[Xmca-l] Re: Fun &Games

[Andrew Babson]

Mike, first as an aside, I tried to post this earlier and it got rejected,
so, updating my contact info now. A sign I should get more active here?

Thanks for the great question, which is relevant to an approach
I am developing for analyzing interactional choices of young people. On
another level of analysis, we can think of the wide range of ideologies of
life course stages, specifically how certain kinds of play and fun are
expected of accepted at certain ages; and also how those ideologies are
different and similar culturally and historically.

For what I'm working on the first interactional level is more relevant
to class, culture and education and the latter about youth and culture
across the lifespan. The twain do meet in that we often think of
experimentation, dynamism, flexibility and freedom when we think of play
and also when we think of youth, whether referring to childhood or young
adulthood.

It's not a big step to consider where "fun" might fit in this conversation.
As an LSE anthro grad I can't also help but think of the relation of this
conversation to Maurice Bloch's work in Madagascar on the constitution of
the body and how it is expected to change through and after life, namely as
we get older we get bonier and therefore closer to the ancestors who are
physically only bone. It's interesting to think of how far we can or should
carry these analogic ideological constructions---the young spirit like
cartilage and the old spirit like bone---and how they relate to the above!

Andrew

---------------

Andrew Babson, Ph.D.
Lecturer
Graduate School of Education
University of Pennsylvania




On Monday, August 17, 2015, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:

> I have been led to wonder -- what is the relationship between having fun
> and playing.  How do they differ? Does their relationship, if they are not
> reducible one to the other, change over the course of development? Odd how
> the category of fun is absent from developmental discourse.
> Mike
>
>
>
> --
>
> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural science with an
> object that creates history. Ernst Boesch
>


-- 
sent from my phone