The ambiguity of play

Bibliographic Information

The ambiguity of play

Brian Sutton-Smith

Harvard University Press, 2001, c1997

  • : pbk.

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Note

First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 2001

Bibliography: p. 233-271

Includes index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Every child knows what it means to play, but the rest of us can merely speculate. Is it a kind of adaptation, teaching us skills, inducting us into certain communities? Is it power, pursued in games of prowess? Fate, deployed in games of chance? Daydreaming, enacted in art? Or is it just frivolity? Brian Sutton-Smith, a leading proponent of play theory, considers each possibility as it has been proposed, elaborated, and debated in disciplines from biology, psychology, and education to metaphysics, mathematics, and sociology. Sutton-Smith focuses on play theories rooted in seven distinct "rhetorics"-the ancient discourses of Fate, Power, Communal Identity, and Frivolity and the modern discourses of Progress, the Imaginary, and the Self. In a sweeping analysis that moves from the question of play in child development to the implications of play for the Western work ethic, he explores the values, historical sources, and interests that have dictated the terms and forms of play put forth in each discourse's "objective" theory. This work reveals more distinctions and disjunctions than affinities, with one striking exception: however different their descriptions and interpretations of play, each rhetoric reveals a quirkiness, redundancy, and flexibility. In light of this, Sutton-Smith suggests that play might provide a model of the variability that allows for "natural" selection. As a form of mental feedback, play might nullify the rigidity that sets in after successful adaption, thus reinforcing animal and human variability. Further, he shows how these discourses, despite their differences, might offer the components for a new social science of play.

Table of Contents

Preface Acknowledgments Play and Ambiguity Rhetorics of Animal Progress Rhetorics of Child Play Rhetorics of Fate Rhetorics of Power Rhetorics of Identity Child Power and Identity Rhetorics of the Imaginary Child Phantasmagoria Rhetorics of Self Rhetorics of Frivolity Conclusion Bibliography Index

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Details

  • NCID
    BA54601063
  • ISBN
    • 0674005813
  • Country Code
    us
  • Title Language Code
    eng
  • Text Language Code
    eng
  • Place of Publication
    Cambridge, Mass.
  • Pages/Volumes
    x, 276 p.
  • Size
    23 cm
  • Classification
  • Subject Headings
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