Event overview
Learn how to make simple board games to reflect on the limits and potentials of social and cultural theory – with designer and social theorist Max Haiven
Games are fun artificial structures within which players encounter and express unusual agency. This makes them excellent vehicles for exploring the nuances of our social world. In this workshop, we’ll learn to make simple board games to reflect on the limits and potentials of social and cultural theory.
In the first part, facilitator Max Haiven will provide a framework for using board game design as a method of theoretical exploration with reference to several popular games as well as some of his own inventions including ClueAnon (a game about why conspiracy theories are fun… and dangerous), Billionaires and Guillotines (a satirical plutocrat simulator, to be published in 2025 by Pluto Press).
In the second part, participants will be invited to use simple elements to create their own board game based on a social or cultural theory that is important to them. No experience or preparation is necessary, although participants are encouraged (but not required) to come with a question about society or theory in mind that they want to explore.
Max Haiven is a writer and teacher and Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination.
His most recent books are Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (2022), Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts (2020) and Art after Money, Money after Art: Creative Strategies Against Financialization (2018).
He is currently working on a book for MIT Press tentatively titled The Player and the Played: Gamification, Financialization and (anti-)Fascism and a board game, Billionaires and Guillotines. He led a team that recently published The World After Amazon: Stories from Amazon Workers (2024).
Haiven is editor of VAGABONDS, a series of short, radical books from Pluto Press. He teaches atLakehead University, where he directs the ReImagining Value Action Lab (RiVAL). As part of Sense & Solidarity, he offers strategy and communications workshops for social movements.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 22 Jan 2025 |
4:00pm - 6:00pm If you can't make it please cancel your eventbrite booking as spaces are limited |
Accessibility
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