New Technologies: New bonds of solidarity, sociability ways and modes of subjectivity in the context of the relationship through online games

GENDLER, MARTÍN ARIEL

Buenos Aires

Congreso; Second Forum of Sociology; 2012

International Sociological Association

During the 1970's we begin to get a glimpse at various political, economical and social changes in the different societies of our time. The industrial production model supported on a welfare state began to collapse before new ways and means of production. The overall development of the technology and its penetration into all spheres of social life brings with it the emergence of a new production mode for capitalism, which various currents of thought have called "informational capitalism" and other "cognitive capitalism" that in turn comprises the reconfiguration of social bonds and solidarity prevailing in the various human groups where a process of change in "typical" social relations of industrial capitalism can be seen. We shall concentrate on one of the modes of computer-mediated communication (Castells, 1997): On-line games and one online gaming type in particular. For now, it is within this context that this paper will seek to analyze the various social ties and relationships that argentinian individuals keep in this MMORTS server platform game, with the objective of the research being, analyzing the various social relations and solidarity bonds formed between the players of this game, studying how the links that are built spread to other areas of human life, analizing the perceptions of the users around the bonds built and social and symbolic representations generated within the group. Our methodology consists in what has traditionally be known as "field work" where the level of complexity is that the "field" is not located in a large city or an Aboriginal community in isolation but in the various areas of daily life the investigator (the home, office, workplace, school, etc.). Also, there have been a series of interviews to various active players in order to learn, in depth, the various representations, judgments of value, actions and relationships held by them under this context and how this extends to other areas of everyday life outside the game. Analyses are subscribed to the investigation of what was formed around the game analyzed and given the qualitative methodology used, it is not the researcher's intention to extend the analysis to the multiplicity of similar games, or world servers or extrapolation to possible across the board or structural predictions, but the description and analysis of the rise in the framework of the argentinian game server investigated.