Please note:  These are papers in progress.  I know it is taboo to show your papers before they are published in journals, but quite frankly if that were the case, then most graduate students are lucky to have a few articles published before they receive their Ph.D. after 6-8 years!  But more imporantly, I don't want my writing to be relegated into the obscurity of academic journal land and jargon - so my publishing medium of choice is online. 

As a blogger, I have a different take on letting the world see my imperfect writing.  I would be lambasted for blasphemy for saying this in academic circles, but I refuse to leave my blogging mind behind or my community of readers who aren't necessarily from academia.   By putting my course work papers, you can see that my acadmic writing is also a work in progress with spelling errors and strands of thought to further develop.  And I would love feedback and am open to dialogue or co-authoring articles.

Sociological Theory

A Marxian Analysis of World of Warcraft: Virtual Gaming Economies Reproducing Capitalistic Structures

ABSTRACT: A new economy is emerging: the economy of virtual game worlds. The gaming points of virtual worlds are traded against millions of dollars in earth currency and some trading is higher then real world currencies, such as the Japanese yen.  However virtual this world may seem, I argue that its structures are grounded in reality and are not completely new forms of labor relations.  Virtual gaming economies embody and reproduce real patterns of capitalist structures of labor, including alienated labor, commodity fetishism and a modern concept of labor theory of value.  marxvirtual.pdf

 

The Iron Cage of Play: A Weberian Approach to Understanding the Virtual Economy of World of Warcraft

ABSTRACT: Traditionally, Weber’s theory of rationalism is utilized to analyze historical processes in society, such as bureaucracy, economy and religion.  However, no author to date has extended Weber’s theory of rationalization to virtual economies.  I will show how Weber’s theory of rationalism is a useful sociological framework to understand that the actions and beliefs of the two different types of players in WoW are tied to their offline economic values.  I propose to analyze massive multi-player online role-playing games  (MMORPG), specifically World of Warcraft (WoW), in the context of modern capitalism.  By examining the gaming ethics and behaviors of players in WoW, I argue that players bring their offline economic rationale into the game.  Beliefs about what constitute work and acceptable economic behavior in an offline world are carried into the online gaming world.  As a result, we can see two types of opposing real-world behaviors that are rooted in an offline capitalistic tradition transferred into the game world: individual hard work and a capitalistic rationale of efficiency. WOW_Weber_final.pdf

 

A Contemporary Modification to Emile Durkheim’s Epistemology

ABSTRACT: By privileging practice over idea, a Durkheimian perspective fails to account for how the abstract realm of conceptual ideas, symbols and beliefs can become sacrilized and thereby effect subsequent action.  Bellah’s theory of symbolic realism faithfully extends Durkheim’s theory to explain how symbols can evolve out of practice to become powerful determinants of action.  By avoiding the pitfall of privileging practice over ideas, symbolic realism allows for a flexible account of cultural historical variation in Durkheim’s theory of practice. durkyepist_final.pdf

Quantitative Analysis

Parental Status and Cell Phone Ownership and Usage: A Systematic Analysis

ABSTRACT:  Recent studies reveal  that the income inequity found for the traditional digital divide for computers and internet access and usage, is actually less extreme with cell phones.  It suggests that factors of social connectedness have increased the value proposition of investing in a cell phone among the economically poor.  Using data from a national survey of cell phone usage, this paper examines whether or not parental status (as a proxy for social connectedness) increases the probability of cell phone ownership among low-income respondents and also increases the probability of being an advanced cell phone user over a conventional cell phone user.  The results of the study show that parental status is not a good predictor of  owning a cell phone, or predicting type of usage, and that income and age are still the strongest predictors of ownership and usage.  This paper then explores how the insignificant results may be due to  mis-sampling of low-income respondents.  A further examination of how material inequality relates to digital poverty and social connectedness is strongly urged for cell phones. cellphone_income.pdf

 Create your own free wiki!Help Add to Del.ici.ous Add to Reddit Add to fUrl Add to SpurlPublic, not yet premium Privacy Policy RSS