Wednesday 16:00-16:30 Laurie Taylor discusses the latest social science research.
07 March 2007
LOST IN RUNESCAPE Nic Crowe, Lecturer, Centre for Youth Work Studies, Brunel University and Dr Simon Bradford, Senior Lecturer in the School of Sport and Eduation at Brunel University.
Their recent academic paper explores young people’s practices in the virtual spaces of online gaming communities. Based on a three-year field-study of virtual worlds, their research focuses on a relatively small online game-world called Runescape. It considers how young people construct and maintain identities within virtual social systems, and how values of the real world are replicated in runescape.
SOCIAL WORTH IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND Laurie Taylor discusses people’s perceptions of worth in early modern England through the records of the church courts. In the fifteen and sixteenth centuries seven million people appeared as witnesses, and were asked a series of questions.
Economic historian, Dr Alex Shepard researched extensively one of the questions asked of all people: How much are you worth? With all debts taken into account, what was the value of what they had left? The answers from gentlemen and yeoman to servants and labourers enabled Dr Shepard to show an economic lift-off of the middle and upper classes during the period. It also uncovers a surprisingly material culture, where the value of your word was exactly analogous to the weight of your purse.
Additional information:
Nic Crowe, Lecturer, Centre for Youth Work Studies, Brunel University
‘Hanging out in Runescape’: Identity, Work and Leisure in the Virtual Playground Published in Children’s Geographies Volume 4, Number 3 – December 2006 Publisher: Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group DOI: 10.1080/14733280601005740
Dr Alexandra Shepard,University Lecturer in early Modern Economic and Social History, Cambridge University
Perceptions of Worth and Social Status in Early Modern England Dr Alexandra Shepard and Dr Judith Spicksley Publication of paper: Wealth, Credit and Social Status in Early Modern England (28 Feb 2007)
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites
