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 is in many senses serious, with social, economic, and political consequences as well as symbolic and experiential import. In this course, we explore what activities labeled play reveal about the cultures and peoples who take part in them, analyzing how everyday practices involving toys, games, and sports might illuminate broader social realities. Our discussions move us 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. Some of our discussion topics include Olympic games and nationalism, dolls and the gendering of bodies, internet avatars and social constructions of the self, individualist ideology, and team spirit.