The brow just keeps getting higher around here. Terra Nova's newest author, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee anthropologist Thomas Malaby, brings an agile and sophisticated understanding of modernity and its contradictions to bear on the contemporary meaning of play. From the social stakes of gambling in modern Greece (the topic of his first book, Gambling Life: Dealing in Contingency in a Greek City) to the ethical life of code in Second Life (the focus of his current, NSF-funded ethnographic research), the questions Thomas pursues -- and the answers he chases down -- light up the intersection of culture, technology, games, and chance like so many signal flares. Indeed, as I recently heard Thomas remark, while his Tauren druid and my Tauren shaman were out slaying Razormane Geomancers near Thorn Hill the other afternoon, "Die, you fat little spell-casting man-pig, die!"
Durkheim himself, I believe, could not have said it better. Please welcome Thomas Malaby.
/wave
/dance
- Cabot
Posted by: ren reynolds | Oct 24, 2005 at 03:34
Welcome! May your wand never, err, grow less sparkly.
Posted by: Dmitri Williams | Oct 24, 2005 at 11:03
Welcome Thomas!
(the other newb),
Mia
Posted by: Mia | Oct 24, 2005 at 12:13
Welcome welcome! Great to see you at State of Play.
Posted by: Joshua Fairfield | Oct 24, 2005 at 13:59
Greetings! Reading your posts already. We think alike... I think. We'll see. ^_^
Posted by: Jim Self | Oct 26, 2005 at 11:39
Thank you all for the warm welcomes! :-)
Posted by: Thomas Malaby | Nov 07, 2005 at 20:07