The future of Indonesia

I just got to blog about about her. She was my former student, a great joy to teach! I have loads of nice things to say about her... intelligent, pleasant-looking, focused, strong-willed, humble, helpful, committed, and so on and on....As I remember back then, she belonged to a very special batch of Indonesian students that I was fortunate enough to have. They are all very good students with great personalities and they did well for their studies too.

I knew then that they are meant for something great. I recall numerous occasions where I would exhorted them to think about their social responsibility as citizens of Indonesia. At that time, it was a few years after Suharto had lost his grip on Indonesia and when his regime fell, Indonesians was struggling to find a strong leader that can bring stability back to their country. I told them that Indonesia is a sleeping giant, waiting to be awoken and it is their responsibility to return back to Indonesia after they have completed their studies and be the agent to bring change to Indonesia. And now, one of them is taking the lead by taking part in the coming election.

I had the pleasure of meeting her last year and continue maintaining contact with her through email and msn. I love her political slogan as it connects well especially with the growing youth population and generally with the public at large. Her experience for the election has and will continue to develop her further and I have full confidence that she will be elected into the legislative council and one day, heads the whole of Indonesia!

Nathania, I just can't say enough how I am so proud of you!

Definition of superstition

I enjoy my literature review on superstition a lot. I have been reading these books and an immediate sense I get is that there is a difficulty to pin down what it is as there is no way to differentiate superstition from other belief and action. On whose authority do we take a belief or an attitude to be superstitious? If we turn to religious authority, there is a continuing debate whether superstition can be distinguished from religion or is the latter itself, as Cattell puts it, just “silly superstition”. If we turn to science, experts often have different opinions and even if scientific community can come to a consensus, other group may not necessarily agree with them. If we leave to “the reasonable man in present-day Western society” or the consensus of the educated people to decide what superstitious belief is, we cannot avoid complicating the debate with cultural and historical issues. I know that it is beyond my paper to enlighten how superstition should be defined. For the aims of my paper, I think it is best to stay away from the above contentious areas and settle with Zusne & Jones’ (1989) definition that superstition is a “(a) specific, circumscribed belief or act that (b) involves magical thinking, either actually or as a remnant, held or engaged in because (c) it is culturally transmitted or learned through fortuitous reinforcement and (d) is resorted to under conditions of uncertainty. To act on a superstition is to become momentarily a magician on a small scale” (pg. 242).

More reading and writing for now...

Values embedded in formal schooling

Dr M’s class discussion last Wednesday about informal and formal learning has opened up a lot of insights for me. What came out strongly from the discussion for me is about values embedded in teaching being carried out in schools. I am thinking about values and games a lot now and wonder what values players derive from playing. Do they derive values from conversations with other players or from overall interactions with players and game environment? Do they derive similar core values from playing or does each player take away with them different values? And how do values affect how they read the game? Is there a relationship between values and reading of games, and if so, how tight is the relationship?

Problematic values
One of the papers Dr M discussed with the class was the Scribner & Cole's paper (see left). That paper is a canonical piece because papers from the last three decades that talk about informal learning or compare it to formal learning, have their roots to that paper. An excellent read because not only did it contrast cognitive consequences between informal learning and formal schooling, it also implied in its argument the different values schooled and unschooled learners drive from their learning. For example, one of the cognitive consequences between informal learning and formal learning mentioned in the paper is where “...unschooled populations tended to solve individual problems singly, each as a new problem, whereas schooled populations tended to treat them as instances of a class of problems that could be solved by a general rule” (pg 554).

Dr M says that the value that is problematic here for formal learning is that learners see that they SHOULD generalize different sets of problems when searching for a solution. We all know that embarking on an inquiry to find out whether different sets of problems have enough attributes that warrant us to draw some form of generalization can be considered a scientific pursuit. However, the act of thinking that all problems can be and should be generalized without first making an inquiry and investigation whether they can be generalized in the first place is problematic.

I remembers there is a paper by John Seely Brown and Allan Collins (see right. They make reference to works by Lave who himself references to Scribner & Cole’s paper) that also follows this line of argument about problematic values when they mention how schooling culture negatively impact learning and is detrimental in preparing learners to get initiated into the practices of experts in related profession when they leave school.

Learning and performance
Dr M also talked about how the relationship between performance and learning differ in informal learning and formal schooling. In informal setting, learning collapses with doing and performance, while in school, there is this duality between learning and performance, and assessment is used to evaluate whether learning lead to performance. The presence of assessment is problematic on a number of counts but one that interest me a lot is that it comes with a certain value that views all learning can be measured to the point that even learning that cannot be measured are also assessed and reduced to number and symbols. Like how do you measure reflection? Or collaborations, how do you measure learners' collaborative learning?

This fascination with assessment cause teachers and learners to lose sight what is the real value and object of learning and in acquiring knowledge. And doing well in the assessment takes centre stage. Learning is geared more towards assessment. It happens to all of us. We get many ‘A’s for our O and A level exams but our knowledge lack depth that we are not confident enough to talk about our understanding and how can we apply what we have learn in real world setting.

Jayanthy's research
My reflection brings me to Jayanthy’s research (See left). Jayanthy hopes to do a comparative study between the way science is taught with a view to values in schools in Singapore and in India. I am thinking that perhaps it may be more meaningful to uncover problematic values resulting from formal schooling first before Jayanthy contrast the difference in values about science taught in science lessons in India and Singapore. A good way to find out more about them is to read and see how Scribner & Cole paper are cited by others.

Dr M shared an anecdote about Singaporeans students spending most of their out of school time with more formal learning like remedial, tuitions etc. I am assuming here that students in India have a more balanced formal and informal learning experience. If this is the case, I wonder how informal learning impact values about science learnt in formal learning for students in India. Jayanthy is very passionate about her research (from her introduction in class) and I feel her research is very interesting and would be of great interest to many people.

Chapter 1

Finally, I manage to come up with a draft of my chapter 1 - Thanks to my supervisor's help and Steve's class. While I should be happy, I am also humbled by the writing experience. I feel this draft is by no means near to my final envisaged version. I remember going through 6-7 iterations for many parts of the chapter and this chapter will probably end-up with many more iterations before I settle for a final version. Was it Steve who said that you never can say that you have completed your writing. It is at best abandon for a while, only for you to return to work on it again.

So bye, bye Chapter 1 and see you next time. Next stop, methodology chapter. Hope to get that one out by the end of next month. Wish me luck! ^^

Terra Nova

Today I have identified the community that I wanted to get initiated into. The community is housed in Terra Nova - a collaborative weblog featuring several important scholars in the field of games research. General focus is MMOGs and social aspects of online gaming communities which is in sync with my research. I will from time to time write commentaries on the entries posted in Terra Nova here in my blog or post comments in Terra Nova. I am also on the lookout for online qualitative research community that I can be a part of. Do you have any recommendation?

Responds to Epistemic Games post: My replies

My replies to all the responds to my Epistemic Games post are below:

To Abel
Let’s consider the massive online gaming now in the market, I believe the guild leaders would in a way restrict the number of players therefore, it will not lead to total chaos. What do you think?

In Granado Espada, every faction (or guild) can have a max of 100 members. Usually faction will try to recruit to the max but I have seen factions that prefer to remain small so that their members can forge close ties and bond more with one another (it is difficult to do this if you have so many people in a faction). I remember reading a paper from Nick Yee who quote the work of Christopher Allen who suggest that in an online environment the cognitive limit for any individual to hold a reasonably stable relationship with others is around 45 - 50 people. I have also seen one person factions but for reasons which I don't know. I am assuming that these factions are new and are recruiting members. Said that, our idiosyncrasies also prevail in MMOG and so you may still find people who choose to remain as one man faction for reasons not related to game concerns. For example, in Granado Espada, if a faction have completed the faction quest, the faction leader will get a halo each for all playing characters. But these halos are pretty unique because it do not hover over the characters' head, but circle around their waist. Awesome and they glow in navy blue colour. So it's kinda of cool to show them off to people so that they will know that you are a faction leader. ^^

As to chaos management, you will be surprise to find how faction organize themselves by enhancing the social structure designed by games designers and developers. One example is where they created sub-teams within their faction with each teams having their own leader and assistants. Still, by no means these structures are capable to ward off chaos in times of war if players cannot commit to the roles and duties assigned to them (And MS talks about this when her brother mentions about commitments as leaders in a guild - the need to be punctual and virtually present.

Some of you seem to be saying that the members are having a common goal. Could it be possible that some players just wanted to help others to achieve their goals; hence arguably, they are not having the same goals. In addition, I believe different people may also have other self-vested goals. Therefore, I would like to suggest that yes it is a given fact that all of them have goals. However, it is not a given premise that they must have the same goal. What do you think?

Oh yes, goals are contextually bounded. You can have shared goals when engaged in a colony war but shared goals can also overlap with personal goals. If the aim of both type of goals do not conflict with each other, by all means you can work on them all. But if they do, then you are face with an ill-problem scenario. Playing involve many decision making processes that, in many instances, warrant higher order thinking. For this case, you need to weigh your options and choose one that suit to serve your interest in one area but at the same time does not jeopardize you position badly in another area.

To MS
You mentioned about shared practices and how rightfully so. James Gee talks about shared practices in the same breath when he mentions 'affinity group'. Similar ideas to COP stuff we have learned so far. So communities exist within and around MMOG and one of the affordances of this interesting feature of MMOG for research is that you can study community dynamics of large scale population (in the hundred thousands if not millions) of people. Interesting. BTW, there is no better way to understand about MMOG than to play it. Trust me. : )

Responds to Epistemic Games post

Wow! I didn't realise my posting on Epistemic Games: Can this work in MMOG environment? which I copy and paste in blackboard for Dr M module has attracted quite a fair bit of responds. I list them below here.

Abel responded to my posting:
I find your point about what would happen when the no. of participants gets too large interesting. Intuitively, I think there will be a certain level of unrest but whether epistemic gaming would still survive under these conditions would be a tricky one to answer. Let’s consider the massive online gaming now in the market, I believe the guild leaders would in a way restrict the number of players therefore, it will not lead to total chaos. What do you think?

MS replied to Abel:
I had a conversation with my younger brother as I know that he is holding some 'leadership' position in the War craft online game. He shared with me that its important for the members to have common shared goals, identities and have trust with their leaders. One simple way to show 'leaderships' and commitment is to be 'punctual' online and be 'virtually present' to provide guidance to the novices and to invite them to join their guilds according to some. Personally, I'm not an online multiplayer gamer so I am still trying to understand what my brother is sharing with me.

WM responded to my posting:
Epistemic games are reflective, knowledge-generating activities that can be used in any classroom, and can be created for any knowledge domain. The theory of epistemic games was developed by Collins and Ferguson (1993) and Morrison and Collins (1995).

Players are grouped into teams of three. Each player draws one card per turn, and places it onto a hierarchy diagram on the posterboard. The player then draws connecting lines to join the new card to existing cards.

For example, the first player draws the card "meat" and places it on the posterboard. The second player draws the card "plants" and places it on the same row with "meat". The third player draws the card "animals" and places it on the same row with "meat" and "plants". The fourth player moves "meat" to the row below. Subsequent players draw cards and place them on the posterboard according to the legal moves.

Players in the same team must have a common shared goal so that they apply the same strategy to achieve their goal.

Abel replied to WM:
Some of you seem to be saying that the members are having a common goal. Could it be possible that some players just wanted to help others to achieve their goals; hence arguably, they are not having the same goals. In addition, I believe different people may also have other self-vested goals. Therefore, I would like to suggest that yes it is a given fact that all of them have goals. However, it is not a given premise that they must have the same goal. What do you think?

I better start thinking how to respond. Hmmm... I can't think now. Liverpool will play Aston Villa in less than an hour. How I hope they win. *on my knees* Please God.... *trembling* : ) I need to calm my nerves first. Will respond soon enough but I am glad to see that my posting has generated so much interest. Cool. ^^

Patrick Williams

So these are the two books by Patrick Williams that Steve talked about last week. Williams is a sociologist and has written quite a fair bit on symbolic interactionism. He teaches on Sociological Psychology (Symbolic Interactionism), Sociology of Youth Subcultures, Qualitative Research Methods, and Cultural Sociology

I hope GPR allows me to take some of his modules next semester.

Granado Espada

So below is the site of my research, a MMOG called Granado Espada. I learn that in Spanish it means Fruit Sword. Funny. No wonder not many Spanish speaking players are here because the game title, while sounds cool in English, is a joke in Spanish. ^-^



I have been playing this game since March last year. Wow! I didn't realize that a year has passed since. Anyway, since classes began in this year, I am hardy online. It comes as a surprise to me that my faction leader still keeps me in the faction despite me missing so many faction events, especially colony wars. I guess the deputy, who is a good friend of mine and we join the faction about the same time, must have been buying me time. Now each time I log-in, there so many new faces that I don't even know. While I'm glad that they prune the faction from non-active players, I know I have to start playing regularly. I promise to be around tomorrow for the colony war to defend our colony and play regularly once I clear the two modules this semester.

Oh yes, didn't I mention that my 8 years old son too play this game. He's very cool. He owned a faction before (when I never had any experience being a FL before) and called it by my family characters' name. Isn't that nice. That boy of mine really looks up to me. : ) He had trouble recruiting players into his faction. Those that joined him decided to leave once they discovered that it was a one-man faction. I thought I would like to join him, only to learn later that he had quit his faction to join his friends in another faction.

He gets enculturated into the way of being in the game very fast. I see spills over of this into his school works - in his composition where at times he use chat English. I am not too concern about this because I see quite a fair bits of good stuff he has gained from playing. For example, he has picked up many difficult vocabulary (not only games vocab, trust me) as playing affords him many context to learn and apply them. We talk a great deal more now because of our common interest in games and this concurs with many papers I have read where real world relationship get betters when family members play games together. I am not sure whether I am going to do a Piaget here - study my own kid for research, like what Norman intends to do. But I do acknowledge that by looking at what he is going through gives me a glimpse of what I can expect from my research.

Chaos & Bliss

While JL likens her learning journey as living through a long Arctic day, my own experience so far have been many tosses and turns between two states of mind - chaos and bliss. The good news is, every time I am at bliss, I understood a bit more about my research, how and where to move it forward than I was in my last state of bliss. You can call that progress. ^^

So where I am today? I can say that I am in between, turning more closely towards bliss. Yesterday (before Steve 's class) was terrible. I was lost. I find blogging helps me organize my thoughts, consolidate what I have read and learnt and keep me away from chaos. Nice.

Ok that's all for now. Need to tidy up 2 writing pieces before working on another. Will blog again soon.

Why looking into superstitions in MMOG is important?

Dr M has asked me to include in my abstract why looking into superstitions in MMOG is important in the first place. There are no scholarly work on superstitions on MMOG to date and only Nick Yee, in his blog above, has started the conversation after getting players to share superstitions they seen in MMOG.

How can we benefit from knowing more about superstitions in MMOG? The first of the two video clips below makes claim that we are all superstitions animal just like the pigeons experimented by Skinner (as told by Yee above). How far have we bring our real world superstitions into the virtual world of games. Are the attributes of and our experiences in virtual worlds so comparable to our real world that we share similar fear, suspicious, rational, etc.

Said that, Yee says there are more basis not to believe superstitions in real world because of the presence of omnipotent, omniscient God whom we have no idea how He works but in MMOG there are the game developers who reign supreme. They are humans like us whom we can second guess their intentions, motives and moves. Further, I feel anything humankind creates is nothing near perfection. So they may claim to "use a random number generator throughout... but it’s also true that it takes just several lines of code to increase the chances of all rare drops" (Yee, above). So if this is the case can superstitions in MMOG be seen as scientific endeavours, testing out hypothesis to determine possible mathematical formula in game design (even for instances deem to be randomized).



Or perhaps superstitions in MMOG are at best a science of hunches and suspicious like how superstitions in real world sports (see below). Because of the need to have an edge over the opponents, even mystic are sought - like having a lucky charm in our inventory to increase the chances of rare drops.



Anyway, back to my paper, I guess what I am trying to established is whether superstitions in MMOGs, while primarily motivated by the need to be successful in gameplay, can they possibly be seen either as scientific and cognitive endeavours to establish mathematical functionings of some aspects of game design or as pursuits shape by socio-cultural forces and situated as part of the practices and culture of gamers. If superstitions in MMOGs are scientific and cognitive endeavours, then they have potential for learning that warrant more investigations to uncover the links. If they are the latter, then they are another avenue for game researchers to understand more of the meaning-making and enculturation process of players into the cultures of gamers in MMOGs.

Epistemic Games: Can this work in MMOG environment?

I have read Shaffer's book on How computer games help children learn and for Dr M's class, two required readings are by him which talk about epistemic games and their links to COP and informal learning. Great idea and nice work, I must say.



Said that, often games for learning are meant for certain audience and by that I mean very specific group of people. Take for example the Whyville.net by Kafai (I am great fan of Kafai and I see Whyville as an ambitious attempt and Kafai is leading the way to push the boundary of research on games in education beyond educational gains into the socio-cultural issues - like race and cheats, that I feel receive little attention) and River City by Harvard Uni as examples and oh yes, local game projects by Dr CYS, you find they share one thing in common - while they are meant or have potential to be multi-user, these games are hardly open beyond students in their experiments.

I wonder whether there is a minimum number of players limit where beyond it, community dynamic comes in and affect players' game play. What would impact interactions and conversations that would determine community dynamic when this happens. Can spontaneous and unintended community events (like players demonstrations and unrests) and social phenomenon (like grief play) happen if the number of players are large enough. How will they impact on the design of the games? Can epistemic games work under these conditions?

While I am confident that Shaffer, folks at Harvard Uni and Dr CYS, have thought through about social aspect of game play, I wonder whether the social structures they have created for their games will stand good and continue to promote interactions that are favourable for learning regardless the number of players.

Well, I can only be certain if I ask them. I know Shaffer will be coming to Singapore soon. Perhaps I will ask him this question.

Four-star Liverpool crushes Manure

I just have to blog about this after reading a whole lot of &#@%$!$# sh@t from the press the past few days leading to this game. Despite Liverpool's emphatic 4-0 victory (and remember, 5-0 aggregate!) over the most celebrated and successful team in Europe, Real Madrid, in mid-week while Manure luckily enough to score 2 goals against Inter Milan who hit the post twice in that game (had those two gone in we will see Inter Milan in the last 8 instead of Manure), papers and sport websites keep writing off Liverpool's chance of winning this game.

Those journalists (they are all Manure fans) should remember that when I started supporting Liverpool, Manure at that time had not won the league for 36 years. What is 19 years of LFC's waiting compare to Manure's 36 years!!! Anyway, I was at seven heaven when I heard "You Never Walk Alone" deafening the whole Old Trafford towards the end of the game, and even echoed at the empty section of OT left behind by Manure fans when the game was not over yet!(where's your loyalty people!). I can be excused for thinking that the game was played in Anfield and not OT. Hahaha

I wonder whether Schemeical still think Manure can win the Champions League playing like they did. And Rooney, please hate us more. *evil grin* T. Smyth, this is a smack on your fat lips.

Ok, enough said. My apologies for this emotional outburt. I just have to let it out and tell the whole world about it. BTW, Liverpool ....YNWA!!!!!

The burden of writing

The burden of writing is not just to complete an assignment but to ensure what gets communicated is clear and readers don't take away a message but THE MESSAGE that you want them to. Dr M spent half of his lesson last Wednesday teaching us how to organise our ideas in ways that a reader can understand everything by just reading our abstract, goes to our intro or chapter one then skip everything else and read our conclusion. He said that everything in the body is implied in the intro and conclusion. I was glad that he brought us through this because so far there isn't a module that teach us how to write research paper or dissertation.

Anyway, the outline that I had prepared earlier is good as rubbish. Will work on one soon. Good news is I got my first version abstract out. Here it is...

Superstitions in MMORPG:
Identifying suitable epistemological frame for analysis

Superstitions in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game (MMORPG) is a phenomenon that has received rare mention in present literature on game research. In this paper, I present an analysis of two superstitious practices found in a MMORPG called Granado Espada concerning enchantment and chipping of weapons and armours. For the analysis, I view the phenomenon from two epistemological frames - cognitive and social constructivism, to argue [will find out what come out from the analysis]. To substantiate my claim, I draw from [need more reading and thinking through].

Any comments?

Superstitions in MMORPG: An outline

I'm thinking about a possible outline for my Superstitions in MMORPG paper for Dr M's class.

Introduction
I will possibly start with a brief history to show that humankind has held numerous epistemological and ontological assumptions since the dawn of time. I'll talk about the forces that shape belief. I would divide this brief history into "Long view" and "Short view". Long view will cover everything before to the advent of positivism philosophy and modern science. Short view will concern with post-positivism and social sciences. I feel this brief history is important and will help me situate nicely my introduction to social scientific inquiry in MMORPG.

Theoretical framework
So I'll talk next about MMORPG and social science research in MMORPG. Here I will argue why epistemology has to be seen from social constructivism lens. I will take symbolic interactionism and Lave and Wenger's Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP)as theoretical perspectives. I will highlight research from the literature that make use of these perspectives.

Now I am not sure whether to bring in here cognitive constructivism as the other epistemology lens to understand social phenomenon in MMORPG. Or should I complete my analysis using social constructivism first before moving on to cognitive constructivism. I'll ask Dr M what he thinks. Anyway, if I decide to bring in cognitive constructivism here, I will talk about cognitive psychology (theoretical perspective), phenomenology (methodology) and discourse analysis (method) which go well with cognitive constructivism as epistemology.

Literature review
So far I only know Nick Yee has written or talked about superstitions in MMORPG. While the focus is on MMORPG, I will also look at this phenomenon broadly and beyond MMORPG and discuss how it is studied by other researchers. I may also adopt, if deem appropriate, coding found in the literature for my discourse analysis.

Data
The artifact I will analysis is a short interview data. I will describe the context of the interview (including the background of the player while not compromising his identity) and how the phenomenon is situated in the larger MMORPG environment and the player real-life.

Data Analysis
I will start analysis the data from social constructivism lens. I will add input from other interview I have with the research subject and from my own observation while playing the game. Then I analysis the data from cognitive constructivism lens through discourse analysis. I will look at cognition as mental process that can be separated from socio-cultural influences.

Results
I will compare and contrast results from both analysis.

Conclusion
MMORPG is a social world and social scientific inquiry in MMORPG needs to view social constructivism as THE EPISTEMOLOGY in order to fully understand how social phenomenon is impact by complex social relations, cultural and practices, historical and political workings found no only in MMORPG, but also around it (the practices players engage in outside the game world like fanfiction, cheats, etc). And finally, real world socio-cultural influences where game playing is situated.

This ought to do it. I got a quarter of the paper done already and will continue working on it this weekend.

Symbolic Interactionism and Ethnography (Rock, 2001)

I can't shrugg off this image of Paul Rock looking like a character in CSI because of his work in criminology. He is an academic in Mannheim Centre for Criminology, an educational institution that provides undergraduate and postgraduate courses related to criminology. I guess if you want to do the work CSI people do, this is THE PLACE you need to go.

Anyway, his paper entitled Symbolic Interactionism and Ethnography (2001) is cited in 21 papers/books. I list below those resources which I can get access to and share how his paper is cited by others.

1. Rosenblum, L. F., (2008) "The ArXiv as a model for open Access: An Anthropoligical Analysis"
Rosenblum argues of the need to look into the cultural practices of users in order to better design, in this case, an institutional repository that will meet their needs and attract them to use it. I find this interesting because I know of a committee whose work is to look into facilitating internal communication in an organization but in their discussion, no one talks about culture and practices within each section (micro level) and in the organization at large (macro level).

2. Tan, T. K., Wang, X. W., & Zhu, L., "Symbolic interactionist ethnography: Implications for information systems (IS) research and practice"
Tan et al. posit that taking symbolic interactionism as theoretical framework will help researchers to look at a phenomenon in IS from a larger perspective that include complex social relations found in the scope of research. They also talk about adopting contant comparison approach in grounded theory will allow for greater focus in structuring data collection and data analysis process.

3. Carlsson, C. S. (2006). "Culture of practice of Ministry of Education, special education occupational therapist and physiotherapists" Master thesis. Auckland University of Technology
This paper reinforces the need to adopt constant comparison approach technique (highlighted by Tan et al. - see no 2) so that researchers do not walk away at the end of an ethnography journey feeling that they have not cover everything.

4. Tianinen, T., & Koivunen, E. -R. (2006). "Exploring forms of triangulation to facilitate collaborative research practice: Reflections from a multidisciplinary research group". Journal of Research Practice, 2(2), Article M2.
Tianimen and Koivunen discuss about triangulation in ethnography research using at least 2 comparable process to "enhance the comprehensiveness of data, to contextualise the interpretations and to explore a variety of similar and dissimilar viewpoints". They cite Rock here to say that triangulation would mean that researcher have to look into many social setting and analyse many persons assuming different roles. At another point they agree with Rock that information given by an informat may not be comprehensive and representing the view of the entire community. These information are context specific to the informant's experience. Further, they see no reason preventing an informant from lying.

5. Keezhangatte, J. J. (2006). "Transnational migration, resilience and family relationship: Indian household workers in Hong Kong" PhD dissertation. University of Hong Kong
The author introduces Natasha who was his informant and who Rock would call deus ex machina (fairy godmother who will come and help the forlorn ethnographer) - an informant, helper, a source of introductions and so on.

6. Thomas, M. L., (2008). "Faith-based organizations and legislative advocacy: A qualitative inquiry" PhD dissertation. Virginia Commonwealth University.
Thomas makes use of symbolic interactionism as theoretical perspective and social constructionism as epistemology and argues that both are congruent to each other. Also symbolic interactionism is in congruent with ethnography because methods employed in ethnography afford researchers understanding of their research subjects' context and their (research subjects) understanding of the context. Quoting Crotty (1998), ethnography using symbolic interactionism as theoretical perspective can be structured in many ways including grounded theory.

7. O'Reilly, K. (2005). "Ethnographic methods".
Quoting Rock (2001), (1) there is definitely be a topic of interest to pursue in social science research using ethnography, (2) ethnography is iterative-inductive and so researchers need to know a fair bit of their study before going down to the "field", (3) be prepared that people may not be open to be observed, (4) someone will appear "like fairy godmother to help the forlorn ethnographer", (5) tension between writing down everything observed to being selective for fieldnotes in interest of time, and (6) knowing background information first so that interview does not have to be long, repeated (to the annoyance of the interviewee).

In brief, key themes I find here are (1) symbolic interactionism as theoretical perspective allows understanding a phenomenon from a larger scope encompassing cultural practices, (2) ethnography using symbolic interactionism as theoretical perspective can be structured in many ways including grounded theory - for example, enhancing ethnography with constant comparison from grounded theory will ensure all grounds are covered, and (3) key features of ethnography research are discussed.

Reimagining Community (Mohan, 2004)

Dia Mohan or now she is known as Dia Da Costa is a faculty member of Queen's University in Kingston, Canada.

Her paper Reimagining Community (Mohan, 2004) is cited in 5 papers (4 of which are written or co-written by her). I would like to thank both Da Costa and Ruwanpura for providing me access to their papers.

1. Da Costa, D. and Philip McMichael, (2007) "The Poverty of the Global Order" Globalizations 4(4): 588-602.
Da Costa talks about institutional mandates and one's action may not run congruent, especially when poverty comes knocking. She cites an example where institution mandates that a father should invest in their children education but often in reality this may not be possible when the family runs into poverty and both parents' lack of success in securing a job. Hence when this happens, they turn to their children to work to help ends meet. The institution judges both parents for not caring for their children's future and parents do not have the institution to empathize with them. Da Costa calls this representational inequality between institution and self and makes people stricken with poverty believe that they befitting a less dignified place in the economic order. Jana Sanskriti Theater performance allows them to speak out what they feel and engage the communtiy in social dialog about the issues they face.

2. Da Costa, D, (2008) "'Spoiled Sons' and 'Sincere Daughters': Schooling, Security, and Empowerment in rural West Bengal, India" in Signs: Journal of Women and Culture 33(2): 283-308.
Da Costa shares that there are men who are comfortable intervening in Jana Sanskriti Theater performances taking the role of female characters. She feels that such enagement has potential to transform social norms (men recognize the rights of women who are often discriminated in a patriarchic society) . Some anecdotes from this intervention was when men voiced their objection about dowry and lack of opportunity given to girls to advance their education.

3. Da Costa, D, (2008) "Tensions of Neo-liberal Development: State Discourse and Dramatic Oppositions in West Bengal" in Contributions to Indian Sociology 41 (3): 287-320.
Da Costa talks about Jana Sanskriti Theater Group's activities and she in the view that they have potential to be the catalyst to get the local community (where the group carries out its activities) to engage in rich social dialog about social issues through its performances and fieldwork activities.

4. Caron, Cynthia M. and Dia Da Costa, (2007) "There’s a Devil on Wayamba Beach: Social Dramas of Development and Citizenship in Northwest Sri Lanka" Journal of Asian and African Studies 42(5): 415-445.
Da Costa talks about legitimacy that it is not determined by one person or institution because the power to determine meaning rests upon every individuals in a society. She see the potential of getting audience to intervene in stage play (what she term as "social drama") to shape the outcome of a performance as a way to encourage them to make meaning not based on what society or institution imposed of them but that reflects more of their inner voice.

5. Ruwanpura, K. N., (2007) "Awareness and action: the ethno-gender dynamics of Sri Lankan NGOs" Gender, Place and Culture - Journal of Feminist Geography 14(3): 317-333.
Ruwanpura talks about NGO activities and in particular theater work where she feels to have the potential to be the engine for social transformation and change. When given the opportunity to script plays on issues central to their lives, women in a patriarchal society see this as a social space for them to create real life realities in a way that will empower them to be active agents to initiate change to their daily lives and thus enhancing their self-worth.

In brief, the common theme I see here is that representations in cultural play have potential to enhance individual self-worth and transform society where participants make commitment to their off-stage lives through their scriptwriting and on-stage experiences in shaping alternative outcomes to the performances.

Symbolic Interactionism and MMORPG

From my Google scholar search, I found only 5 research on MMORPG using symbolic interactionism as theoretical framework and they focus only on two themes - social interaction and culture. Research on social interaction look into exploring possible forms of social interaction afforded in virtual world (Lundin, 2007), mapping out a conceptual framework to articulate in a broad sense what social interaction means in MMORPG (Chen & Duh, 2007), and understanding impact of patches and expansions on social interaction (Chen et al. 2008). Research on culture look into discussing the importance of dress-up play as form of adult play in digital culture (Fron et al. 2007), and explaining the development and maintenance of peer culture within virtual world of games (Adams, 2005).

Superstitions in MMORPG: From cognitive and social contructivism lens

I'm thinking about Dr M final assignment. His module is about social foundation of learning sciences. What I have in mind is to present an analysis of a social phenomenon (superstitions in MMORPG) from two lens - taking epistemology to be cognitive constructivism and social constructivism. The whole idea is to highlight how taking cognitive constructivism lens will restrict the scope of analysis and disregards the impact of socio-cultural forces in shaping game play. This assignment will also help strengthen my argument for my choice of epistemology, theoretical perspective, methodology and methods for the final assignment for Steve's class and for relevant sections of my dissertation.

I am all up for social constructivism as epistemology for my dissertation. For theoretical perspective, I am going for symbolic interactionism and perhaps too Lave and Wenger's Legitimate Peripheral Participation. As for methodology, I am taking on symbolic interaction (symbolic interaction can be both at theoretical perspective and methodology levels) and for methods - observations and interview.

The artifact for my analysis is a piece of an interview script with a gamer. So, for cognitive constructivism lens, I am contemplating to go for cognitive psychology as theoretical perspective, phenomenology as a methodology and discourse analysis as method. I will also look into the literature on superstitions (I probably find nothing on MMORPG because so far only Nick Yee talk about superstitions in MMORPG) and see how codings I'll find there be useful for my discourse analysis.