TY - BOOK
T1 - Politics of Play
T2 - Wargaming with the US Military
AU - Hirst, Aggie
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© Oxford University Press 2024. All rights reserved.
PY - 2024/5/23
Y1 - 2024/5/23
N2 - Politics of Play: Wargaming with the US Military is the first book in international relations to examine the use of wargames in the world’s most powerful fighting forces. Since 2014, a wargaming renaissance has been under way in which a small but committed wargames community of practice has been empowered to proliferate their craft across the military’s strategic planning, professional education, and training regimes. Drawing in detail upon one hundred hours of interviews conducted at US military wargames and schoolhouses, Politics of Play examines the military’s use of games for recruitment, training, education, and research. It argues that by promoting a non-reflexive immersive state and cultivating a drive toward victory conditions, wargaming has both reality-producing and subject-producing properties. In addition, grounded in the thought of Jacques Derrida, it offers a new theorization of play—“deconstructive play”—as a practical means by which the politics and power relations at work in wargames might be identified and challenged. The book shows that, far from games and play being one and the same, games sit in tension with play insofar as games are systems or structures that arrest and direct play, often imposed from outside, while play involves the making and breaking of such rules by players themselves. Combining original empirical analysis with a new theory of play, Politics of Play offers a critical analysis of the use of wargaming to produce soldiers in the digital age.
AB - Politics of Play: Wargaming with the US Military is the first book in international relations to examine the use of wargames in the world’s most powerful fighting forces. Since 2014, a wargaming renaissance has been under way in which a small but committed wargames community of practice has been empowered to proliferate their craft across the military’s strategic planning, professional education, and training regimes. Drawing in detail upon one hundred hours of interviews conducted at US military wargames and schoolhouses, Politics of Play examines the military’s use of games for recruitment, training, education, and research. It argues that by promoting a non-reflexive immersive state and cultivating a drive toward victory conditions, wargaming has both reality-producing and subject-producing properties. In addition, grounded in the thought of Jacques Derrida, it offers a new theorization of play—“deconstructive play”—as a practical means by which the politics and power relations at work in wargames might be identified and challenged. The book shows that, far from games and play being one and the same, games sit in tension with play insofar as games are systems or structures that arrest and direct play, often imposed from outside, while play involves the making and breaking of such rules by players themselves. Combining original empirical analysis with a new theory of play, Politics of Play offers a critical analysis of the use of wargaming to produce soldiers in the digital age.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85199616155&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1093/oso/9780197629192.001.0001
DO - 10.1093/oso/9780197629192.001.0001
M3 - Book
AN - SCOPUS:85199616155
SN - 2024009080
SN - 9780197629192
BT - Politics of Play
PB - Oxford University Press
ER -
