Social Dreaming With Youth From Nondominant Communities: Co-Designing Abolitionist Technologies in Virtual Worlds

• In Event: Weaving Axiological Commitments, Social Dreaming, and Digital Storytelling Toward Sociopolitical Imagination: A Collaboration

Abstract

Objective
Abolitionist technologies serve as powerful tools for dismantling systems of oppression, while also creating conditions to dream up new worlds and social futures (Benjamin, 2019). This paper will examine how educators and youth in an out-of-school learning ecology modified the video game Grand Theft Auto IV into an abolitionist technology by collaboratively reimagining the game’s embedded codes. Specifically, the analyses reveal how educators and youth countered narratives and ideologies embedded in the game’s code that have historically marginalized non-dominant communities.

Theoretical Perspectives

We examine how a virtual out-of-school program (author, in press) leveraged video game play to design learning ecologies that enabled youth to engage in social dreaming (author, 2023; Espinoza, 2009; Gutierrez, 2009) – a historical process that engenders collective visions and more liberatory social futures for non-dominant communities. In line with previous work (author, 2023), our findings indicate that through robust meaning-making, role-play, and collaboration, youth in the program leveraged technology to create artifacts that were rooted in visions of anti-colonial and more utopian worlds for non-dominant communities.

Data & Methods

Our out-of-school program is a social-design experiment (Gutierrez & Jurow, 2016) where youth-created media artifacts were leveraged for the development of relationship-building, joy, and world-making. The proposal focuses on activities and artifacts educators co-designed with youth in a video game ecology that enabled youth to invent and design abolitionist technologies, such as commercials, podcasts, and documentaries toward the development of new social futures. The analysis for this proposal draws on data collected from a case study of a group of four young people and two educators that collaborated to redesign a segment of Grand Theft Auto’s online world – Paleto Bay. Given that Grand Theft Auto has historically perpetuated harmful narratives about non-dominant communities, the case study is part of a larger research project that aims to transform the narratives and cityscape of Grand Theft Auto into a more utopic and sustainable virtual society for non-dominant communities.

Findings & Significance

The findings for this proposal indicate that educators and youth leveraged their sociopolitical imagination to create new codes and media artifacts that challenged the narratives and ideologies embedded in the codes of Grand Theft Auto IV. For example, youth created manifestos, commercials, and podcasts within a virtual video game city that required youth to engage deeply with societal ideologies and historical double binds (Engeström, 1987; Pacheco, 2012; Gutierrez et al, 2020). Through this process, students developed technologies that critiqued how the game’s narratives and architecture were modeled after systems that exploit the land and its resources. Moreover, through the development of media artifacts that they coded into the city, youth imagined new social futures for the virtual city. As such, the educators and young people in this study created abolitionist technologies that critiqued the way the virtual game and city are organized and dreamed up new worlds for non-dominant communities. This paper has implications for how educators can leverage video game modding and redesign to collaborate with young people to create more equitable and just worlds with and for students from non-dominant communities.

Authors

• Edward Rivero, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Arturo Cortez, University of California - Davis