Ben Smith is an Associate Professor of Human Development andeaerned a joint Ph.D. in Comparative Human Development and LInguistics from the University of Chicago. In his research, he is working to construct a semiotic and ideological approach to language socialization, an approach developed in contexts of socialization in which non-human agents are implicated in one way or another.  In this talk, I make sense of the role of digital gaming in the life histories of three indigenous/working class gamers in Southern Peru, all engineering students in one of the major regional universities. In particular, I consider how their gaming gets framed relative to their narrativized projects of “getting ahead” or “salir adelante” - i.e., relative to their advancement in educational settings, their migration from rural to more urban environments, their attempt to reject/overcome the stereotypes attached to rural or indigenous lives, their role as engineers in furthering regional development, etc. How, then, does the practice of digital gaming – a practice associated in Peru with global connection and advancing technology as well as with “retrograde” diversions like substance abuse and gambling – get framed in the contexts of lives that are imagined in multiple ways as projects of “progress” and “development”? In this talk, I offer an account of three ways in which this happens in these life histories: gaming as an impediment to progress, as a complement to progress, and as an example of this progress. 

The School of Social Sciences Brown Bag Series is always free, open to faculty, staff, students, and the public, and provides a congenial interdisciplinary forum for the discussion of recent research by School of Social Sciences faculty.Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020-2021 Brown Bag Series will take place via Zoom.