The use of the death trope in peer culture play: grounds for rethinking children and childhood?

Abstract

Dying and death in children's imaginative play is often subjected to literal interpretation, seen as evidence of meaning-making about death or a form of catharsis. Viewed in this light, children's enactment of uncaused and reversible deaths in ludic activity is considered evidence of developmental ‘immaturity’. Such interpretations, however, fundamentally misplace the contestive and transformative aspects of play [Henricks, T. S. (2006). Play reconsidered: Sociological perspectives on human expression. Urbana: University of Illinois Press]. In contrast, this article argues for the importance of figurative interpretations of children's play. Drawing on data generated in an ethnographic study at an early years setting in West London, it will be suggested that the death trope served as a generative metaphor in the peer culture, its everyday world characteristics provoking relatively stable responses in the face of uncertainties and ambiguities encountered in ludic activity. The use of the death trope made intimate, caring touch between children permissible, rather than just a by-product of small play spaces filled with many bodies.

Keywords:

• imaginative play
• death
• peer culture
• touch
• childhood
• generative metaphor

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Rachel Rosen is a Lecturer in the Sociology of Childhood at the UCL Institute of Education, London. Her research is concerned with the impact of intersecting inequalities on children's everyday lives, including the ways in which childhoods are classed, ‘raced’, gendered, and generationed. She explores these themes in relation to children's contributions to formal and informal economies, educational institutions, and play/peer cultures.

Notes

1. The term ‘ludic’ is employed synonymously with ‘play’ throughout this article. This is not to discount the possible presence of ‘epistemic play’ or indeed to re-instantiate a binary typology of play. The choice of terms is due to the emphasis of the article on imaginative rather than problem-solving aspects of play, the latter often being associated with the term ‘epistemic play’ (Wood, 2013).

2. All names of people and places in the study are pseudonyms.