Ireland, as elsewhere, has witnessed an increase in immigration. This book examines the lived housing experiences of recently arrived migrants in Ireland. It relies on migrants' first-hand accounts of their housing experiences during the period commonly associated with Ireland's 'Celtic Tiger' economic boom on the basis that increases in immigration coincided with and contributed to increases in house prices and private rents, on the one hand, and rising social housing need on the other. Importantly, the 'housing pathways approach' utilises migrants' subjectivity to assist policy makers to identify how housing policy influences people's behaviour, as housing policy can enable or prevent individuals and households from behaving in particular way. The book also locates the 'housing pathways approach' within debates concerning social research methodologies in a way that adds to the social scientific analytical toolkit.
Creating an 'impression' for the opposition fans, locals and viewers on the television was a fundamental part of being a carnival fan. This 'cultural performance' of fandom was engaged in by fans at various levels and could change from season to season or match to match. 'Banter', 'piss taking' and 'winding up' ruled, with fans constantly coming up with new ways to make fun of others and making football 'a place where societal norms about politeness are suspended'. In addition to the prospects for hedonism, matches were seen as an opportunity for the carnival fan groups to express their identity to outsiders through numbers, noise and colour. A key feature of this expression came from football chants, which carnival fans were expected to know and sing loudly. Observations suggested that it was normally these carnival fan groups who created, reworked and introduced chants to the wider match-going support.
Ireland, as elsewhere, has witnessed an increase in immigration. The unprecedented economic boom that occurred between the mid-1990s and 2007/08 was associated with a reversal in Ireland's longstanding population decline or stagnation. The increase in the ethnic and cultural mix in Ireland occurred over a relatively short period of time and in high volumes. As a result, the level of Ireland's migrant population is comparable to many other Western European countries. This book examines the lived housing experiences of recently arrived migrants in Ireland. It relies on migrants' first-hand accounts of their housing experiences during the period commonly associated with Ireland's 'Celtic Tiger' economic boom on the basis that increases in immigration coincided with and contributed to increases in house prices and private rents, on the one hand, and rising social housing need on the other. As the analysis in the book is based primarily on migrants' views and perceptions, the 'housing pathways approach' breaks new ground in the housing studies field as it focuses on the experiences, interactions and behaviours of recently arrived migrants in Ireland in areas including the leaving home process, initial engagement with housing systems and residential mobility. The book also locates the 'housing pathways approach' within debates concerning social research methodologies in a way that adds to the social scientific analytical toolkit.
This chapter focuses on the technological developments - internet and mobile phones - and how carnival fans utilised them in their expressions of fandom. New technology has revolutionised much of carnival fan culture, expanding networks, opening up more opportunities for expressions of the carnivalesque and providing a forum to discuss fan issues. The majority of the research in the chapter is drawn from the author's experiences with fans of United Manchester, as the technology was only just starting to have an impact when his research with Blackpool finished. The chapter focuses on how the internet forums shape the activities of fans at matches, rather than what posters claim on the internet. The powerful combination of camera phone and internet message board is increasingly being used by carnival fans to connect those at the match and those left at home.
This book is about the loud and noisy subculture of wider football fandom who attend matches home and away, who spend a huge amount of their time and money following their team, who help to create the chants that form the 'atmosphere' at football matches but who provide a constant challenge to the football authorities and police through their attendance and modes of expression. It aims to provide a deep ethnographic account of these supporters, their interpretations, attitudes, motivations and behaviour. The book touches upon the seismic changes that have transformed football fandom since the mid-1990s. It provides a longitudinal and thickly descriptive ethnographic account of the carnival fan, based on observations with fans of three different football clubs. The book also argues that recent technological developments have been playing a huge part in defining and shaping fan culture.
Understandings of videogame history are therefore progressive in tone, with arguments for how far and how fast things have moved supported by screenshots that show the development from the crude 2D sprites populating the flat landscapes of a couple of decades ago to the complex 3D worlds of the first decade of the twenty-first century. The videogame protagonist who is moved by the player through the vast 3D landscapes of today's flagship games is presented as always engaged in the revelation of the new and the previously unseen. Games are designed in such a way that the player is encouraged to develop their playing skills over time to become more effective agents in the game world. At the same time games seek to surprise, delight and challenge the player as a game's textual regimes unfold. Sometimes these factors converge and at other times they become separated and work in tension.
This chapter introduces the book, locating it within literature on urban peripheries, noting its insights but also limitations, particularly its ability to engage with the complexities of urban change as narrated by residents in these spaces. The book then details the methodological approach which combines an analysis of drivers of change with an understanding of lived experiences using mixed methods (social surveys, diaries, interviews) and the adoption of a comparative urbanism approach, drawing on both genetic and generative tactics informing our case study analyses and conceptual framings. We provide an understanding of African peripheries through a focus on three case study city-regions – Gauteng and eThekwini in South Africa and Addis Ababa in Ethiopia – and seven urban peripheral areas within these. We introduce the Accra cases used within the chapter on Ghana, where the urbanisation of land under traditional tenure systems and the conflict and politics of land are examined. Next, we outline five logics of urban peripheral development (speculative; vanguard; auto-constructed; transitioning; inherited), which we developed inductively through our research and which unpack the urban periphery concept in new ways. The value of these lies in their recognition of how logics of peripheral development can co-exist, hybridise and bleed into each other to differing degrees in specific places and at different temporal junctures. Importantly, our five logics also facilitate conceptual as well as substantive comparison across and within our seven cases and arguably beyond into other African peripheral contexts. Finally, the chapter outlines the structure of the book to follow.
Focusing on Ethiopia and South Africa, this chapter explores the dynamics and drivers of investment and economic change on urban peripheries in the case studies, focusing on areas where there has been significant private and public investment at some point: Tulu Dimtu and Yeka Abado in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and in South Africa, Lufhereng in Johannesburg, Ekangala in the City of Tshwane and northern eThekwini. Taking each country in turn, it presents some of the general policy trends and frameworks shaping investment in each national context, and some of the ways in which these are experienced, before considering the city-regions and case study areas. Using empirical evidence, it highlights the diverse trajectories of these places, key actors and agencies, and some of the specific major investment projects that have been shaping our case study peripheries. It adds substance to concepts of speculative, vanguard and inherited peripheries which are developed and presented in the Introduction to this book, in relation to the case studies.
Warcraft III begins with two short missions, 'Chasing Visions' and 'Departure'. They introduce the game as prologue, tutorial in the rudiments of Warcraft game mechanics, and first moments of play set in the narrative arc of the game. In Warcraft III, built-in spectator modes and replay capture, websites for distributing replays from Video on Demand and shoutcast commentaries of games fostered a player-spectator relationship around competitive game performance. Warcraft became more ambitious with each new version by this measure, whether in the continuity of the world history, the quality of cinematic cut-scenes or the charming 'pissed sounds' emitted when a player clicked repeatedly on unit avatars (Orc Grunt: 'It not easy being green'). Warcraft, in other words, exhibits a tension between the developer's notion of game story-lines, authored and continuous, and player-generated stories based on game performance and experience.
This chapter explores lived experiences of access to work and livelihoods on the urban peripheries of South Africa and Ethiopia, relating these to the varying logics of peripheries spelled out in the Introduction (i.e. speculative, vanguard, auto-constructed, transitioning, inherited). It contributes to debates on the extent to which new growth on the edge is likely to be associated with poor access to employment and a reliance on commuting, at least for the urban poor. It considers the extent to which major infrastructure and economic investment in vanguard and speculative peripheries result in better access to employment and economic opportunity, and the types of jobs and livelihoods generated in these and other areas. It suggests that while there may be higher levels of employment and more opportunities in economically dynamic areas, jobs available can be short term or inaccessible to the poor. Despite differences across areas, there is a significant reliance on commuting, diverse local livelihood strategies, social grants (in South Africa) and (often politically mediated) public works programmes, none of which are adequate to meet the challenge of secure livelihoods on the urban edge.