Culture in Play: Toys, Games, and Sports

Common phrases like "it's only a game" suggest that play is less than serious. But for players and spectators alike, play often entails considerable commitments, including substantial expenditures of time and money. Thus, despite common assumptions about its frivolity, play can have social, economic, and political consequences as well as symbolic and experiential import. In this course, we ask what do play activities reveal about the cultures and peoples who take part in them? We explore how everyday practices involving toys, games, and sports might illuminate broader social and cultural realities. We begin by examining philosophies of play, testing these against our own experiences by creating auto-ethnographic accounts. What do the toys of our childhood mean to us and what do they say about the cultural environments in which we experienced them? From there, our discussions move through a range of the anthropology's subfields, from ritual studies to globalization, and from political and economic anthropology to studies of the body, gender, and sexuality. We consider a range of ethnographic examples, from Barbie dolls to board games, and from wrestling matches to World of Warcraft. Discussion and research topics might include Olympic games and nationalism, internet avatars and social constructions of the self, individualist ideology, and team spirit.