Getting a Life
eBook - ePub

Getting a Life

The Social Worlds of Geek Culture

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Getting a Life

The Social Worlds of Geek Culture

About this book

Comic book superheroes, fantasy kingdoms, and futuristic starships have become inescapable features of today's pop-culture landscape, and the people we used to deride as "nerds" or "geeks" have ridden their popularity and visibility to mainstream recognition. It seems it's finally hip to be square. Yet these conventionalized representations of geek culture typically ignore the real people who have invested time and resources to make it what it is.

Getting a Life recentres our understanding of geek culture on the everyday lives of its participants, drawing on fieldwork in comic book shops, game stores, and conventions, including in-depth interviews with ordinary members of the overlapping communities of fans and enthusiasts. Benjamin Woo shows how geek culture is a set of interconnected social practices that are associated with popular media. He argues that typical depictions of mass-mediated entertainment as something that isolates and pacifies its audiences are flawed because they do not account for the conversations, relationships, communities, and identities that are created by engaging with the products of mass culture.

Getting a Life combines engaging interview material with lucid interpretation and a clear, interdisciplinary framework. The volume is both an accessible introduction to this contemporary subculture and an exploration of the ethical possibilities of a life lived with media.

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Yes, you can access Getting a Life by Benjamin Woo in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Popular Culture. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half title
  3. Title
  4. Copyright
  5. Contents
  6. Acknowledgments
  7. Introduction: “What Is a Nerd?”
  8. 1 Talk Nerdy to Me: The Meaning of Geek Culture
  9. 2 Taking Geek Culture Seriously: A Practice-Theoretic Account
  10. 3 Values and Virtues: What Is Best in Life?
  11. 4 Careers: Boldly Going On
  12. 5 Making Communities from Mass Culture
  13. 6 Institutions: Building Worlds between Production and Consumption
  14. 7 The Limits of Participation
  15. 8 The Geek, the Bad, and the Ugly
  16. Conclusion
  17. Appendix: Participant Profiles
  18. Notes
  19. References
  20. Index