The Ambiguity of Play

By B. Sutton‐Smith. 2000

905 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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 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 an 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.

Subfields: Literature and Literary Theory

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/71f96d4d3543b2020dcb0ec349a3111bac886aa4

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Citations in the corpus

Barriers for Outdoor Play in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) Institutions: Perception of Risk in Children’s Play among European Parents and ECEC Practitioners (2020, background): “…intrinsically motivated experience where the activity itself is more important than the outcome (Bateson, 2005; © 2019 The Child Care in Practice Group CONTACT Ellen Beate Hansen Sandseter ebs@dmmh.no Queen Maud University College of Early Childhood Education, Trondheim, Norway Sutton-Smith, 1997).”
The Video Game Experience as “True” Identification: A Theory of Enjoyable Alterations of Players' Self‐Perception (2009, methodology): “People have always used various techniques to simulate alternate or altered identities, especially various types of play (Sutton-Smith, 1997).”
Characteristics of risky play (2009, background): “This notion is expressed by Sutton-Smith ( 1997 ) describing play as activity that serves the opportunity to actualize one's potential, providing an optimal experience of arousal, excitement, fun, merriment, joy, and lightheartedness.”
Games Managers Play: Play as a Form of Leadership Development (2011, background): “Child psychologists note that play serves as rehearsal, a form of preparation for the future (e.g., Miller, 1973; Sutton-Smith, 1997).”
Guided Play: Where Curricular Goals Meet a Playful Pedagogy (2013, background): “…often have an element of make-believe (Christie & Johnsen, 1983; Fisher, Hirsh-Pasek, Golinkoff, Singer, & Berk, 2011; Garvey, 1990; Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff, 2003; Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2009; Johnson, Christie, & Yawkey, 1999; Pellegrini, 2009; Sutton-Smith, 2001; Sutton-Smith & Kelly-Byrne, 1984).”
A Different Kind of Child Development Institution: The History of After-School Programs for Low-Income Children. (2002, background): “Not least, the current climate of heightened expectations of after-school programs is likely to further reduce opportunity for the unstructured time and unsupervised play that is so critical to development in middle childhood but that seems to be disappearing steadily from children’s lives ~ Sutton-”
ECE teachers’ views on play-based learning: a systematic review (2019, background): “Given the theoretical and conceptual complexities play and PBL represent (Sutton-Smith 1997; Bergen 2014; Rogers 2010a) and the lack of consensus that exits in the research community on these matters (Brooker, Blaise, and Edwards 2014), this could also provide a fruitful ground for…”
Learning in immersive worlds: A review of game-based learning (2006, background): “While there has been a large volume of work charting different games typologies and classifications (e.g. Juul, 2003; Sutton-Smith, 1997; Salen and Zimmerman, 2004) these typologies have more often than not been based upon leisure rather than educational games.”
Juvenile survival and benefits of play behaviour in brown bears, Ursus arctos (2004, background): “Play involves both control and loss of control, both predictability and unpredictability, both novelty and familiarity (Fagen, 1981; Sutton-Smith, 1997; Power, 2000; Spinka et al., 2001).”