Shifting on Bourdieu's Study to Game Culture: The Capital and Class of the Game Field

• Main Authors: Chou, Kuan-Ting, 周冠廷
• Other Authors: Chang, Yu-Pei
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/hj6h37

碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 傳播研究所 === 105 === The virtual world in online games is a miniature of reality and a space of socia-lization for teenagers. The purpose of this research is to deconstruct capital formation and symbolic violence in the game field. With the adoption of Bourdieu's analytical framework and his concepts of field, capital and class, how players use their economic capital, social capital and cultural capital to establish social positions is discussed in this research. The research method is adopted by depth interview with 20 participants. Through their experiences of playing games, the relationships and the conflicts among different social classes in game field are depicted. There are four results. First, the social position is piled together by economic capital, cultural capital and social capital. Economic capital is only a ticket to reach the threshold of dominant class in game field. Cultural capital and social capital are the main factors in class construction. Second, this study builds the conversion model of capitals in the game field, which depicts the circulatory relationship among economic, cultural and social capitals. Also, the capitals help to bring positive developments toward daily life. Third, symbolic violence contains two perspectives: class and gender. Symbolic violence of class is shaped by capital formation of players’ different social positions. Symbolic violence of gender is a phenomenon of domination in cor-respondence to patriarchal society; however, players can stop the phenomenon and counter the gender order through various means. Last, the research also deconstructs the cause of players’ stigmatization. While facing the negative label imposed by the outside, playersare also motivated to rethink and redefine their identity. The game field then becomes a potential land of breaking disciplinary boundaries and relieving gender oppression.