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Playing on the Periphery: Sport, Identity and Memory (Sport in the Global Society)
by Tara BrabazonPart of the Sport in the Global Society series, this innovative and creative text explores collective history, memory, and sport culture, tracking the passage of sports away from England. The author investigates why ‘elite’ English sports – such as rugby and cricket – became national sports in New Zealand and Australia, and asks why ‘working class’ English sports – such as football – have travelled less well to these areas. Focusing on these sports, the author tracks narratives and myths, tracing the passage of colonial truths, behaviours and practices. Clearly defined sections in the book focus on: * sport and tourism* sport and history* sport and memory. Using a refreshingly broad range of sources to analyze differences between popular culture and sporting memory, this book offers new perspectives on sport and makes an interesting reference for masters and postgraduate readers in sport and cultural studies.
Playing Out of Bounds: “Belonging” and the North American Chinese Invitational Volleyball Tournament (G - Reference, Information and Interdisciplinary Subjects)
by Yuka NakamuraPlaying Out of Bounds investigates the North American Chinese Invitational Volleyball Tournament (NACIVT), an annual event that began in the 1930s in the streets of Manhattan and now attracts 1200 competitors from the U.S. and Canada. Its two key features are the 9-man game, where there are nine instead of the usual six volleyball players on the court, and the fact that player eligibility is limited to "100% Chinese" and Asian players, as defined in the tournament rules. These rules that limit competitors to specific ethno-racial groups is justified by the discrimination that Chinese people faced when they were denied access to physical activity spaces, and instead played in the alleyways and streets of Chinatowns. Drawing on interviews, participant-observation, and analysis of websites and tournament documents, Playing Out of Bounds explores how participants understand and negotiate their sense of belonging within this community of volleyball players and how membership within and the boundaries of this community are continually being (re)defined. This identity/community building occurs within a context of anti-Asian racism, growing numbers of mixed race players, and fluidity of what it means to be Canadian, American, Chinese, and Asian.
Playing Software: Homo Ludens in Computational Culture
by Miguel SicartThe play element at the heart of our interactions with computers—and how it drives the best and the worst manifestations of the information age.Whether we interact with video games or spreadsheets or social media, playing with software shapes every facet of our lives. In Playing Software, Miguel Sicart delves into why we play with computers, how that play shapes culture and society, and the threat posed by malefactors using play to weaponize everything from conspiracy theories to extractive capitalism. Starting from the controversial idea that software is an essential agent in the information age, Sicart considers our culture in general—and our way of thinking about and creating digital technology in particular—as a consequence of interacting with software&’s agency through play.As Sicart shows, playing shapes software agency. In turn, software shapes our agency as we adapt and relate to it through play. That play drives the creation of new cultural, social, and political forms. Sicart also reveals the role of make-believe in driving our playful engagement with the digital sphere. From there, he discusses the cybernetic theory of digital play and what we can learn from combining it with the idea that playfulness can mean pleasurable interaction with human and nonhuman agents inside the boundaries of a computational system. Finally, he critiques the instrumentalization of play as a tool wielded by platform capitalism.
Playing the Identity Card: Surveillance, Security and Identification in Global Perspective
by David Lyon Colin J. BennettNational identity cards are in the news. While paper ID documents have been used in some countries for a long time, today's rapid growth features high-tech IDs with built-in biometrics and RFID chips. Both long-term trends towards e-Government and the more recent responses to 9/11 have prompted the quest for more stable identity systems. Commercial pressures mix with security rationales to catalyze ID development, aimed at accuracy, efficiency and speed. New ID systems also depend on computerized national registries. Many questions are raised about new IDs but they are often limited by focusing on the cards themselves or on "privacy." Playing the Identity Card shows not only the benefits of how the state can "see" citizens better using these instruments but also the challenges this raises for civil liberties and human rights. ID cards are part of a broader trend towards intensified surveillance and as such are understood very differently according to the history and cultures of the countries concerned.
Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O. J. Simpson
by Linda WilliamsThe black man suffering at the hands of whites, the white woman sexually threatened by the black man. Both images have long been burned into the American conscience through popular entertainment, and today they exert a powerful and disturbing influence on Americans' understanding of race. So argues Linda Williams in this boldly inquisitive book, where she probes the bitterly divisive racial sentiments aroused by such recent events as O. J. Simpson's criminal trial. Williams, the author of Hard Core, explores how these images took root, beginning with melodramatic theater, where suffering characters acquire virtue through victimization. The racial sympathies and hostilities that surfaced during the trial of the police in the beating of Rodney King and in the O. J. Simpson murder trial are grounded in the melodramatic forms of Uncle Tom's Cabin and The Birth of a Nation. Williams finds that Stowe's beaten black man and Griffith's endangered white woman appear repeatedly throughout popular entertainment, promoting interracial understanding at one moment, interracial hate at another. The black and white racial melodrama has galvanized emotions and fueled the importance of new media forms, such as serious, "integrated" musicals of stage and film, including The Jazz Singer and Show Boat. It also helped create a major event out of the movie Gone With the Wind, while enabling television to assume new moral purpose with the broadcast of Roots. Williams demonstrates how such developments converged to make the televised race trial a form of national entertainment. When prosecutor Christopher Darden accused Simpson's defense team of "playing the race card," which ultimately trumped his own team's gender card, he feared that the jury's sympathy for a targeted black man would be at the expense of the abused white wife. The jury's verdict, Williams concludes, was determined not so much by facts as by the cultural forces of racial melodrama long in the making. Revealing melodrama to be a key element in American culture, Williams argues that the race images it has promoted are deeply ingrained in our minds and that there can be no honest discussion about race until Americans recognize this predicament.
Playing the Supporting Role: Strip Club Managers and Other Third Parties
by Tuulia LawStrippers may be the main attraction of strip clubs, but their work is bolstered by people who are rarely meaningfully considered: those who organize, supervise, manage, or coordinate the labour of erotic dancers, including managers, bouncers, and disc jockeys. Playing the Supporting Role contends it is essential to explore the managerial layer in order to have a comprehensive understanding of the power relations and working conditions in the erotic dance sector – and, consequently, distinguish banal or beneficial from unfair or exploitative sex-industry labour practices. Focusing primarily on third parties in the erotic dance sector, this book examines who these individuals are; how they manage clients, workers, security, and stigma; the services and resources they provide; and, in turn, strippers’ experiences and perceptions of these practices. Through qualitative interview data with third parties and strippers from two Ontario cities, Playing the Supporting Role ultimately advances an understanding of third-party work as gendered, classed, and racialized occupational performance in a stigmatized labour sector that is simultaneously over- and under-regulated.
Playing to Win
by Hilary Levey FriedmanPlaying to Win: Raising Children in a Competitive Culture follows the path of elementary school-age children involved in competitive dance, youth travel soccer, and scholastic chess. Why do American children participate in so many adult-run activities outside of the home, especially when family time is so scarce? By analyzing the roots of these competitive afterschool activities and their contemporary effects, Playing to Win contextualizes elementary school-age children's activities, and suggests they have become proving grounds for success in the tournament of life--especially when it comes to coveted admission to elite universities, and beyond. In offering a behind-the-scenes look at how "Tiger Moms" evolve, Playing to Win introduces concepts like competitive kid capital, the carving up of honor, and pink warrior girls. Perfect for those interested in childhood and family, education, gender, and inequality, Playing to Win details the structures shaping American children's lives as they learn how to play to win.
Playing to Win: Sports, Video Games, And The Culture Of Play (Digital Game Studies)
by David J. Gunkel Robert Alan BrookeyIn this era of big media franchises, sports branding has crossed platforms, so that the sport, its television broadcast, and its replication in an electronic game are packaged and promoted as part of the same fan experience. Editors Robert Alan Brookey and Thomas P. Oates trace this development back to the unexpected success of Atari's Pong in the 1970s, which provoked a flood of sport simulation games that have had an impact on every sector of the electronic game market. From golf to football, basketball to step aerobics, electronic sports games are as familiar in the American household as the televised sporting events they simulate. This book explores the points of convergence at which gaming and sports culture merge.
Playing to Win
by A. G. Lafley Roger L. MartinThis is A.G. Lafley's guidebook. Shouldn't it be yours as well?Winning CEO A.G. Lafley is now back at the helm of consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble. If you want to know the strategy he'll use to restore P&G to its former dominance-read this book.Playing to Win, a noted Wall Street Journal and Washington Post bestseller, outlines the strategic approach Lafley, in close partnership with strategic adviser Roger Martin, used to double P&G's sales, quadruple its profits, and increase its market value by more than $100 billion when Lafley was first CEO (he led the company from 2000 to 2009). The book shows leaders in any type of organization how to guide everyday actions with larger strategic goals built around the clear, essential elements that determine business success-where to play and how to win.Lafley and Martin have created a set of five essential strategic choices that, when addressed in an integrated way, will move you ahead of your competitors. They are: (1) What is our winning aspiration? (2) Where will we play? (3) How will we win? (4) What capabilities must we have in place to win? and (5) What management systems are required to support our choices? The result is a playbook for winning.The stories of how P&G repeatedly won by applying this method to iconic brands such as Olay, Bounty, Gillette, Swiffer, and Febreze clearly illustrate how deciding on a strategic approach-and then making the right choices to support it-makes the difference between just playing the game and actually winning.Playing to Win outlines a proven method that has worked for some of today's most celebrated brands and products. Let this book serve as your new guide to winning, as well.
Playing with Fire: Queer Politics, Queer Theories (Thinking Gender)
by Shane PhelanThe last five years have witnessed the birth of a vibrant new group of young scholars who are writing about queer law, politics, and policy--topics which are no longer treated as of interest only to lesbians and gay men, but which now garner the attention of political theorists of all stripes. Playing With Fire--the first scholarly collection on queer politics by US political theorists--opens the intersection of lesbian and gay studies and political theory to a wide audience. It covers a wide range of issues, including: the theory of queer identities; the contrasts among ethnic, racial, and sexual identities; the debate between liberals and communitarians; the right to privacy; and the meaning of equal citizenship.
Playing with the Big Boys: Basketball, American Imperialism, and Subaltern Discourse in the Philippines
by Lou AntolihaoBasketball has a lock on the Filipino soul. From big arenas in Manila to makeshift hoops in small villages, basketball is played by Filipinos of all walks of life and is used to mark everything from summer breaks for students to religious festivals and many other occasions. Playing with the Big Boys traces the social history of basketball in the Philippines from an educational and “civilizing” tool in the early twentieth century to its status as national pastime since the country gained independence after World War II. While the phrase “playing with the big boys” describes the challenge of playing basketball against outsized opponents, it also describes the struggle for recognition that the Philippines, as a subaltern society, has had to contend with in its larger transnational relationships as a former U.S. colony. Lou Antolihao goes beyond the empire-colony dichotomy by covering Filipino basketball in a wider range of comparisons, such as that involving the growing influence of Asia in its region, particularly China and Japan. In this context, Antolihao shows how Philippines basketball has moved from a vehicle for Americanization to a force for globalization in which the United States, while still a key player, is challenged by other basketball-playing countries.
Playing With Time: Mothers And The Meaning Of Literacy
by Jane MaceAgainst a background of press reports of declining literacy standards, there is a dominant idea that both the responsibility for literacy learning and the key to literacy success lies as much within the family as in the school. With women in particular, feel pressurized to be responsible for their children's literacy. Using a historical framework, this book explores the lives of mothers born after 1870.
Playing with Words (Group Games Ser.)
by Rosemary Portmann Elisabeth SchneiderWith an emphasis on learning through play, this book provides a comprehensive collection of word games for vocabulary development or to constructively fill leisure time. The activities are suitable for children and adults and can be adapted for different client groups. They are ideal for teachers, therapists, youth club leaders or activity providers. The only principle for including a game in this collection is that it had to be fun to play! This title includes: A-E-I-O-U; Letter patience; 'M' in the middle; double meanings; Pro-nouns; Haiku; Guessing rhyming words; Forbidden letters; Who has the word?; and Word snakes. The only principle for including a game in this collection is that it had to be fun to play!
Plays Well with Others: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Relationships Is (Mostly) Wrong
by Eric BarkerFrom the author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Barking Up the Wrong Tree comes a cure-all for our increasing emotional distance and loneliness—a smart, surprising, and thoroughly entertaining guide to help build better friendships, reignite love, and get closer to others, whether you’re an extrovert or introvert, socially adept or socially anxious.Can you judge a book by its cover? Is a friend in need truly a friend indeed? Does love conquer all? Is no man an island? In Plays Well with Others, Eric Barker dives into these age-old maxims drawing on science to reveal the truth beyond the conventional wisdom about human relationships. Combining his compelling storytelling and humor, Barker explains what hostage negotiation techniques and marital arguments have in common, how an expert con-man lied his way into a twenty-year professional soccer career, and why those holding views diametrically opposed to our own actually have the potential to become our closest, most trusted friends.Inside you will learn:The two things essential to making friends – and what Dale Carnegie got wrong.What creates love, reignites love, and sustains love. (There’s no Build-A-Bear store for a happy marriage but this is close.)The ethical and effective way to get your partner to change.How social media can actually improve relationships.The antidote to loneliness and why what we usually hear doesn’t work.And so much more. The book is packed with high-five-worthy stories about the greatest female detective to ever live, the most successful liar to ever open his mouth, genius horses, thieving hermits, the perils of perfect memories, and placebos. Leveraging the best evidence available—free of platitudes or magical thinking—Barker analyzes multiple sides of an issue before rendering his verdict. What he’s uncovered is surprising, counterintuitive, and timely—and will change the way you interact in the world and with those around you just when you need it most.
Please Don't Remain Calm: Provocations and Commentaries
by Michael KinsleyThis volume collects editorial columns penned by Slate founder and center-left political pundit Michael Kinsley between 1995 and 2007. Kinsley addresses a diverse range of topics, including the Wen Ho Lee case, Bush v. Gore, the definition of terrorism, the Martha Stewart insider trading case, the United Nations and the US war on Iraq, the Valerie Plame scandal, nostalgia for the late Ronald Reagan, and Supreme Court nominations, to name just a few. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Please Fire Me: Posts from the Revolting Workplace
by Adam Chromy Jill MorrisIf you work in the kind of place where your boss's door is always open, the coffee is always refilled, and professionalism reigns, then kindly put down this book and throw yourself off something very tall. If years of being frustrated by arrogant douche bags and mental pygmies have left you ready to burn the world to the ground while laughing, then prepare to discover someone actually has it worse.
Please Give My Baby Back (A Maggie Hartley Foster Carer Story)
by Maggie HartleyA new short-story from Britain's most-loved foster carer, perfect for fans of Cathy Glass and Casey Watson When a health visitor notices a bruise on her newborn son's leg, Robyn's world quickly falls apart. Before she knows what's happening, police are called and three-week-old Quinn is being taken to hospital to be examined. As Robyn can't give them any definite explanation as to what's caused the bruise, Quinn is immediately taken into care and given to Maggie to foster while Social Services investigate.With no idea how long the investigation will take and in total shock and distress that her newborn son has been taken from her, Robyn appeals to Maggie for help. But is Robyn really telling the truth that she hasn't harmed her baby? And if so, can Maggie help her prove her innocence and convince Social Services and the courts to let her bring Quinn home?
Please Give My Baby Back (A Maggie Hartley Foster Carer Story)
by Maggie HartleyA new short-story from Britain's most-loved foster carer, perfect for fans of Cathy Glass and Casey Watson When a health visitor notices a bruise on her newborn son's leg, Robyn's world quickly falls apart. Before she knows what's happening, police are called and three-week-old Quinn is being taken to hospital to be examined. As Robyn can't give them any definite explanation as to what's caused the bruise, Quinn is immediately taken into care and given to Maggie to foster while Social Services investigate.With no idea how long the investigation will take and in total shock and distress that her newborn son has been taken from her, Robyn appeals to Maggie for help. But is Robyn really telling the truth that she hasn't harmed her baby? And if so, can Maggie help her prove her innocence and convince Social Services and the courts to let her bring Quinn home?
Pleasure and Efficacy: Of Pen Names, Cover Versions, and Other Trans Techniques
by Grace Elisabeth LaveryA leading trans scholar and activist explores cultural representations of gender transition in the modern periodIn Pleasure and Efficacy, Grace Lavery investigates gender transition as it has been experienced and represented in the modern period. Considering examples that range from the novels of George Eliot to the psychoanalytic practice of Sigmund Freud to marriage manuals by Marie Stopes, Lavery explores the skepticism found in such works about whether it is truly possible to change one’s sex. This ambivalence, she argues, has contributed to both antitrans oppression and the civil rights claims with which trans people have confronted it. Lavery examines what she terms “trans pragmatism”—the ways that trans people resist medicalization and pathologization to achieve pleasure and freedom. Trans pragmatism, she writes, affirms that transition works, that it is possible, and that it happens.With Eliot and Freud as the guiding geniuses of the book, Lavery covers a vast range of modern culture—poetry, prose, criticism, philosophy, fiction, cinema, pop music, pornography, and memes. Since transition takes people out of one genre and deposits them in another, she suggests, it should be no surprise that a cultural history of gender transition will also provide, by accident, a history of genre transition. Considering the concept of technique and its associations with feminine craftiness, as opposed to masculine freedom, Lavery argues that techniques of giving and receiving pleasure are essential to the possibility of trans feminist thriving—even as they are suppressed by patriarchal and antitrans feminist philosophies. Contesting claims for the impossibility of transition, she offers a counterhistory of tricks and techniques, passed on by women to women, that comprises a body of knowledge written in the margins of history.
Pleasure and Power in Nazi Germany
by Pamela E. Swett Corey Ross Fabrice D’almeidaAlthough we associate the Third Reich above all with suffering, pain and fear, pleasure played a central role in its social and cultural dynamics. This book explores the relationship between the rationing of pleasures as a means of political stabilization and the pressure on the Nazi regime to cater to popular cultural expectations.
The Pleasure Gap: American Women and the Unfinished Sexual Revolution
by Katherine RowlandAmerican culture is more sexually liberal than ever. But compared to men, women's sexual pleasure has not grown: Up to 40 percent of American women experience the sexual malaise clinically known as low sexual desire. Between this low desire, muted pleasure, and experiencing sex in terms of labor rather than of lust, women by the millions are dissatisfied with their erotic lives. For too long, this deficit has been explained in terms of women's biology, stress, and age. In The Pleasure Gap, Katherine Rowland rejects the idea that women should settle for diminished pleasure; instead, she argues women should take inequality in the bedroom as seriously as we take it in the workplace and understand its causes and effects. Drawing on extensive research and interviews with more than one hundred women and dozens of sexual health professionals, Rowland shows that the pleasure gap is neither medical malady nor psychological condition but rather a result of our culture's troubled relationship with women's sexual expression. This provocative exploration of modern sexuality makes a case for closing the gap for good.
Pleasure in the News: African American Readership and Sexuality in the Black Press (New Black Studies Series #1)
by Kim GallonCritics often chastised the twentieth-century black press for focusing on sex and scandal rather than African American achievements. In Pleasure in the News, Kim Gallon takes an opposing stance—arguing that African American newspapers fostered black sexual expression, agency, and identity. <P><P> Gallon discusses how journalists and editors created black sexual publics that offered everyday African Americans opportunities to discuss sexual topics that exposed class and gender tensions. While black churches and black schools often encouraged sexual restraint, the black press printed stories that complicated notions about respectability. Sensational coverage also expanded African American women’s sexual consciousness and demonstrated the tenuous position of female impersonators, black gay men, and black lesbians in early twentieth African American urban communities. <P><P> Informative and empowering, Pleasure in the News redefines the significance of the black press in African American history and advancement while shedding light on the important cultural and social role that sexuality played in the power of the black press.
Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities
by Alexandra RobbinsHere we find lushes, trollops, bigots, sadists, masochists, anorexics, and those made mad by unrequited lust for election as Prom Queen. Journalist Robbins takes a novelistic approach as she joins the "sisters" of a real-life sorority to prove that all that has been said about their entrance standards, rituals, systems of judgment and punishment, over-the-top lifestyle, and lifelong loyalty is true. She follows the stories of several women who could be considered ambitious, attractive, and intelligent as they make choices based on unhealthy regard for themselves and others. The subtext here is that these women will go on to be business and civic leaders.
Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities
by Alexandra RobbinsHere we find lushes, trollops, bigots, sadists, masochists, anorexics, and those made mad by unrequited lust for election as Prom Queen. Journalist Robbins takes a novelistic approach as she joins the "sisters" of a real-life sorority to prove that all that has been said about their entrance standards, rituals, systems of judgment and punishment, over-the-top lifestyle, and lifelong loyalty is true. She follows the stories of several women who could be considered ambitious, attractive, and intelligent as they make choices based on unhealthy regard for themselves and others. The subtext here is that these women will go on to be business and civic leaders. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Pledging Allegiance: Learning Nationalism at the El Paso-Juarez Border
by Susan J. Rippberger Kathleen A. StaudtOffering a critical ethnography of education at the U.S.-Mexico border, Pledging Allegiance explores how public schools teach cultural and national values explicitly and implicitly. Susan J. Rippberger and Kathleen A. Staudt illuminate the complex overlays of culture and learning through the eyes of students, teachers, and administrators in U.S. and Mexican schools. This book examines nationalism and civic ritual, bilingualism, technology, and classroom organization to discover how educators along the border impart senses of national and cultural identity to their students.