Social Games and Identity in the Higher Education Workplace

Michelle Addison is Research Associate/Project Manager at the Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle University, UK, and is currently focused on public health and issues connected to multiple social inequalities.

We all play games at work - but have you ever wondered how your identity becomes bound up with game playing? This book is about employees in the Higher Education workplace and it provides an interpretation of why people act the way they do at work as an expression of game playing. It offers an insight into how people try to adapt and fit in at work by looking at how value is attached to certain identities through the lens of class and gender. The figure of the 'chav', the 'emotional woman', 'The Grafter', and 'Mrs. Bucket', are explored in detail as representations of what kinds of people are permitted, or not, to fit in at work. These identities are topical, and may even be familiar to readers, but the author's analysis of them challenges why they exist, what function these identities serve at work, and who is able to deploy and inscribe them as part of the games people play at work.

Explores how employees in the Higher Education workplace relate to their colleagues and their surroundings

Chapter 1. Social Games.- Chapter 2. What is Work in the 21st Century?.- Chapter 3. The Marketization of the Higher Education Workplace.- Chapter 4. Playing Games in the HE Workplace.- Chapter 5. Knowledge and Embodiment of Femininity at Work.- Chapter 6. Knowledge and Embodiment of Class at Work.- Chapter 7. (Not) 'Fitting In' and Emotion Work.- Chapter 8. Concluding Thoughts.