The COVID-19 pandemic has shed new light on some significant problems that have been present in the education systems for decades. Тhe lack of various educational methods is becoming more and more evident, leading to a decreasing interest in learning and critical thinking. Оn the other hand, more and more research shows that different types of digital games can enhance creative and critical thinking in students. А closer look at the requirements of the educational programs shows how strict they are (...) in their demands on students. Digital games like role playing games can be a bridge between students’ imaginations and complex educational material. Video games feature a variety of game mechanics that stimulate creative thinking and spark interest in otherwise difficult to understand topics. Motivation and engagement in digital games can be used in a specific way for educational purposes. If we think of teaching as an art in itself, what better method of teaching than through interactive arts. (shrink)

This article is a critical analysis of the historical and sociological works of the American political anthropologist J. S. Scott (1936–2024). His works were largely related to the study of the contradictions of social development between the city and the village. This topic is presented especially deeply and comprehensively in Scott's monographs of his late intellectual period: ‘From the Point of View of the State’ (1998), ‘The Art of Being Ungovernable’ (2006), and ‘Against the Grain’ (2016). In these works, Scott (...) analyzed—practically in retrospective order—several key rural-urban contradictions and paradoxes of social development from the era of high modernism of the 19th–20th centuries to the era of the emergence of the first city-states in the 6th millennium BC. Scott based his analysis on extensive regional comparative studies and interdisciplinary research at the intersection of history, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, ecology, and political science. The problem of the formation, development, and expansion of state power in matters of regulating relations between city and countryside are core themes of these works. On the other hand—in matters of state-controlled relations between city and countryside—Scott highlights the influence of a third force, a third party: the so-called stateless, unsettled barbarism and anarchy that wedges itself into the regulation of rural-urban contradictions. (shrink)