Fuzing Play and Politics: On Individualized Collective Action in Leisure

Abstract

Today, widespread use of digital technologies transform cultural forms, among them leisure and art. This article analyzes nine creative, political enactments on the ground, communicated on the Internet. Five are rooted in the vitality and freedom of leisure, and four spring from the dedicated work of professional artists. The techniques applied in all of these actions are knitting/crocheting, allowing crowd production and crowd financing. Amateurs seem to experience less strain and more sociability in this type of activism than professionals do. Their efforts may be modest and imbued with individual gratification, but those who take part are nevertheless able to move among “peers,” announce a project, share in the construction of a political space, and likely to bring this positive experience to future civic/political involvements. The article’s proposition is that the digital turn has opened a participatory political potential growing directly out of pleasurable, everyday leisure.

Keywords:

• Activism
• digitalization
• leisure
• narrative
• play

Notes

1 My colleague, Professor Trude Lappegård, initially made me aware of knitters’ activism. I am also grateful for perceptive contributions from the editor and two anonymous referees.

2 The mentioned constellation of characteristics in Huizinga’s definition differs from the usual dictionary versions of play with emphasis on enjoying or amusing oneself, or taking part in an activity for recreation. The opposite of play in Huizinga’s sense is not seriousness but real-life, which does not imply that play is unrelated to real-life, quite the contrary.

3 I apply vignettes much like urban geographer Loretta Lees (2008) does when I attempt to highlight a general argument by showing a selection of concrete situations with some nuance. In sociological and psychological research, vignettes usually denote an experimental method. To find out how respondents perceive a particular problem and/or balance considerations, they are asked to evaluate hypothetical but realistic accounts.

4 There are other kinds, also touching on leisure and contemporary politics. Some apply situationist-inspired methods, say, when arranging midnight cricket matches in London’s financial district to challenge the use of urban space (see for instance Lashua & Baker, 2019).

5 Knitting and crocheting are old crafts with wide-ranging social and geographical distribution and recognized utility. With an eye to cultural tradition, household economy, and the need for warm clothing, educators made sure school systems conveyed basic skills to the young, particularly to girls. At least since World War II, the slang term Stitch'n Bitch used to refer to groups of women who would join to knit, stitch and talk in organized clubs. The term re-emerged as part of the book No Idle Hands. The Social History of American Knitting (Macdonald, 1988). Per 2013 there were, according to Wikipedia, an estimated 1450 registered Stitch'n Bitch groups in 289 cities worldwide, and this was only one of several related circles. A third wave of feminism left its mark on some initiatives. Bust Magazine, for instance, saw itself as a woman’s lifestyle publication, covering music, news, crafts, art, sex and fashion from “an independent third wave feminist perspective.” With the slogan “for women with something to get off their chests,” editors in the early 90s wanted a publication “as fierce, and funny and as pro-female as the women they knew”, by contrast to the unreal female models in Mademoiselle, Vogue, and Cosmo. The idea was to balance between consumerism and self-reliance, and to encourage women to embrace their sexuality (Matheson, 2013). The previous feminist wave in the late 1960s and 70s was less relaxed towards several of these themes.

Historically, there were knitting guilds with demanding entry exams, employing males only. Closer to our period, a number of famous male designers have specialized in knitted couture. Currently, quite a number of men take up this interest as leisure.

During the French revolution, leftist groups who planned to overthrow the monarchy adopted the Phrygian cap, a conical hat made from soft felt or wool with a pointed crown that curls forward.

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