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作者

来源

JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ETHNOGRAPHY,Vol.46,Issue2,P.203-229

语言

英文

关键字

edgework; gaming; voluntary risk-taking; SELF; WARCRAFT; ILLUSION; WORLD; GAME

作者单位

[Shay, Heather] Lake Super State Univ, Sch Publ Safety Community & Behav Sci, 650 W Easterday Ave, Sault Ste Marie, MI 49783 USA. Shay, H (reprint author), Lake Super State Univ, Sch Publ Safety Community & Behav Sci, 650 W Easterday Ave, Sault Ste Marie, MI 49783 USA. E-Mail: hshay@lssu.edu

摘要

This article examines how table-top role-playing fantasy gamers engage in edgework. Edgework, as defined by Stephen Lyng, occurs when people voluntarily tread boundaries to gain emotional rewards. Based on nineteen months of participant-observation in a gaming group, twenty in-depth interviews, and archival data from e-mail lists and websites, I show how gamers gained many of the benefits that traditional edgeworkers, like extreme sports participants, obtain without the physical danger. Participants tread the boundaries of sanity/insanity and order/disorder, prepared for their edgework, and sustained an illusion of control. By playing a game, they felt alive and powerful, yet removed the edge, thus engaging in virtual edgework. In contrast to previous studies, I show that what makes an activity edgework is not the type of risk but how the experience is structured. I suggest that future scholars need to consider new avenues for edgework as people's lives move online.