183872138X     

Playing oppression : the legacy of conquest and empire in colonialist board games / Mary Flanagan and Mikael Jakobsson

Flanagan, Mary, 1969- [Verfasserin/Verfasser]

Jakobsson, Mikael [Verfasserin/Verfasser]

Cambridge, Massachusetts ; London, England : The MIT Press, [2023] [© 2023]

1 Online-Ressource (ix, 225 Seiten) : Illustrationen, Diagramme

Englisch

Acknowledgments -- Colonial fantasies -- Establishing mindsets -- World as empire -- Trading excuses -- Winners & losers -- Explorers and exploiters -- Representations of the other -- Urgency and hope -- Glossary

Includes bibliographical references and index

Erscheint auch als: Playing oppression / Mary Flanagan (Druck-Ausgabe)

978-0-262-37371-5 (pdf); 978-0-262-37372-2 (epub)

978-0-262-04791-3 (ISBN der Printausgabe)

OCoLC: 1372251446     

Elektronische Ressource: Zugang über Resolving-System (Lizenzangabe: Kostenfrei zugänglich ohne Registrierung)

Elektronische Ressource: Zugang über Resolving-System (Lizenzangabe: Kostenfrei zugänglich ohne Registrierung)

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): 10.7551/mitpress/11779.001.0001

Rechteinformation und Access Status: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 | Open Access

GV1312

306.4/810973 ; 794     Ähnliche Literatur

LOC-SH: Imperialism in board games ; Board games -- Moral and ethical aspects

Colonialism & imperialism ; GAMES / Board ; Kolonialismus und Imperialismus ; POL045000 ; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural ; GAMES & ACTIVITIES / Board Games ; POLITICAL SCIENCE / Colonialism & Post-Colonialism ; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social

A striking analysis of popular board games' roots in imperialist reasoning—and why the future of play depends on reckoning with it. Board games conjure up images of innocuously enriching entertainment: family game nights, childhood pastimes, cooperative board games centered around resource management and strategic play. Yet in Playing Oppression, Mary Flanagan and Mikael Jakobsson apply the incisive frameworks of postcolonial theory to a broad historical survey of board games to show how these seemingly benign entertainments reinforce the logic of imperialism. Through this lens, the commercialized version of Snakes and Ladders takes shape as the British Empire's distortion of Gyan Chaupar (an Indian game of spiritual knowledge), and early twentieth-century “trading games” that fêted French colonialism are exposed for how they conveniently sanitized its brutality while also relying on crudely racist imagery. These games' most explicitly abhorrent features may no longer be visible, but their legacy still lingers in the contemporary Eurogame tendency to exalt (and incentivize) cycles of exploration, expansion, exploitation, and extermination. An essential addition to any player's bookshelf, Playing Oppression deftly analyzes this insidious violence and proposes a path forward with board games that challenge colonialist thinking and embrace a much broader cultural imagination.