Games and Public Anthropology

Abstract

Multimodal anthropologists are beginning to use games and game design as a method for producing ethnographic knowledge collaboratively with research participants and as a genre for communicating anthropological knowledge with varied publics. As a methodological approach and a rhetorical genre, games offer unique affordances in that they highlight the dynamic interplay of structures, systems, rules, and norms on the one hand, and contingency, interaction, and agency, on the other. Games are marked by uncertain outcomes, open-endedness, and contingency, reflecting Geertz's observation that "[c]ultural analysis is intrinsically incomplete " (1973: 30). Public anthropology has much to gain from games as an engaging modality for scholarly research, public communication, and pedagogy.