Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Participatory Culture in a Networked Era
WORK NOTES: with Henry Jenkins and danah boyd
PSEUDONYM(S): Ito, Mimi
BIRTHDATE: 7/22/1968
WEBSITE: http://www.itofisher.com/mito/
CITY:
STATE: CA
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://www.ics.uci.edu/faculty/profiles/view_faculty.php?ucinetid=mizukoi * https://clrn.dmlhub.net/people/mimi-ito * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizuko_Ito * http://www.itofisher.com/mito/about/bio.html * https://mitpress.mit.edu/authors/mizuko-ito * https://www.linkedin.com/in/mizuko-ito-17b2/ * https://uchri.org/uchri/staff/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born July 22, 1968, in Kyoto, Japan; married Scott Fisher; children: two.
EDUCATION:Harvard University, graduated, 1990; Stanford University, M.A., 1991, Ph.D. (education), 1998, Ph.D. (anthropology), 2003.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Anthropologist, educator, and writer. Previously worked at organizations including Apple, Xerox PARC, the Institute for Research on Learning, University of Southern California, Tokyo University, and Japan’s National Institute for Education Research; University of California, Irvine, professor in residence at Humanities Research Institute, 2008–, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Chair in Digital Media and Learning; Connected Camps, CA, CEO. Chair of advisory board of Connected Learning Alliance; advisor to DIY.org; advisory board member of Wikimedia Foundation; member of board of trustees for Exploratorium.
AWARDS:Grants and fellowships from organizations, including the MacArthur Foundation, National Science Foundation, Social Science Research Council, Association for Asian Studies Northeast Asia Council, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Mellon Foundation, Spencer Foundation, and Vodaphone Group Foundation.
WRITINGS
Contributor of chapters to books.
SIDELIGHTS
Mizuko Ito is a Japanese social anthropologist, educator, and writer. She was born in Japan but spent a significant portion of her childhood in the United States. Ito earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, as well as a master’s degree and two doctorates from Stanford University. In 2008, she joined the University of California, Irvine, as a professor in the Humanities Research Institute. Ito has also served as the school’s John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Chair in Digital Media and Learning. Previously, Ito worked for technology companies including Apple and Xerox PARC and taught at the University of Southern California and Tokyo University. She has received grants and fellowships from organizations including the MacArthur Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Association for Asian Studies’ Northeast Asia Council.
Personal, Portable, Pedestrian and Engineering Play
Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life is a 2005 book, edited by Ito, Daisuke Okabe, and Misa Matsuda. In this volume, contributors examine the use of cellular phones and the cell phones themselves, both of which are referred to as keitai in the Japanese language. The writers analyze the function of keitai within the family unit and within both physical and virtual communities. David B. Broad, reviewer in the International Social Science Review, remarked: “These authors’ penchant for empirical testing of theory is evident in every one of the fifteen articles in the present collection.”
Ito observes the ways in which children’s software has evolved over the years in Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children’s Software. She divides the software into categories that include educational software, construction software, and entertainment software. Writing on the Techno_ethno website, Megan Danielle Neal noted that the book contains “a successful narrative that shows how the computer was further anchored in the American household by way of the child.” Neal added: “Ito’s insights culminate into a robust impetus for future research. Her assertion that children participate in technological innovation has strong theoretical implications. Actor-network theory calls for increased attention to non-human entities. Yet, in its application, human actors are typically conceptualized as adults. Ito’s work thus challenges people to consider if and how kids are counted in networks. At the same time, applying Ito’s insights to actor-network theory’s emphasis on materiality also stimulates new ways to think about kids and computers–as well as the role of imagination and improvisation in play.” Neal continued: “Ito’s ethnographically thick descriptions enable her text to be read playfully alongside other theories centered on the creative dimensions of play such as those explored by Jean Piaget.” Isobel Gorman, reviewer on the Masters of Media Web site, suggested: “While the language is a little technical … at times, the content was very informative and structurally well-balanced which more than made up for this. Overall, this is an excellent, engaging and relevant read for anyone with an interest in the history of children’s software.”
Fandom Unbound and Participatory Culture in a Networked Era
In Fandom Unbound: Otaku Culture in a Connected World, edited by Ito, Okabe, and Izumi Tsuji, contributors comment on the otaku phenomenon in Japan and beyond. Otaku has been translated as “obsessive fan” or “geek,” and it is associated with all types of fan-related activities, including conventions, books, videos, and costumes. One contributor, Lawrence Eng, traces current otaku behavior to fans of manga and anime during the 1970s. Choice critic T.S. Munson suggested that some of the material in the book is dated, noting: “Most of the references cited throughout are from the early 2000s to 2008.” However, Munson categorized the book as “recommended.” Casey Brienza, contributor to the London School of Economics and Political Science Web site, asserted: “This is an important, albeit flawed, book. With its smart, careful organization, skilled Japanese-to-English translation, and grounded, lucid argumentation, it makes a clear contribution to the still much under-investigated phenomenon of East to West cultural flow that is certain to be much read and cited in the future. In fact, it is likely to encourage a new generation of otaku, who might otherwise have not considered themselves or their cultures legitimate subjects of serious scholarship, into the academy to pursue further groundbreaking research in this new field.”
Ito, Henry Jenkins, and Danah Boyd are the authors of Participatory Culture in a Networked Era: A Conversation on Youth, Learning, Commerce, and Politics. In this volume, they examine how young people are harnessing social-networking platforms, video-sharing sites, and other digital phenomena to connect with one another, to organize around certain issues, and to project images of themselves to the world. Ito, Jenkins, and Boyd respond to one another in discussions on each of the topics in the book. S. Pepper, contributor to Choice, suggested: “The book is both exciting and frustrating, but leaves one happy to have been there and with a head buzzing.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice, September, 2012, T.S. Munson, review of Fandom Unbound: Otaku Culture in a Connected World, p. 128; June, 2016, S. Pepper, review of Participatory Culture in a Networked Era: A Conversation on Youth, Learning, Commerce, and Politics, p. 1470.
International Social Science Review, fall-winter, 2006, David B. Broad, review of Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life, p. 180.
ONLINE
Connected Learning Research Network, https://clrn.dmlhub.net/ (June 7, 2017), author profile.
London School of Economics and Political Science Web site, http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/ (May 5, 2012), Casey Brienza, review of Fandom Unbound.
Masters of Media, http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/ (September 19, 2010), Isobel Gorman, review of Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children’s Software.
Mizuko Ito Home Page, http://www.itofisher.com (June 7, 2017).
National Center for Women Information Technology Website, https://www.ncwit.org/ (June 7, 2017), author profile.
Techno_ethno, http://sites.uci.edu/technoethno/ (May 16, 2014), Megan Danielle Neal, review of Engineering Play.
University of California, Humanities Research Institute Web site, https://uchri.org/ (June 7, 2017), author profile.
University of California-Irvine Web site, https://www.ics.uci.edu/ (June 7, 2017), author profile.
Mizuko Ito
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mizuko Ito
Mimidesk.jpg
Ito at her home desk
Born July 22, 1968 (age 48)
Kyōto, Japan
Residence Southern California
Nationality Japanese
Education Ph.D.
Alma mater Harvard University (undergraduate)
Stanford University (graduate)
Occupation Anthropologist
Spouse(s) Scott Fisher
Children 2
Relatives Joi Ito (brother)
Mizuko Itō or Mizuko Ito or Mimi Ito (伊藤瑞子 Itō Mizuko?, born 22 July 1968) is a Japanese cultural anthropologist who is a Professor in Residence at the Humanities Research Institute at the University of California, Irvine. Her main professional interest is young people's use of media technology. She has explored the ways in which digital media are changing relationships, identities, and communities.
Contents
1 Early life
2 Career
2.1 Research interest
2.2 Titles and grants
3 Bibliography
4 See also
5 References
6 External links
Early life
Mizuko Ito grew up between the United States and Japan. In Japan, she attended Nishimachi International School and the American School in Japan. She did her undergraduate work at Harvard University, graduating in 1990 with a degree in East Asian studies: her thesis was "Zen and Tea Ritual: A Comparative Analysis."[1]
Ito did her graduate work at Stanford University. In 1991, she received a Masters of Arts degree in anthropology; her thesis was "The Holistic Alternative: A Symbolic Analysis of an Emergent Culture." In 1998, she received a Ph.D. from the Department of Education for her dissertation: "Interactive Media for Play: Kids, Computer Games and the Productions of Everyday Life." In 2003, she received a Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology for her dissertation: "Engineering Play: Children’s Software and the Productions of Everyday Life."[2]
Ito lives in Southern California with her husband, Scott Fisher, a virtual reality researcher, and their two children. She keeps a Bento Moblog, a visual record of the school lunches she prepares for her kids. Ito's brother is Joi Ito, Director of the MIT Media Lab. With her brother, she hosts Chanpon.org.[3]
Career
Research interest
Ito's main professional interest are connected learning and young people's use of media technology. She has explored the ways in which digital media are changing relationships, identities, and communities. With Misa Matsuda and Daisuke Okabe, Ito edited Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life (MIT Press, 2005).[4] She also investigated otaku fan culture with collaborators Daisuke Okabe and Izumi Tsuji, which resulted in the book Fandom Unbound: Otaku Culture in a Connected World.[5]
Titles and grants
Ito is currently the Research Director of the Digital Media and Learning Hub, and a Professor in Residence at University of California, Irvine's Department of Anthropology, Department of Education, Department of Informatics, and School of Education. She is also the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Chair in Digital Media and Learning.
In 2006, Ito received a MacArthur Foundation grant to "observe children's interactions with digital media to get a sense of how they're really using the technology."[6] This work led to creation of the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub (housed in the University of California Humanities Research Institute) and the publication of two books: Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out and Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children's Software.
Ito is CEO[7][8] of Connected Camps, a benefit corporation that provides online learning programs in coding and the digital arts.
Bibliography
In January 2013, Ito and her collaborators, who include Kris Gutierrez, Sonia Livingstone, Bill Penuel, Jean Rhodes, Katie Salen, Juliet Schor, Julian Sefton-Green, and S. Craig Watkins, released Connected Learning: An Agenda for Research and Design, a synthesis report of the Connected Learning Research Network.
Mizuko Ito wrote or contributed to several books:[9]
Ito, Mizuko. "Virtually Embodied: The Reality of Fantasy in a Multi-User Dungeon" in Internet Culture, edited by David Porter. Routledge, 1997.
Ito, Mizuko, Daisuke Okabe, Misa Matsuda, Eds. Personal Portable Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005.[10]
Ito, Mizuko. "Introduction." In Networked Publics, edited by Kazys Varnelis, 1-14. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Ito, Mizuko, Heather A. Horst, Matteo Bittanti, danah boyd, Becky Herr Stephenson, Patricia G. Lange, C. J. Pascoe, and Laura Robinson. Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project In The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008.
Ito, Mizuko. Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children's Software. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009.
Ito, Mizuko, Daisuke Okabe, Izumi Tsuji, Eds. Fandom Unbound: Otaku Culture in a Connected World. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012.[11]
Ito, Mizuko, Kris Gutiérrez, Sonia Livingstone, Bill Penuel, Jean Rhodes, Katie Salen, Juliet Schor, Julian Sefton-Green, S. Craig Watkins. 2013. Connected Learning: An Agenda for Research and Design. Irvine, CA: Digital Media and Learning Research Hub.[12]
Ito, Mizuko, Sonja Baumer, Matteo Bittanti, danah boyd, Rachel Cody, Becky Herr, Heather A. Horst, Patricia G. Lange, Dilan Mahendran, Katynka Martinez et al. Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2013. ISBN 9780262518543.
Dr. Mizuko Ito, Research Director
mito@hri.uci.edu
Mizuko (Mimi) Ito is a cultural anthropologist, studying youth new media practices in the US and Japan. She oversees research activities of the Digital Media and Learning Hub and is developing a research area focused on interest-driven learning. She is a Professor in Residence at UCHRI, and has appointments in the Department of Informatics and the Department of Anthropology, and is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Chair in Digital Media and Learning at UC Irvine.
Mimi Ito
Professor in Residence
DEGREE:
Ph.D. Education, Ph.D. Anthropology, Stanford University
RESEARCH AREAS:
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Mizuko Ito is a cultural anthropologist of technology use, focusing on children and youth's changing relationships to media and communications. She recently completed a research project supported by the MacArthur Foundation a three year ethnographic study of kid-initiated and peer-based forms of engagement with new media. In 2008, she was awarded the Jan Hawkins Award for Early Career Contributions to Humanistic Research and Scholarship in Learning Technologies from the American Educational Research Association.
CONTACT INFORMATION:
E-mail: mizukoi@uci.edu
Office: DBH 5054
Phone: (949) 824-9011
Fax: (949) 824-4056
Website: www.itofisher.com/mito
Mizuko Ito is a cultural anthropologist who studies new media use, particularly among young people, in Japan and the United States, and a Professor in Residence at the University of California Humanities Research Institute.
February 7, 2006
Bio
M.A. Anthropology, Ph.D. Education, Ph.D. Anthropology, Stanford University
Research Director of the Digital Media and Learning Hub
University of California Humanities Research Institute
Professor in Residence and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Chair in Digital Media and Learning
Department of Anthropology and Department of Informatics, School of Education, University of California, Irvine
Co-Founder and CEO
Connected Camps
Advisory Board Chair
Connected Learning Alliance
I am a cultural anthropologist who studies new media use, particularly among young people in Japan and the US. During my graduate work at Stanford, I worked at the Institute for Research on Learning, Xerox PARC, and Apple, studying up the emerging field of social and cultural studies of digital technology use. My doctoral work was part of the Fifth Dimension project led by Michael Cole. For many years I had a research group at Keio studying mobile technology use. In the first teen social media boom, I conducted a study with Peter Lyman and Michael Carter on a multi-year project on digital kids and informal learning, with support from the MacArthur Foundation. As part of this, I did case studies of anime fandoms in Japan and the English-speaking online world, focusing on anime music videos and fansubs. I edited a book for MIT Press with Daisuke Okabe and Misa Matsuda entitled, Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life., and my book on children's software is Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children's Software. My co-authored book reporting on the digital youth project, Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. My research on anime fandom appears in a book I helped edit, Fandom Unbound: Otaku Culture in a Connected World. My most recent book is a conversation with Henry Jenkins and danah boyd -- Participatory Culture in a Networked Era: A Conversation on Youth, Learning, Commerce, and Politics.
Professional credentials: a doctorate in Anthropology and a doctorate in Education, both from Stanford. Past workplaces: University of Southern California's Annenberg Center and School of Cinematic Arts, The Institute for Research on Learning, Xerox PARC, Tokyo University, the National Institute for Educational Research in Japan, and Apple Computer.
June 2, 2014
Research and Projects
Connected Camps
At SXSW2015, I launched a benefit corporation, Connected Camps with co-founders Tara Tiger Brown and Katie Salen. Connected Camps offers social, creative, hands-on online learning experiences, accessible to kids in all walks of life. Our current focus is on building learning communities and experiences in Minecraft.
Connected Learning Alliance
In 2014, with the support of the MacArthur Foundation, I helped launch the Connected Learning Alliance, dedicated to realizing a world where all young people have equitable access to learning opportunities that are social, participatory, driven by personal needs and interests, and oriented toward educational, civic and economic opportunity
Connected Learning Research Network
I chair a MacArthur Foundation research network on Connected Learning with an interdisciplinary group of researchers seeking to study and design for connected learning environments. My Leveling Up team has been focused on case studies of digitally networked youth interest groups that support connected learning.
The Digital Media and Learning Hub
After moving to UC Irvine in 2008, the focus of my work has been on developing a research hub for the field of digital media and learning, supported by the MacArthur Foundation. In addition to developing some new research initiatives in this area, I have been supporting the development of a communication and networking hub, which includes the website, dmlcentral.net, an annual conference, and other field-building activities.
Digital Youth
In 2008, I completed a project on Kids' Informal Learning with Digital Media together with my co-PIs Peter Lyman and Michael Carter. The project was funded by the MacArthur Foundation, and involved three years of basic ethnographic research on how kids engage with and play with new media in their everyday lives. Some recent press coverage on this work is here. The results of the project are encapsulated in the report, Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project, and the book Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media.
DIY Video
I have been part of the planning of a series of events, 24/7: A DIY Video Summit, that showcases current developments in digital video production, focusing on amateur production, remix, and Internet distibution. Our first event was in 2008.
Keitai and Portable Computing
I worked for many years with Daisuke Okabe and a research group at Docomo House at Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus, studying the everyday pratices of portable technology use in Japan. Our research appears in a book we co-edited with Misa Matsuda, Personal Portable Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life. Our current work focuses on visual communication and on mobile kits. We're collaborating with Intel's People and Practices Group for the mobile kit work.
Otaku and Amateur Cultural Production
My other area of research is on how kids engage with, remix, and remake anime related popular cultures. I have a book forthcoming from Yale University Press, Fandom Unbound: Otaku Culture in a Connected World. One article on anime music videos is in a First Monday special issue.
Networked Publics
In 2006-2007, while at the (now defunct) Annenberg Center at USC, I was part of a research group on Networked Publics, exploring what came to be known popularly as Web 2.0 or the social web. The results of this collaborative research group was published in a book edited by Kazys Varnelis, Networked Publics.
Children's Software
My doctoral work in Education and Anthropology looked at the production and consumption of children's software. I did field work at the Fifth Dimension After-School Clubs on how kids played with educational games, and I interviewed children's software producers. My Education dissertation focused on the content of the games and play. My Anthropology dissertation analyzed "multimedia genres" of edutainment, entertainment, and authoring, that cross- cut production, distribution, marketing, and play. This work has been published as the book Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children's Software.
Japanese Interculturalism
As my childhood was spent split between both Japan and the US, Japanese interculturalism and Japan/US relations is a personal as well as professional topic of interest. My junior high and high school yearswere spent at Nishimachi International School and the American School in Japan. As a personal project, I have been working since 1999 on establishing an online community (now a multi-author blog) for Japanese interculturals, chanpon.org
Broadening Access: An Ethnography of SeniorNet
In 1998 and 1999, I conducted an ethnographic study with SeniorNet, a national network of computer using seniors. Fellow researchers: Annette Adler, Charlotte Linde, Elizabeth Mynatt, and Vicki O'Day. Research conducted atThe Institute for Research on Learning(IRL), The Broadening Access Research Project Page reports on the result of this study.
Disclosure Statement
Disclosure Statement v1
September 2010
I offer this disclosure statement in order to be clear about my significant professional affiliations and financial engagements, and the principles behind how I choose to fund and pursue my work. This is not intended as a comprehensive disclosure of all past and present affiliations and personal relationships tied to my work, but is rather a map of the influences that I feel have a material influence on my current professional obligations.
My primary professional identity is as an academic researcher, writer, and speaker. Unlike most university professors, my work has been funded primarily by grants, and secondarily by commercial consulting, investments, and speaking engagements. I do not make my living off of teaching and university administration, but rather as a full time researcher funded by "soft money" grants. I have never held a traditional faculty appointment or a tenure-track or tenured "permanent" faculty position. This has meant that my work is limited to the kinds of agendas that can be funded by external sources or that has relevance to diverse stakeholders who want to hear me speak or hire me for consulting. On the other hand, this has also meant that I have had the freedom to pursue and publish work that is not tied to the accountabilities of getting tenure and promotions within established fields and academic assessments.
My current institutional affiliations are:
Professor in Residence, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine
Professor in Residence, Department of Informatics, School of Information and Computer Science, University of California, Irvine
Research Director of the Digital Media and Learning Hub, University of California Humanities Research Institute
Co-Founder and CEO Connected Camps
Board of Trustees Exploratorium
Advisor DIY.org
Speaker with the Leigh Bureau
Grants and research funding
My current research is funded primarily by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation as part of their Digital Media and Learning (DML) Initiative. In addition, I hold the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Chair in Digital Media and Learning at UC Irvine which provides additional financial support for my work independent of specific funded projects. I am highly committed to the success of the DML initiative and its aims of transforming public education to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by today's networked and digital technology. I have no qualms about being highly aligned, invested and well-supported by this private foundation because the goals of the initiative are overwhelmingly in the public interest independent of my own professional and personal gain. The foundation has never dictated the content of my talks or publications, and I have had significant input into the research and directions that the initiative has taken.
In addition to the funding from the MacArthur Foundation, I currently have a research grant from the National Science Foundation Cyberlearning program.
Past sources of research funding include (in alphabetical order):
Abe Fellowship Program at the Social Science Research Council
Annenberg Center at the University of Southern California (now defunct)
Association for Asian Studies Northeast Asia Council- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
Google University Relations
Intel Research
Mellon Foundation- National Science Foundation
NTT DoCoMo
Phi Beta Kappa Northern California Society
Spencer Foundation
Reischauer Institute
Vodaphone Group Foundation
Whether from governmental, corporate, or philanthropic sources, all of these grants and fellowships have supported research where I have had control of the research agenda and intellectual property. The funding entities have had influence to the degree that they are able to select and in some cases shape the proposed research agenda, but they have not had any rights to review or influence the outcomes or publications resulting from the research.
Commercial engagements
In addition to research funding, I also do commercial consulting and speaking engagements. My commercial speaking engagements are handled by the Leigh Bureau. give my time freely to many academic and public sector groups, but I believe that commercial entities should provide appropriate compensation for scholarly consulting and speaking. I also do not engage in commercial speaking and consulting activity that involves making any of my primary and grant-funded research proprietary to a commercial entity (with the exception of publishers). In other words, I do not believe in transferring philanthropically or government funded intellectual property to private commercial entities, and almost all my commercial engagements are one-time or very short term in nature. I do not feel that any of my commercial engagements influence whether I will speak out for or against a particular company or product. If I do feel like there is an influence, I will note this in at the time of speaking or publication.
This web site and publications
This is a personal web site that is not affiliated with the academic institutions or funding agencies that I am currently or formerly affiliated with. I blog infrequently, and primarily about my own professional activities. Occasionally I will blog or tweet to promote the activities or publications of others who I want to support personally or professionally. When I am promoting an entity that I have a direct financial interest in or that I support financially I will note this fact. In my publications, I note the funding sources for the work in the acknowledgments section.
Other affiliations
I also sit on a number of editorial and advisory boards:
Editorial Board Mobile Communication Research Annual
Editorial Board Games and Culture
Advisory Board Vectors: Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular
Advisory Board Member, Wikimedia Foundation
Family and friends
I am blessed to have close family and friends who share my professional interests and vision of social change. In particular, my brother, Joi Ito, and husband, Scott Fisher, work in closely allied areas, and we on occasion engage in shared projects and events when there is a principled reason to do so. I fully acknowledge that these and other personal relationships have been hugely enabling of my work and provide indispensable support and motivation to keep me going. At the same time, I am highly committed to professional standards of research integrity that insist that my analysis and findings are independent of these personal relationships.
Mimi Ito
University of California, Irvine
Biography
Mizuko Ito is a cultural anthropologist of technology use, examining children and youth’s changing relationships to media and communications and is Professor in Residence and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Chair in Digital Media and Learning at the University of California, Irvine, with appointments in the University of California Humanities Research Institute, the Department of Anthropology, and the Department of Informatics. Her work on educational software appears in Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children’s Software. In Japan, her research has focused on mobile and -portable technologies, and she co-edited a book on that topic, Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life. She has led a three-year collaborative ethnographic study, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, examining youth new media practices in the US, and focusing on gaming, digital media production, and Internet use. The findings of this project are reported in Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Youth Living and Learning with New Media. Most recently, she has co-edited and contributed to a book on fan culture, Fandom Unbound: Otaku Culture in a Connected World.
Continuing work on informal learning with new media with the support of the MacArthur Foundation, she is Research Director of the Digital Media and Learning Hub at UC Irvine and Chair of the MacArthur Research Network on Connected Learning. In addition to her current work funded by the MacArthur Foundation, she has been awarded grants by the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, Intel Research, the Abe Fellowship Program, and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and is the recipient of the Jan Hawkins Award for Early Career Contributions to Humanistic Research and Scholarship in Learning Technologies from the American Educational Research Association.
Mizuko Ito
Professor in Residence and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Chair in Digital Media and Learning
University of California, Irvine
Background
Mizuko Ito is a Cultural Anthropologist of Technology Use, examining children and youth’s changing relationships to media and communications. She is a Professor in Residence and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Chair in Digital Media and Learning at the University of California Irvine, with appointments in the University of California Humanities Research Institute, the Department of Anthropology, the Department of Informatics, and the School of Education. She chairs the MacArthur Connected Learning Research Network and is the Research Director of the Digital Media and Learning Hub. Her co-authored book, Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Youth Living and Learning with New Media, describes new opportunities for interest-driven learning fueled by games, social media, and digital tools. In Connected Learning: An Agenda for Research and Design, Mizuko and her colleagues in the Connected Learning Research Network map out how education can embrace today’s technology to make meaningful learning available to all young people. She is Co-founder of Connected Camps, a benefit corporation that provides online creative learning in Minecraft for kids in all walks of life.
QUOTED: "The book is both exciting and frustrating, but leaves one happy to have been there and with a head buzzing."
Jenkins, Henry: Participatory culture in a networked era: a conversation on youth, learning, commerce, and politics
S. Pepper
53.10 (June 2016): p1470.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Jenkins, Henry. Participatory culture in a networked era: a conversation on youth, learning, commerce, and politics, by Henry Jenkins, Mizuko Ito, and danah boyd. Polity, 2016. 214p bibl Index afp ISBN 9780745660707 cloth, $59.95; ISBN 9780745660714 pbk, $19.95; ISBN 9780745689432 ebook, $9.95
(CC) 53-4256
HQ799
2015-12712 CIP
In this book, Jenkins (communication, USC), Ito (digital media and learning, Univ. of California, Irvine), and boyd (a principle researcher at Microsoft)--all well-known media scholars--carry on a sustained conversation about participatory culture, connected learning, and networked youth. Each author discusses issues of fandom, learning, activism, and identity as they relate to the networked public. This is not a book about Face book, Twitter, or You Tube per se. Rather, it is about how youth are making use of those platforms (and many others) to connect, make things, take action, and express themselves--that is, to participate in the world. This book can function as an introductory overview of the scholarly landscape, or it can serve to energize new media researchers to ask important questions about democracy and collaboration in a networked era. The authors bring a cross-section of research about participatory culture to the table, as they discuss everything from the It Gets Better Project and Kony 2012 to World of Warcraft and the Harry Potter Alliance. Structured as an ongoing dialogue (like a panel discussion or a dinner party with academics), the book is both exciting and frustrating, but leaves one happy to have been there and with a head buzzing full of ideas. Summing Up: ** Recommended. All levels.--S. Pepper, Northeastern Illinois University
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Pepper, S. "Jenkins, Henry: Participatory culture in a networked era: a conversation on youth, learning, commerce, and politics." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, June 2016, p. 1470+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA454942667&it=r&asid=fd9d7caec3333b9a0a9ae931fe25ac1b. Accessed 10 May 2017.
QUOTED: "Most of the references cited throughout are from the early 2000s to 2008."
"recommended."
Gale Document Number: GALE|A454942667
Fandom unbound: otaku culture in a connected world
T.S. Munson
50.1 (Sept. 2012): p128.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 American Library Association CHOICE
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50-0352
GV1469
2011-937359 MARC
Fandom unbound: otaku culture in a connected world, ed. by Mizuko Ito, Daisuke Okabe, and Izumi Tsuji. Yale, 2012. 320p bibl index alp ISBN 9780300158649 pbk, $35.00
This edited volume explores the world of the otaku, a Japanese word often translated into English as "geek," but perhaps more usefully rendered as "obsessive fan." Chapters explore the many nodes of fan production--costume play ("cosplay"), fan conventions, fan fiction, fan-produced videos, and so forth. The "connected world" of the subtitle suggests a focus not only on fan culture in early-21st-century Japan, but also on the international links the digital age has made possible. In particular, one standout chapter by Lawrence Eng provides a concise history of anime and manga fandom in the US from the 1970s to the present. However, not all the chapters are as engaging, at least for generalist readers--and one, strictly speaking, is not a "chapter" at all, but rather a reprinted excerpt from another book. This might be understandable if the original work were not over 11 years old. In fact, most of the references cited throughout are from the early 2000s to 2008. Four years is a long time in "Internet years," and one wonders what developments have occurred since 2008. Summing Up: Recommended. ** Upper-division undergraduates and above.--T. S. Munson, Randolph-Macon College
Munson, T.S.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Munson, T.S. "Fandom unbound: otaku culture in a connected world." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Sept. 2012, p. 128. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA305083550&it=r&asid=4302abab94fae23254114fe62082fd70. Accessed 10 May 2017.
QUOTED: "These authors' penchant for empirical testing of theory is evident in every one of the fifteen articles in the present collection."
Gale Document Number: GALE|A305083550
Ito, Mizuko; Okabe, Daisuke; and Matsuda, Misa, eds. Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life
David B. Broad
81.3-4 (Fall-Winter 2006): p180.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2006 Pi Gamma Mu
http://www.pigammamu.org/international-social-science-review.html
Ito, Mizuko; Okabe, Daisuke; and Matsuda, Misa, eds. Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005. 357 pages. Cloth, $39.95.
This is a collection of research articles about the phenomenon of keitai (the Japanese term for a mobile phone or phones and the use of such devices). Japanese social scientists have seemingly embraced the integration of theory and empirical methodologies more than American or European scholars. In tone, they are Parsonian (perhaps in part because of translation effects), but they do not leave theory untested long. The range of theoretical groundings achieved in this collection is quite remarkable. In one of the articles, Georg W.E Hegel, Karl Marx, Karl Mannheim, Marshall McLuhan, and Thomas Kuhn are referenced and the concepts of spirit of the era, fetish objectification, world village, framing of ideology, and paradigm shift, respectively, are employed as heuristics for exploring the revolutionary adoption of keitai. But these authors' penchant for empirical testing of theory is evident in every one of the fifteen articles in the present collection.
First, a little history. After their defeat at the hands of the United States in World War II, the Japanese both endured and embraced the American occupation led by Douglas MacArthur. In the Shinto/Buddhist mind, enduring and embracing are not so difficult to reconcile. MacArthur brought with him 200 scientists and engineers to assist in the economic recovery and Americanization of Japan. One of them was W. Edwards Deming, a statistician whose ideas for process improvement in manufacturing became the basis for Total Quality Management (TQM). One particular Japanese professor, whose former students included a number of CEOs of nascent Japanese industries, was quite taken with Deming's ideas, and he recommended that his mentees attend Deming's seminars. This marked the beginning of Japan's industrial and technological leap of quality that has made so many Japanese products the preferred products of the world. The history of keitai is a chapter in that larger history.
Throughout the economic transformation that TQM undergirds in Japan, traditional Japanese culture has survived. Japanese adoption of technology, which has outpaced and eclipsed the world in many respects, has also been shaped by the cultural centrality of family and respect. According to Philip Sugai, a marketing professor at International University of Japan: "One of the wonderful things about the Japanese culture is its amazing ability to merge seemingly contradictory elements, so I think the integration of keitai culture with traditional culture simply makes sense. TM In a way, this whole collection of articles supports that assertion.
One focus of the research reported is the development of keitai use "from a businessmen's tool to youth media technology" (p. 22). In this piece, the perceptions of youth toward keitai use are traced from the beginnings when they were considered "uncool" to their unfettered embrace by the same generation. In the uncool phase, youth described the early businessmen users as "self-important" and acting as if "I am busy" and "I am needed by others" (p. 23). In a transitory period of adoption by youth, mobile phones were seen as status objects, reminiscent perhaps of Marlboro packs conspicuously displayed in shirt pockets.
As a crucible of the evolution of family in the post-industrial world, keitai are observed in some of the current articles as vehicles of family integration and at the same time devices that enable youth distancing, by making reporting to parents easy from anywhere. They are also described as tools for virtual community building and personalization of participation in emerging virtual communities. The camera function in particular is described as having this use. In a Japanese twist to the Parsonian predilection for naming by function, one author gives the keitai the moniker "antiubiquitous territory machine" (p. 92). This refers to the role of the extraordinary use of keitai in Japan in the national culture's defense against globalization.
Perhaps the most salient observation made, that will become a theory of the middle range from this work, is about how keitai use is structuring a fading of urban anonymity and engendering what one of the authors has labeled "telecocooning" (p. 178)--the production of social identity within the networks enabled by keitai. If so, then this particular combination of technology and culture has produced a new and distinct context in which identity is created.
NOTE
(1) Philip Sugai to David Broad, e-mail correspondence, February 7, 2006, possession of author.
David B. Broad, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
North Georgia College & State University
Dahlonega, Georgia
Broad, David B.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Broad, David B. "Ito, Mizuko; Okabe, Daisuke; and Matsuda, Misa, eds. Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life." International Social Science Review, vol. 81, no. 3-4, 2006, p. 180+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA160103832&it=r&asid=ae013d068198c8b4c2b00a426e19f730. Accessed 10 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A160103832
QUOTED: "a successful narrative that shows how the was computer further anchored in the American household by way of the child."
"Ito’s insights culminate into a robust impetus for future research. Her assertion that children participate in technological innovation has strong theoretical implications. Actor-network theory calls for increased attention to non-human entities. Yet, in its application, human actors are typically conceptualized as adults. Ito’s work thus challenges people to consider if and how kids are counted in networks. At the same time, applying Ito’s insights to actor-network theory’s emphasis on materiality also stimulates new ways to think about kids and computers–as well as the role of imagination and improvisation in play."
"Ito’s ethnographically thick descriptions enable her text to be read playfully alongside other theories centered on the creative dimensions of play such as those explored by Jean Piaget."
Review Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children’s Software, by Mizuko Ito
Megan Danielle Neal May 16, 2014 Uncategorized
Book Review: Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children’s Software.
Mizuko Ito. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009. 234 pp. ISBN: 9780262013352.
Engineering Play
Mizuko Ito’s book, “Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children’s Software” explores the ongoing construction of kid’s software genres. Her “working hypothesis” is that the proliferation of digital tools engages people in novel forms of linguistic, social, cognitive, and self-directed exploration. The effects of this exploration have altered expressions of identity, independence, creativity, and cognition. By focusing on the significance of children as co-producers of innovation and meaning, she calls necessary attention to the lacuna that has separated anthropology from a number of social science disciplines that take seriously issues of childhood.
Ito’s text draws attention to kid-computer interactions, especially in relation to agency, socialization, capitalism, play, and culture. Rather than a univocal story, she contends that the development of children’s software genres is the product of successes, failures, and ongoing negotiations between kids (as she points out they call themselves), parents, teachers, and software developers. The bulk of her book is comprised of three chapters spanning the ongoing sociocultural, creative, embodied, and market-oriented negotiations fueling the development of academic, entertainment, and construction software. To illustrate these everyday “micropolitical” negotiations, Ito relies on binaristic tensions like structure/agency, market/domestic, play/learning, and kid/adult. The result is a successful narrative that shows how the was computer further anchored in the American household by way of the child.
Ito’s bibliography is built upon theory from cultural anthropology, developmental psychology, visual and media studies, and Science and Technology Studies. Her analyses are also derived from meso-level multi-sited fieldwork conducted amongst kids and adults at three after school clubs in California hosted by the non-profit, 5th Dimension. Two of her sites were located in San Diego and another in Palo Alto. Ito’s observational work at 5th Dimension draws heavily on Bourdieu’s notion of “practice” to elucidate the dynamics connecting micro and macro scales (1990). Ito uses the kid’s engagements with computers at 5th Dimension to explain how their resistance against purely academic play performs an embodied critique that influences the design of educational commodities. To further understand the industry-mediated channels framing the production, circulation, and consumption of children’s software, Ito also conducted interviews with software developers. This rich layering effect is furthered by past and present-day analyses. By drawing on archival data, Ito reaches back in time to narrate the computer’s gradual domestication.
Before they became “digital natives” co-parented by the internet and video games, children in the Victorian era were expected learn bourgeois sensibilities through restricted interaction with toys and other forms of supposedly low-class hedonistic play. Ito’s chronological analysis shows how the popularity of styles and technologies of play connote certain ideals about childhood that ebb and flow in capitalist, sociocultural environments. In many ways, Ito tells the story of how American childhood has been structured by ever-changing boundaries distinguishing learning from play. At 5th Dimension, we see how computer interfaces can be poised as games to be enjoyed in and of themselves and/or the tools of educational labor kids must perform. By centering her analysis on kids, Ito performs another logical extension of Bourdieu’s work that explicates how software becomes a medium through which various adult stakeholders attempt to foster childhood habitus. Ones implicitly derived from American orientations toward, among other things, class, ontology, phenomenology, and epistemology.
By the 1980s, experimental software developers in the edutainment genre sought to reform the American educational system and democratize literacy by developing programs that synthesized learning with play. A technological critique of the standardization rampant in American school systems and the explicit distinction between play and learning, these developers sought a more pragmatic form of learning. Through the combination of fun with real world-problem solving and open-ended trajectories, these developers sought to adapt the computer to the phenomenological experience of children while encouraging their epistemological development. Yet, these early developer’s aspirations to improve the US education system were gradually dismantled by the constraints of the capitalist market, which prioritized consumption over innovation. One developer lamented, “They made it impossible to transform education alongside making huge profits by doing the same little programs over and over” (2009: 40).
Promoting the consumption and internalization of achievement and capitalizing off the anxieties of middle-class parents, academic software in the 1990s was marketed as a status symbol to parents. Less exploratory than its antecedent, this software boasted Mensa-like challenges and rigorous point systems. In this sense, children’s software was engineered to discipline kid’s aspirations toward the attainment of social distinction as opposed to playful exploration. However, kid’s lack of interest in these games dissuaded parents from buying into the genre and its popularity declined. Uninspired by formally academic software, kids eager to participate in gaming then fueled the expansion of the entertainment genre.
More kid-entered, this genre emphasizes youth culture, appeals directly to kid imaginations, and playfully promotes parental subversion. Ito notes how this genre of engagement was evident at 5th Dimension. While adults encouraged them to engage with the software’s academic content, the kids were often more captivated by the game aesthetics showed a tendency to willfully switch from goal-oriented to fun-oriented, exploratory engagement. Ito contends that the kid’s embodied commitment to ”fun” can be understood as a “micropolitics of pleasure” and also resistance (2009: 131). 5th Dimension was a location where kids resisted engaging with standardized knowledge in pursuit of professional achievement.
Ito contends that, “Today’s children and youth are growing up in a media ecology where producing, modifying, messing around with, customizing, and sharing digital media are part of every day life (2009: 185).” The need for flexibility and adaptability is exemplified by construction genre games like SimCity, which emphasize authorship and the design of digital worlds. Such games are more conducive to play because they facilitate agency, appeal to sensorial pleasure, and emphasize education through open-ended, procedural learning. Ito’s apparent preference for construction-oriented games implicitly critiques not only the standardization of learning but also the presumably “normal” computer-using kid. Building on Ito’s insights, future ethnographies should explore how children’s software fosters and reinforces phenomenologically and ontologically normative conceptualizations of learning.
Ito succeeds in her attempt to show how the interplay of structure and agency can spur the development and circulation of technologies. In doing so, she not only highlights the agency of childhood but the agency of the imagination as well. Stylistically, Ito’s language draws on the anthropological register but overall, her text is accessible to a wider audience. Her prose is complemented by a wealth of transcripts she uses to ground her analyses. Additionally her utilization of visual studies to analyze numerous software advertisements concretizes her claims and conceptually engages the visually inclined. Her work also speaks directly to polemical debates surrounding video games that situate play and learning as oppositional. Ito’s discussion of play, learning, technology, and agency make her relevant and beneficial to scholars interested in technology and childhood development, as well as parents and educators.
Ito’s insights culminate into a robust impetus for future research. Her assertion that children participate in technological innovation has strong theoretical implications. Actor-network theory calls for increased attention to non-human entities. Yet, in its application, human actors are typically conceptualized as adults. Ito’s work thus challenges people to consider if and how kids are counted in networks. At the same time, applying Ito’s insights to actor-network theory’s emphasis on materiality also stimulates new ways to think about kids and computers–as well as the role of imagination and improvisation in play. Ito shows how the kids at 5th Dimension tended to push the boundaries of both software and adult expectations. Also material and immaterial, the computer’s flexibility can be seen as both analogous and conducive to the imagination.
Ito’s ethnographically thick descriptions enable her text to be read playfully alongside other theories centered on the creative dimensions of play such as those explored by Jean Piaget. He contended that kids can use their imaginations to improvise during symbolic play. Imagination enables kids to creatively interact with immaterial phenomena in a process akin to transduction, where physical objects can be transformed into other material or immaterial objects, and visa versa (1962). In another sense, Ito shows how cultural ideals of childhood are also transduced into software designed to cultivate a certain habitus for burgeoning US adults though the distinction of play from the work of epistemological socialization, a boundary the kids actively balk.
Taking their phenomenological experience of symbolic play seriously, the versatility of imagination enables kids to creatively elaborate on environmental parameters and interact with material and immaterial phenomena. By using improvisation and imagination to playfully resist software circumscribing their participation in physical and digital environments, the kids at 5th Dimension engage in acts of playful self-authorship. Although Ito poignantly illustrates how the computer has been engineered to foster certain notions of development, identity, play and knowledge, the kids at 5th Dimension show that they can still innovate the course of predetermined trajectories in favor of more idiosyncratic journeys.
Works Cited:
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990 The Logic of Practice. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Ito, Mizuko. 2009 Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children’s Software.
Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Piaget, Jean. 1962 Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood. New York: Norton.
QUOTED: "This is an important, albeit flawed, book. With its smart, careful organization, skilled Japanese-to-English translation, and grounded, lucid argumentation, it makes a clear contribution to the still much under-investigated phenomenon of East to West cultural flow that is certain to be much read and cited in the future. In fact, it is likely to encourage a new generation of otaku, who might otherwise have not considered themselves or their cultures legitimate subjects of serious scholarship, into the academy to pursue further groundbreaking research in this new field."
Book Review: Fandom Unbound: Otaku Culture in a Connected World, edited by Mizuko Ito
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In Fandom Unbound, Mizuko Ito explores how the once marginalized popular culture of otaku has come to play a major role in Japan’s identity at home and abroad. Casey Brienza praises the book for encouraging a new generation of otaku into the academy to pursue further groundbreaking research in this new field.
Fandom Unbound: Otaku Culture in a Connected World. Edited by Mizuko Ito, Daisuke Okabe, and Izumi Tsuji. Yale University Press. March 2012.
Find this book:
“Otaku culture,” writes cultural anthropologist Mizuko Ito in the introduction to Fandom Unbound: Otaku Culture in a Connected World, “defies simple definition. Emerging first in Japan in the 1980s as a marginalized and stigmatized geek subculture, it has gradually expanded its sphere of influence to become a major international force, propelled by arguably the most wired fandom on the planet.” In this edited volume, Ito and her colleagues Daisuke Okabe and Izumi Tsuji set out to map this international force through the transnational circulation of anime, manga, and videogames. In the process, they shed new light on the sometimes secretive creative habits and practices of active and passionate otaku consumers in Japan and the United States.
Fandom Unbound’s twelve chapters, written by a total of ten authors based in either America or Japan, are divided equally into three sections of four chapters each on ‘Culture and Discourse,’ ‘Infrastructure and Place,’ and ‘Community and Identity.’ The first section is the most theoretical, its chapters focusing on who, precisely, the otaku are and how they came to be. The second section is devoted to how otaku have transformed – or may potentially transform—the geographic, digital, and legal spaces in which they have become embedded. And the final section provides a series of case studies on particular otaku subcultures, those of the fujoshi, cosplayers, fighting gamers, and AMV creators, respectively.
Photo by Yumeto Yamazaki/AFLO
The great strength of Fandom Unbound is its thick description of otaku cultures. Ito et al. have assembled a fantastic, international team of contributors, and in the tradition of the very best ethnographers, they bring vibrantly alive people utterly unknown to most of the world. Better still, otaku will recognize themselves in these pages, even as they derive new perspectives on their own fan practices from the book’s penetrating theoretical and sociological analyses. In particular, Tsuji’s chapter on train otaku, Eng’s on American anime otaku culture, and Ito’s on anime music video (AMV) subculture are excellent. And Morikawa is to be likewise applauded for his convincing chapter on the Tokyo neighbourhood of Akihabara’s transformation into an otaku mecca.
Unfortunately, this anthology’s dynamic ethnographic storytelling is not coupled with overarching theoretical narrative of equal force. Kitada’s chapter on the Japanese social media platform 2ch and its relationship to mainstream media critique, along with an excerpt from a previously published English translation of Azuma’s Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals, together comprise a deeply critical, problematizing core to the study of otaku culture which is simply not replicated elsewhere in the anthology. Otherwise, Henry Jenkins is the most cited scholar, a choice that leads more to celebration than ideological critique. Sure, this is a book about media consumption—but where are the culture industries that made all this media in the first place? Ito et al. would have been well-advised to consider more carefully the ways in which media power is complicit in, and benefiting from, the development of fandom. Prough’s book Straight from the Heart on shoujo manga publishing in Japan or even my own ongoing research on manga publishing in the United States would have been useful in this context.
All in all, this is an important, albeit flawed, book. With its smart, careful organization, skilled Japanese-to-English translation, and grounded, lucid argumentation, it makes a clear contribution to the still much under-investigated phenomenon of East to West cultural flow that is certain to be much read and cited in the future. In fact, it is likely to encourage a new generation of otaku, who might otherwise have not considered themselves or their cultures legitimate subjects of serious scholarship, into the academy to pursue further groundbreaking research in this new field. I look forward to that. Recommended for students and scholars of fan studies and Japanese popular culture.
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Casey Brienza is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Cambridge and member of Trinity College, Cambridge. She received her AB from Mount Holyoke College in 2003 and her MA from New York University’s Department of Media, Culture, and Communication in 2009. Her doctoral thesis, fully funded by an External Research Studentship from her College, is being written under the supervision of John Thompson on manga publishing and the transnational production of print culture. Casey also has refereed articles in print or forthcoming in journals such as The Journal of Popular Culture, Publishing Research Quarterly, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, and The International Journal of the Book. She may be reached through her website. Read more reviews by Casey.
QUOTED: "While the language is a little technical ... at times, the content was very informative and structurally well-balanced which more than made up for this. Overall, this is an excellent, engaging and relevant read for anyone with an interest in the history of children’s software."
Book Review: “Engineering Play – A Cultural History of Children’s Software” – By Mizuko Ito
By: Isobel Gorman
On: September 19, 2010
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Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children’s Software by cultural anthropologist Mizuko Ito, takes an in-depth look at the evolution of children’s software and it’s development into the three distinct genres; academic (edutainment), entertainment and construction.
As a person who has followed the evolution of video gaming from the early days of 8-bit home computers, I found this cultural history of children’s software to be an extremely interesting and enlightening read. However, I was more than a little surprised (given the levels of research) by the all-encompassing title, which reads ‘A Cultural History of Children’s Software’ and then discovering that the study only focused on a localized market, with no mention of children’s software outside the United States.
Ito weaves a compelling tale of the dynamic and rapidly changing face of the children’s software industry from the pioneering days of the early 1980s to the late 1990s when she completed her case studies. This historical perspective shines a light on the academic genre, which primarily plays on the achievement-based anxieties of parents and students through grade based software. The entertainment genre, which focused on home-based family orientated software that encouraged open-ended child-centered play with educational elements. In the final genre, construction, Ito discusses how the children themselves became increasingly involved in content creation through customization, authoring and more dynamic self-motivating approaches to learning.
It is interesting to note that the history of children’s software saw the computer grow from a professional tool to its domestication as a learning and entertainment device. This Lev Manovich described as “…during one decade a computer moved from being culturally invisible technology to being the new engine of culture.” (Manovich, L, Pg. 10)
Engineering Play is a well-structured and easy to follow book. While each of the children’s software genres developed almost simultaneously, the author effectively manages to break these down into individual chapters and present the evolution of each mode chronologically. This was no easy feat given the multi-disciplinary approach and wide scope of research carried out, which also included history of the genre, interviews with early pioneers, marketing analysis and live case studies.
While the language is a little technical and dry at times, the content was very informative and structurally well-balanced which more than made up for this. Overall, this is an excellent, engaging and relevant read for anyone with an interest in the history of children’s software or video game studies. On a final note, I would suggest including a global study or comparison in order to give a more international overview.
Book: Mizuko Ito, 2007, “Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children’s Software”, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
References: Manovich, Lev., Draft version: November 20, 2008. “Software Takes Command” http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2008/11/softbook.html