Play à la mode

ABSTRACT

How do we imagine play? Are there as if models or metaphors that underlie and influence our understanding of play and, if so, how do they affect the questions that we ask about this phenomenon? The goal of my talk is to call attention to the model of play that views it as a mode or disposition that can be adopted toward any activity and not, itself, a separate category of behavior. This is not a new argument but I suggest that it is one that needs to be examined in more detail. Central to this approach is the need to understand how play is produced, interpreted and also used in specific situations by all participants: players and researchers. This means recognizing that the goals of researchers and the goals of players may differ in several important ways. I explore this view in more detail by turning to three TAASP/TASP Keynote addresses: Gregory Bateson (1977), Norman Denzin (1980) and June Factor (2006). I believe that the perspectives offered by these scholars are important because they complicate our understanding of what play is while also suggesting new ways to examine the way that play is played.

KEYWORDS:

• Play mode
• meta-communication
• paradox
• interactive and embodied play
• players’ perspectives

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank The Association for the Study of Play for inviting me to present the Keynote Address for the 50th Golden Anniversary of Play Research, Annual Meeting, 21 March 2024, Rochester, New York.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I want to dedicate this talk to my mother, Betty Evelyn Beale (1920–2006), who owned and operated a small diner known as the Wishing Well in Woodland Hills, California (in the San Fernando Valley) from 1948-1954. My mother was famous for her home-baked pies and the 1948 menu from the Wishing Well indicates that you could get ‘pie à la mode’ for just 15 cents.

2 It first appeared in Volume 4(1) (1977) of The Association for the Anthropological Study of Play Newsletter (pp.2-8).

3 Bateson’s analysis of the significance of this ceremony is presented in Naven: A survey of the problems suggested by a composite picture of the culture of a New Guinea tribe drawn from three points of view (First published in 1936 by Cambridge University Press, republished by Stanford University Press in 1965).

4 I discuss Bateson’s development of the idea of meta-communication and the significance of the message ‘this is play’ in more detail in my book Transformations: The Anthropology of Children’s Play (1978) in Chapter 8 ‘Saying Play: Communication Studies,’ pp. 210–247.

5 Initially, I thought that this film had been lost in the midst of the distribution of Bateson’s papers that occurred after he died in 1980. Several years ago, I checked with his daughter, Nora Bateson, about where the film might be but at that time she did not know. Fortunately, I discovered that copies of the film are held in the Gregory Bateson Papers (MS.098) University Archives at the University of California Santa Cruz and the film is also discussed in a journal, Grey Room, published by MIT Press (see Bateson & Kees, 2017).

6 Norman Denzin was a sociologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was one of the leaders in the field of qualitative research methods as well as symbolic interactionism and the study of media, culture and society. His work on childhood socialization (see 1977) stressed the role that language and social interaction play in the development of children’s sense of self in relation to others.

7 June Factor’s Keynote Address was reprinted in Play & Culture Studies (see Factor, 2009). She was recently recognized as a Member of the Order of Australia (AM). For 25 years she was the Director of the Australian Children’s Folklore Center at the University of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia. She is well-known for her collections, compilations and analyses of Australian’s children’s ‘playlore’ and folklore (see Far, out, Brussel sprout! (1984), Captain Cook chased a chook (1988) and Kidspeak: A dictionary of Australian children's words, expressions and games (1996)).

8 In the first paper I presented at the TAASP meetings in Detroit (see Schwartzman, 1977) I tried to follow Bateson’s advice to ‘think sideways’ by presenting what I called ‘a sideways glance’ at children’s make-believe. My analysis focused on how play provides children with a way ‘to tell themselves stories about themselves’ and their relationships with each other as these are developed within particular social settings (p. 213). In this way children are able to act as both the subjects and the objects of their play events (p. 208).

9 Catherine Garvey (1977), in her well-known study of play, underlines the importance of not by suggesting that, ‘All play requires the players to understand that what is done is not what appears to be’ (p. 7, emphasis added).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Helen B. Schwartzman

Helen B. Schwartzman (Professor Emerita of Anthropology, Northwestern University), [email protected], is a psychological anthropologist who specializes in the study of childhood development and play and the anthropology of work and organizations. Dr. Schwartzman was President of The Association for the Anthropological Study of Play (TAASP) from 1978 to 1979. Her publications include Transformations: The Anthropology of Children's Play (1978), which was the first comprehensive examination of the literature on children's play in anthropology; Play and Culture (1980, Editor), The Meeting: Gatherings in Organizations and Communities (1989), Ethnography in Organizations (1993) and Children and Anthropology: Perspectives for the twenty-first Century (2001, Editor). Her most recent article on children’s play is: Brian Sutton-Smith and Anything Goes: A carnevale ogni scherzo vale which will appear in Volume 17 of Play and Culture Studies.