Main Research Questions

– What are the discourse networks that authorize console-modding practices? Who can participate in them and who is excluded? What counts as valuable knowledge and what is dismissed?

– What operations and techniques circulate in these networks? To what extent are these techniques borrowed from other discourse networks? How are borrowed techniques adapted? Are any of the relevant techniques sui generis? Which techniques persist and which fade away? Have any circulated outward to other networks?

– What kinds of official and unofficial documents do these networks produce? Where do they reside? How public are they?

– What sorts of institutions recognize and enable these techniques and practices, and what sorts fail to comprehend their existence?

– What sorts of subjects, with what sorts of credentials, come into being as a result of these practices? How are they constituted as “modders” by the discourse network? When and where do modifications occur?

– Which particular consoles do people modify? What are the circumstances of their production, circulation, consumption and afterlife that make them amenable to modification?

– What other objects circulate in these discourse networks?

– What circulates out from this network (objects including modded consoles; subjects; discourse; techniques; documents)? Where do these things go?