Play, Games, and Socialization

1
Play, Games, and Socialization
2
Why do Sociologists Find Play Interesting
Sociologically?

• George Herbert Mead play significant in the
  development of an individuals sense of
  generalized other and reflexivity
• Mead Play involves the use of symbols and rules
  as model for everyday life
• Gregory Bateson play looks like reality (a nip
  is like a bite) how do people and animals
  establish a play frame in which the meaning of
  actions differ?

3
Socialization may be broadly defined as the
learning of skills and attitudes necessary for
playing given social roles within a social group.

• Note skills and attitudes
• Note given social roles
• Note a social group may participate in multiple
  social groups

4
Socialization is about learning to become a
particular kind of person

• How does one learn to be a boy or a girl?
• How does one learn to be a Christian or Muslim or
  a Jew?
• How does one learn to be a WASP or middle-class?

5
How do people learn?

• By participating in that social group!
• Observation
• Some direct instruction, but much less than one
  would get in a school

6
Learning as participation in a social group

• Legitimate peripheral participation
• One never fully masters the role one plays in
  that group one is always learning being a good
  mother, for instance.
• Over time, ones participation increases
  gradually in engagement and complexity
• Learning and living/participating in a social
  group are therefore the same.

7
Continuous Socialization From Children to Adults

• For Mead, play is crucial to childrens
  development to adulthood.
• Children are incomplete adults.
• Are children learning adult social roles?

8
Discontinuous Socialization Childrens Peer
Culture

• But children have their own peer culture and
  social groups (they are not simply participating
  in adult worlds)
• Socialization composed of breaks in the life
  course (differences between the older children
  and teenagers in Goodwin)

9
Doing Things through Words

• I now pronounce you husband and wife (Austin,
  How to Do Things with Words)
• Differentiation of people not solely done
  through the content of the speech, but also
  through kinds of talk, p. 63

10
Directives

• Definition, p. 65
• Many ways to make a request
• Direct vs. indirect (not the same as polite vs.
  impolite), p.67
• Vary in the amount of social control speaker is
  proposing to exert over the addressee, p.68
• Do directives reflect or do they constitute
  relative status and power? p. 72

• Alison Bechdel,
• Fun Home (2006)