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E-book Why We Play : An Anthropological Study

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Penilaian

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Always contextualize. Always historicize. Always focus on the particular and the specific. These have become basic mantras in cultural anthropology, as well as the humanities in general. And with these mantras have come a deep suspi-cion of wide-ranging comparative studies, and in particular a deep suspicion of the general categories that undergird such comparative work. Terms like myth, ritual, and sacrifice have come to be treated with wariness—as remnants of an earlier anthropology that had not yet shaken off its ethnocentric biases.This turn to contextualized studies, this focus on indigenous terminologies, has been crucial for the field. But the concurrent suspicion of comparative stud-ies and comparative categories has come at a great cost. Long gone are the generalist studies that would define a topic—say, the gift—and then explore the complexities of that activity through a comparative study of the different modes in which it has appeared across cultures. Such studies are now often seen as inherently ethnocentric, since the categories are seen as being defined with implicit reference to a dominant (usually Western and usually Christian) cul-ture, with the preconceptions of that culture then being superimposed on very different practices.This is one of the reasons Roberte Hamayon’s Why we play: An anthropologi-cal study is such an exciting and important study. Hamayon happily takes what she calls a generalist approach—the approach that defined the great works of classical anthropology like Mauss’ The gift, or Hubert and Mauss’ Sacrifice. The approach, in other words, that is now so rare.Hamayon certainly agrees that the categories we have inherited from these classical works need to be rethought. Yet, her response is not to reject generalist categories per se but rather to argue that we need a new one: play.As she argues so persuasively, play has often occupied a minor role in an-thropological theorizing—even in the heyday of generalist, cross-cultural stud-ies organized around themes. Play has been deemed the non-serious activity performed by children, or by adults in their leisure. Even if we do look at play, it has typically been seen as simply a less serious form of ritual. A lesser cousin, in other words, to the important activities that should be the focus of our an-thropological analyses.So why have we failed to bring play fully into our studies? Hamayon argues that this is based on a latent set of associations traceable back to Christianity’s rejection of the Roman Circus Games and related forms of play. She then gen-eralizes the point. Forms of religious practice that emphasize belief in a single great deity—a deity that cannot be imitated, represented, played with—also entail a rejection of play. The field of anthropology, she argues, implicitly carried on these same biases when we focused all of our energies on ritual at the expense of play, on the agon of the gift as opposed to the play of gift-giving.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

301 HAM w

Penerbit

USA : HAU Books., 2016

Deskripsi Fisik

370 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9780986132568

Klasifikasi

301

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

Sociology and Anthropology, Society

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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