television Sport and Cultural Transformation, Understanding Sport (co-authored with John Horne and Alan Tomlinson) and Understanding Television (co-edited with Andrew Goodwin), all published by Routledge.