Socially organized role‐taking: Becoming an auction player

Abstract

Symbolic interaction theory often guides leisure research, and social interaction is touted as constitutive of the recreative experience. Absent from our literature is information about how social roles, which are the social mechanism for organizing interaction, develop in play. To build grounded theory about personal experience in freely chosen pursuits, a naturalistic investigation of personal goods auctions was conducted using participant observation methodology. The first analysis concluded that auction settings could be characterized as adult play‐worlds. One finding was that adults developed player roles to engage in auctions. In this new analysis, auction data were studied to learn how people become players at auctions. Three aspects of experience are discussed as findings relevant to role‐taking: the leisure experience as a developmental process; role forms taken in the transformation of people into players; and the role‐learning process. Findings suggest that play roles are personally constructed and learned informally and are a means for becoming engrossed in play. Kleiber's Leisure Process Model provided an ideal interpretation of how freedom was perceived in the auction setting and facilitated the transformation of people into players.

Keywords:

• Social organization
• social roles
• auction
• leisure process
• adult play
• flow