Garry Crawford

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Garry Crawford
Born
Scientific career
Fields Sociology, Leisure Studies, Cultural Studies, Game studies
Institutions University of Salford

Garry Crawford is a British sociologist.

His interests in fans, audiences, and consumption have led Garry Crawford to publish on a wide range of subjects including cultural studies, cosplay, gender, leisure, classical music, and, most notably, sports fans [1] and video game culture. [2]

Contents

Garry Crawford works at the University of Salford, where he is a Professor of Cultural Sociology and Lead Professor for the Social Sciences. He established and was the first Director of the University of Salford Digital Cluster, which the British governments’ Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) report Higher Ambitions described as "a forum and centre of excellence, which combines and leads on high quality research, academic enterprise and teaching in areas of informatics, digital media, and new and convergent technologies". [3]

He is a member of the British Sociological Association and the Leisure Studies Association. He was the first review editor for, and helped found and establish, the journal Cultural Sociology. He also co-created and was the first editor of the school-focused website Discover Sociology. [4] He is a member of the University of Salford's Connected Lives Research group.

Garry Crawford is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Science and a Principal Fellow of the HEA.

Sports Fan Studies & Early Career

Garry Crawford began his academic career as a researcher at the Sir Norman Chester Centre for Football Research at the University of Leicester, where he worked as a researcher and consultant on several projects, such as Asians Can't Play Football. Following this, his doctoral research (at the University of Salford) and subsequent early publications focused on British ice hockey, its history, and supporters.

His first book Consuming Sport (2004) was the first book to offer a detailed consideration of how sport is experienced and engaged with in the everyday lives, social networks, and consumer patterns of its followers [5] which Martin Johnes in the International Journal of the History of Sport described as "a very important contribution to the field of sports studies". [6]

Sports fan culture is an area where Garry Crawford continues to work and publish, such as his edited collection with Stefan Lawrence on Digital Football Cultures (2019).

Game Studies

Another area where Garry Crawford has made significant and important contributions to is the study video game culture. Significantly, his early work here focused most notably on sports video games, but beyond this his work expanded to explore the sociology of video games in his book Video Gamers (2012), and then (with Daniel Muriel) the growing social and cultural significance of video game culture in their book Video Games as Culture (2018). Video Games as Culture not only considers contemporary video game culture, but also explores how video games provide important insights into the modern nature of digital and participatory culture, patterns of consumption and identity formation, later modernity and contemporary political rationalities. [7]

Closely connected to this is his work on cosplay culture, and in particular his book with the practicing artist David Hancock Cosplay and the Art of Play. This book offers an introduction to cosplay as a subculture and community built around playful spaces and everyday practices of crafting costumes, identities, and performances. This book draws on new and original ethnographic research with cosplayers, but moreover, also employs more innovative arts-led practice research. [8]

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hobby</span> Regular activity done for enjoyment

A hobby is considered to be a regular activity that is done for enjoyment, typically during one's leisure time. Hobbies include collecting themed items and objects, engaging in creative and artistic pursuits, playing sports, or pursuing other amusements. Participation in hobbies encourages acquiring substantial skills and knowledge in that area. A list of hobbies changes with renewed interests and developing fashions, making it diverse and lengthy. Hobbies tend to follow trends in society. For example, stamp collecting was popular during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as postal systems were the main means of communication; as of 2023, video games became more popular following technological advances. The advancing production and technology of the nineteenth century provided workers with more leisure time to engage in hobbies. Because of this, the efforts of people investing in hobbies has increased with time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leisure</span> Time that is freely disposed by individuals

Leisure has occasionally been defined as a quality of experience or as free time. Free time is time spent away from business, work, job hunting, domestic chores, and education, as well as necessary activities such as eating and sleeping. Leisure as an experience usually emphasizes dimensions of perceived freedom and choice. It is done for "its own sake", for the quality of experience and involvement. Other classic definitions include Thorstein Veblen's (1899) of "nonproductive consumption of time." Free time is not easy to define due to the multiplicity of approaches used to determine its essence. Different disciplines have definitions reflecting their common issues: for example, sociology on social forces and contexts and psychology as mental and emotional states and conditions. From a research perspective, these approaches have an advantage of being quantifiable and comparable over time and place.

<i>Otaku</i> Someone highly interested in anime and manga

Otaku is a Japanese word that describes people with consuming interests, particularly in anime, manga, video games, or computers. Its contemporary use originated with a 1983 essay by Akio Nakamori in Manga Burikko.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fan (person)</span> Person who is enthusiastically devoted to something or someone

A fan or fanatic, sometimes also termed an aficionado or enthusiast, is a person who exhibits strong interest or admiration for something or somebody, such as a celebrity, a sport, a sports team, a genre, a politician, a book, a movie, a video game or an entertainer. Collectively, the fans of a particular object or person constitute its fanbase or fandom. They may show their enthusiasm in a variety of ways, such as by promoting the object of their interest, being members of a related fan club, holding or participating in fan conventions or writing fan mail. They may also engage in creative activities such as creating fanzines, writing fan fiction, making memes or drawing fan art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sociology of sport</span> Sub-discipline of sociology

Sociology of sport, alternately referred to as sports sociology, is a sub-discipline of sociology which focuses on sports as social phenomena. It is an area of study concerned with the relationship between sociology and sports, and also various socio-cultural structures, patterns, and organizations or groups involved with sport. This area of study discusses the positive impact sports have on individual people and society as a whole economically, financially, and socially. Sociology of sport attempts to view the actions and behavior of sports teams and their players through the eyes of a sociologist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Outline of academic disciplines</span> Overviews of and topical guides to academic disciplines

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to academic disciplines:

Game studies, also known as ludology, is the study of games, the act of playing them, and the players and cultures surrounding them. It is a field of cultural studies that deals with all types of games throughout history. This field of research utilizes the tactics of, at least, folkloristics and cultural heritage, sociology and psychology, while examining aspects of the design of the game, the players in the game, and the role the game plays in its society or culture. Game studies is oftentimes confused with the study of video games, but this is only one area of focus; in reality game studies encompasses all types of gaming, including sports, board games, etc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Jenkins</span> American media scholar

Henry Guy Jenkins III is an American media scholar and Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts, a joint professorship at the University of Southern California (USC) Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He also has a joint faculty appointment with the USC Rossier School of Education. Previously, Jenkins was the Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities as well as co-founder and co-director of the Comparative Media Studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He has also served on the technical advisory board at ZeniMax Media, parent company of video game publisher Bethesda Softworks. In 2013, he was appointed to the board that selects the prestigious Peabody Award winners.

Children's culture includes children's cultural artifacts, children's media and literature, and the myths and discourses spun around the notion of childhood. Children's culture has been studied within academia in cultural studies, media studies, and literature departments. The interdisciplinary focus of childhood studies could also be considered in the paradigm of social theory concerning the study of children's culture.

Video game culture or gaming culture is a worldwide new media subculture formed by video game hobbyists. As video games have exponentially increased in sophistication, accessibility and popularity over time, they have had a significant influence on popular culture, particularly among adolescents and young adult males. Video game culture has also evolved with Internet culture and the increasing popularity of mobile games, which has led to an increase in the female demographic that play video games.

Leisure studies is a branch of the social sciences that focuses on understanding and analyzing leisure. Recreation and tourism are common topics of leisure research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Puck bunny</span> Ardent female hockey fan

A puck bunny is a term used to describe a female ice hockey fan whose interest in the sport is purported to be primarily motivated by sexual attraction to the players rather than enjoyment of the game itself. Primarily a Canadian term, it gained popular currency in the 21st century, and in 2004 was added to the second edition of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sociology of the Internet</span> Analysis of Internet communities through sociology

The sociology of the Internet involves the application of sociological or social psychological theory and method to the Internet as a source of information and communication. The overlapping field of digital sociology focuses on understanding the use of digital media as part of everyday life, and how these various technologies contribute to patterns of human behavior, social relationships, and concepts of the self. Sociologists are concerned with the social implications of the technology; new social networks, virtual communities and ways of interaction that have arisen, as well as issues related to cyber crime.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Play (activity)</span> Voluntary, intrinsically motivated recreation

Play is a range of intrinsically motivated activities done for recreational pleasure and enjoyment. Play is commonly associated with children and juvenile-level activities, but may be engaged in at any life stage, and among other higher-functioning animals as well, most notably mammals and birds.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to culture:

Tim Jordan is a professor at the University College London where he is also Head of the programme in Arts and Sciences (BASc). Prior to that, he worked at the University of Sussex, King's College London in culture, media and creative industries and digital humanities departments, and has previously worked as the head of the sociology department at the Open University. He has published his work on hacking and online cultures. He was co-founder of the journal Social Movement Studies.

Cultural studies is a politically engaged postdisciplinary academic field that explores the dynamics of especially contemporary culture and its social and historical foundations. Cultural studies researchers generally investigate how cultural practices relate to wider systems of power associated with, or operating through, social phenomena. These include ideology, class structures, national formations, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, and generation. Employing cultural analysis, cultural studies views cultures not as fixed, bounded, stable, and discrete entities, but rather as constantly interacting and changing sets of practices and processes. The field of cultural studies encompasses a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives and practices. Although distinct from the discipline of cultural anthropology and the interdisciplinary field of ethnic studies, cultural studies draws upon and has contributed to each of these fields.

Graeme Kirkpatrick is Professor of Social and Cultural Theory at the University of Manchester. He has also worked as Professor in media arts, aesthetics and narration at the University of Skövde in Sweden, and been a visiting Professorial fellow of the Digital Cultures Research Programme at Flinders University in Adelaide.

Fan studies is an academic discipline that analyses fans, fandoms, fan cultures and fan activities, including fanworks. It is an interdisciplinary field located at the intersection of the humanities and social sciences, which emerged in the early 1990s as a separate discipline, and draws particularly on audience studies and cultural studies.

References

  1. "İddaa Bahis Siteleri - Burada en İyi Siteler Var" . Retrieved 24 April 2013.
  2. "Key Note - Under the Mask 2014".
  3. "About the Digital Cluster".
  4. "Discover Sociology About Us".
  5. "Consuming Sport". Routledge.com. 3 June 2004.
  6. Johnes, M (2005) International Journal of the History of Sport, 22 (5) pp.923-924.
  7. "Video Games as Culture".
  8. Cosplay and the Art of Play.