Born in 2013, the Scientific Interest Group (SIG) “Jeu et Sociétés” gathers faculties and researchers from the Universities of Paris Descartes, Paris-SPC 13, Paris Nanterre and Paris-Sorbonne, who are specialists in game and gaming by multidisciplinary approaches in the framework of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.
The ambition of SIG is to attract researchers on the game and gaming subject, to promote independantly the information sharing among academies and universities, to diffuse their works in order to promote a public debate on social phenomenon of game, in particular money game.
The SIG has an endowment from FDJ®, as part of its Responsible Gaming program, that is € 343,000 over 3 years (2013-2016). The endowment is renewed from 2017 to 2019.
The SIG is attached to the laboratory Interdisciplinary Research Institute on Social Issues – IRIS (UMR 8156) CNRS – Inserm – EHESS, at the UFR SMBH of the University Paris 13.
Why SIG ?
Created in 2010, the Forum “Jeu et Sociétés” which asscoiated the Universities Paris Descartes and Paris 13 to FDJ® (Responsible Gaming program), aimed to encourage the emergence of humain sciences studies to better understand the cultural, economic and social phenomena in the gambling sector, but also the game in general. The Forum’s works have helped to gain knowledges on the social function of money gambling as well as contemporary gaming practisings and their evolution.
The study of the game as a whole was neglected by humain et society sciences, apart some reference works (history, literature, sociology, psychology …). More recently, the research interests have focused on video games or on addictions.
The game plays a significant role in our lives: what will the game reflect in terms of our needs, our pleasures and our expectations ? How is it changing over the ages ? Are educational games or games of chance and gambling like the other games ? Does the digital change players’ behaviors ? Do we play differently in the North and the South? What are the practices of regional games ? By explaining the stakes of different game practices of yesterday and today, we can learn a lot about the mankind.
SIG’s mission
In order to develop the working dynamics in the Forum “Jeu et Sociétés” , the SIG was launched in late 2013.
The scientific objectives of SIG “Jeu et Sociétés” (2013-2016) are centered around four research axises :
- Encourage the humain and society sciences’ presence in the domains of game and societies which include gambling and money game, by helping researchers and favouring a multidisciplinary approach (law, literature, philosophy, history, geography, sociology, psychology, anthropology, etc),
- Align with l’Observatoire des Jeux (ODJ) in a complementary way,
- Design a scientific and academic docmentary resource in order to show the diversity of approaches (PhD thesises, various works, announcements of events) about the game. iIn this perspective, achieving theoretical and critical texts corpus of digitization of literary history, history of so-called hard sciences, history, humanities and social sciences. This is the purpose of this site accessible to researchers and the general public,
- To help promote innovative works, make them more accessible outside the university field.