An interesting overlapping theme I picked up on in two of this week's readings were the importance of context in determining the potential justice or injustice of particular situations. In Jin's article, "Chinese Gold Farmers in the Game World," I found it interesting that in "some particular [gold farms]...the farmers are willing to work for free as long as they have a place to live and they can play games for free." It seems as though many of these "gaming workers" were living out the fantasy lives of many 15-year-old xbox/pc/playstation-obsessed youths, being able to make money playing video games all day, while others might view these gold-farmers as being exploited unjustly for little or no pay. This perception of (in)justice is context-dependent: whether these gaming workers are exploited is dependent on who you ask.
The same context-dependent sense of justice is also present in the AoIR's "guidelines" rather than "codes" for conducting internet research; the authors forefront the need to consider ethics on a case-by-case or context-by-context basis, because the sense of justice or injustice of particular ethical protocols is not universal, especially when it comes to issues of consent and rights to privacy. I think this context dependency is reflective of a larger them within our CST course, as it is itself an illustration of anthropology's need for understanding "cultural relativity;" different things have different meanings for different people.
No comments:
Post a Comment