Pokémon Go as palimpsest
Creating layers of meaning through augmented reality
Keywords:
Pokémon Go, anthropology of place and space, place knowledge, place meaning, palimpsestAbstract
In this paper, I employ the concept of the palimpsest of meaning (Bailey, 2007) to illustrate how Pokémon Go shapes and produces relations to place. Using ethnographic data from student players at the University of Guelph, I demonstrate how augmented reality (AR) gaming constructs a curated layer of place meaning that influences players’ knowledge of, relationships to, and movement through space. In so doing, I argue that we should not ignore the potential of AR technology to influence how we come to know place, emphasizing the impacts that biases, which are coded into this technology, might have on subaltern narratives of place and for marginalized communities.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 Victoria Clowater
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
The copyright for work in this journal is retained by the author(s), with first publication rights granted to the journal. In keeping with a Creative Commons license, articles are free to use with proper attribution (to both the author and Loading…) for educational and other non-commercial uses.