The Interrelationship of Leisure and Play

Play as Leisure, Leisure as Play

Robert A. Stebbins

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781137513014
• eBook ISBN: 9781137513038
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Index: Social Sciences

Augmentative play is a special activity that substantially aids the pursuit of a larger, encompassing leisure activity. This approach to the study of play is unique. It recognizes the hundreds of activities in which play and leisure come together.

1

The Scientific Studies of Play and Leisure

The two fields – leisure studies and the study of play – would be, one might think, natural partners in the investigation of free-time activity. For example, both set themselves off from the domain of work, albeit this distinction in both disciplines has sometimes been crudely conceptualized (I return to this point later). Both have had to fight the headwinds of naïve lay public imagery, which sees them as dealing exclusively in the frivolous. Yet, through research, both have generated practical lessons with deep import.

If we may thus conceive of leisure studies and the study of play as riding in the same scientific canoe, it is also true that they are mostly unaware of each other’s presence there. The one in the bow (it makes no difference which one) paddles in directions unbeknownst to the one in the stern and vice versa. I suspect that it is because of this preoccupation with paddling their own disciplinary canoe as though no one else were aboard that this mutual ignorance has taken root and thrived. In general, members of the two fields know little about what their counterparts at the other end are doing. As evidence, it is rare in the study of play to see words like “leisure” and “recreation” (“fun” is a common term, though), while in leisure studies “play,” though appearing relatively more frequently, is hardly a household term.1

The scope of two fields

The goal of any definition is to set out its essential features, thereby distinguishing the definiendum from everything else. Since such efforts are uncommon when it comes to defining play, the definition of Edward Norbeck is especially welcome. His is a provisional definition – provisional in that future thought and research could prompt changes to it. He holds that play is “behavior resting upon a biologically inherited stimulus or proclivity, that is distinguished by a combination of traits: play is voluntary, somehow pleasurable, distinct temporally from other behavior, and distinct in having a make-believe or transcendental quality” (Norbeck, 2013, p. 1). He goes on to note that many definitions of play include the condition that it is non-utilitarian. Observing that this may not always apply to professionals in art and sport, he prefers to say that “at least among non-professional players, the goals of play are usually not consciously utilitarian” (p. 2). He states further that there is in play “a transcendence of ordinary cognitive states which . . . seems to represent altered neurophysiology in a distinct and distinctive physiological state.” Kimberlee Bonura (2009) adds that play is self-initiated, self-ended, and open-ended, thereby falling at the opposite end of a continuum starting with the domain of work. Furthermore, play activities have a beginning and an end. Nonetheless, I will argue later that this definitional stance needs qualifying in certain places.

That play is defined as a kind of behavior is not to imply that the latter is necessarily physical. True, we can physically play or dabble with an object or an organism, including objects and organisms that some other people approach seriously (e.g., a piano, a microscope, or food on a plate). Yet, it appears that most play is mental behavior, as seen most vividly in the creative and innovative manipulation, both conscious and semi-conscious, of certain ideational elements, leading thereby to new constructs of immense variety. These ideas may be expressed, for instance, in daydreams, stories, pretend play, and solutions to problems (including serious ones). Artistic and scientific creativity and strategies for winning games and sporting competitions also exemplify this kind of play. Consonant with this mental behavior thesis is one of the OED’s many definitions of play: “3 fig. & gen. Action, activity, operation, working, esp. with rapid movement or change, or variety. (Now almost always of abstract things, as fancy, thought, etc.)” Thus it should come as no surprise that the study of play revolves substantially around its psychological and neurological roots in humans as well as those recently found in other mammals in whom play behavior has also been observed.

Moreover, the OED shows that the word “play” and its derivatives are awash in different meanings and usages. Play occupies nearly two full (dictionary-sized) pages in the OED. By contrast, “leisure” gets approximately four inches in one column and “recreation” about half of that (there are three columns per page). So, according to that dictionary, we play idly with an object, play a game of rugby, play on another’s sensitivities, play the flute, and make a play for something, to mention a few meanings.

The scope of the study of play is determined substantially by the fact that, while play is also a noun, one of its central concepts is a verb. Moreover, it is several centuries old (the OED traces it to Old English). As a result, plenty of time has elapsed during which its users have piled on new meanings, subtle distinctions, pithy sayings, and lively metaphors. Moreover, because play is both a transitive and an intransitive verb, the range of its usage is even further extended and enriched.

This linguistic evolution has resulted in an amorphous, if not ambiguous, assemblage of ideas and, it seems, a veritable challenge to play scholars trying to convincingly adumbrate their field of inquiry and define its central concepts (e.g., Henricks, 2006, pp. 2–4).2 Brian Sutton-Smith (2001) holds that the very idea of play is “ambiguous.” Granted, some play scholars have little interest in a clear definition of the study of play as a field or even of its central concept, maintaining instead that open-endedness here is advantageous. They argue that it facilitates the exploration of frontiers and discovery of new ways of conceiving of play and its consequences.

By contrast, leisure is a noun only. That is, we cannot “leisure,” notwithstanding John Neulinger’s (1981) attempt to introduce a new verb in his book To Leisure.3 As a word, “leisure” is at least as old as the word “play,” yet it cannot come anywhere near matching the proliferation of meanings of the latter. Compared with those who study play, leisure studies scholars, in attempting to determine the essence of their central concept, have had a lot fewer allied meanings, distinctions, sayings, and metaphors to contend with.

Definitions of leisure therefore abound (Kelly, 1990, pp. 16–23). Moreover, they do not always agree. Indeed, I found the defining of leisure to be so involved that my attempt to do the job in sufficient depth resulted in a smallish monograph. There I described leisure (the short definition) as “un-coerced, contextually framed activity engaged in during free time, which people want to do and, using their abilities and resources, actually do in either a satisfying or a fulfilling way (or both)” (Stebbins, 2012, p. 2). Yet, definers of play face a much greater challenge in trying to nail down the essential definitional elements in their field’s far more complex accumulation of usages.

Play: concentrations of research and theory

Much of theory and research in the social scientific study of play falls into three concentrations: (1) play as disinterested activity; (2) play as interested activity in games, both sport and non-sport; and (3) play as interested activity in art. The full interdisciplinary spectrum of the study of play is, however, much broader than this, for a vast literature exists on, for example, play and the brain and play in non-human fauna (for a partial review see Burghardt, 2010). A full understanding of play must include a grasp of these works, which is not, however, the goal of this book with its focus on the recipe for playfulness. The play of children within these three concentrations has attracted considerable scholarly attention. Meanwhile, scholarly interest in adult play is much less common, even when mounted from a leisure studies angle (but see, for example, Barnett, 2007; Kleiber et al., 2011).4

Huizinga’s (1955) definition of play squares with concentration 1. He says play lacks necessity, obligation, and utility, being pursued with a disinterestedness that sets play as an activity that is apart from ordinary, real life. Examples include daydreaming, dabbling at an activity, and fiddling with something. Concentrations 2 and 3 fall at the end of a continuum identified by Roger Caillois (2001) as ludus or rule-governed activity. At the other end of his continuum lies paidia, the play of concentration 1. In the study of play, Huizinga’s conceptualization has been more influential than that of Caillois. As Hendricks (2006) puts it after reviewing the scholarly commentary on Huizinga’s book: “Homo Ludens remains, after more the sixty years, the greatest treatment of the socio-cultural implications of play” (p. 10).

Notwithstanding Huizinga’s elevated stature in modern play studies, concentrations 2 and 3 juxtaposed with concentration 1 do reveal some logical difficulties, for the first two concentrations show that play activity is neither always disinterested nor wholly open-ended. Games have rules, which constrain what participants may (playfully) do in them. Likewise, in much of amateur and professional art, creativity is constrained by canon, by a set of aesthetic criteria embraced and promulgated by the art’s establishment (in music, painting, theater, dance, craftwork, etc.). Play in games, sport, and art is also interested, goal-oriented activity. Furthermore, in concentrations 2 and 3, though there may be no utility, there is obligation, especially in team-based activity (e.g., obligation to members of the team). The fact that some activities in games, sport, and art are pursued as work further muddies the conceptual waters of the study of play. Here, these workers play just as their amateurs counterparts do, doing so, however, in service of their livelihood.

These concentrations of research and theory in the study of play are perfectly defensible, given how the verb form of play has been used in these three ways for centuries. And, to the extent that activities pursued in the three concentrations allow for the imaginative play of ideas, the study of play can surely contribute to our understanding of those activities. Even where play is partly structured, as in concentrations 2 and 3, spaces exist where the mind is free to roam, to play. Thus the chess player ponders the consequences of alternative moves of his pieces on the board and the composer considers different harmonic options for ending a movement of a symphony she is writing. This, to repeat, is the play of ideas.

In the study of play, children at play are sometimes described as having “fun,” which amounts to a sort of research operationalization of the concept of play. But here too, commonsense usage begets confusion. This is because fun is also sometimes used to describe what people (children, adolescents, adults) experience when carrying out activities not ordinarily considered play (Stebbins, 2004a). Telling a friend that I had fun the other day while skiing or playing Dungeons and Dragons refers to feelings about two leisure activities of far greater complexity than the fun a child experiences in playground activities.

Moreover, play is not always positive for the player, as leisure is not always thus for the participant (Stebbins, 2009). Sutton-Smith (2001) writes that play can be destabilizing, destructive, or disturbing. He observed imaginative expressions of this nature in children’s stories. And are not adults also capable of letting their imaginations run wild with negative as well as positive thoughts? The principal difference separating the two is that leisure, even when marred by occasional negative experiences, is positive activity overall. It is activity that people want to do. On the other hand, play can sometimes be both disagreeable and unavoidable. Is this kind of play even leisure?

Play as leisure/leisure as play

In the SLP – discussed in the next chapter – play is classified as a type of casual leisure (Stebbins, 2007/2015). In this perspective, it is conceived of as concentration 1 and is therefore in harmony with Huizinga’s approach. Concentrations 2 and 3, however, are treated rather differently in leisure studies. In the SLP these are discussed as amateur or hobbyist serious leisure and, recently, as devotee work (Stebbins, 2012). Play according to concentration 1, if considered at all in amateurism and hobbyism, is conceptualized as dabbling. That is, some amateurs and hobbyists acquire their initial interest in their serious leisure by disinterestedly playing at it, for example, by hitting a tennis ball, finding notes on a piano, or drawing something (discussed in Stebbins, 2014).

Here leisure studies and the study of play overlap, even while apart from the word “play” itself, their theoretic terminology is usually different. Thus it is possible to view play as a special activity pursued within the many leisure activities that foster it. More precisely, augmented play – it is an activity with a beginning and an end, both initiated by the participant – occurs as part of the core activity of a larger or general leisure activity.

A general activity such as alpine skiing, cabinet making, or volunteer fire fighting gets further refined in the concept of core activity: a distinctive set of interrelated actions or steps that must be followed to achieve the outcome or product that the participant seeks. As with general activities, core activities are pursued in work, leisure, and non-work obligations. Consider some examples in serious leisure: a core activity of alpine skiing is descending snow-covered slopes, in cabinet making it is shaping and finishing wood, and volunteer fire fighting is putting out blazes and rescuing people from them. In each case the participant takes several interrelated steps to successfully ski downhill, make a cabinet, or rescue someone. The powerful appeal of the core activity for serious leisure participants is epitomized in the words the famous tightrope walker Karl Wallenda: “Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting.” Core and general activity in serious and casual leisure are discussed more thoroughly in Stebbins (2009, pp. 4–7).

By way of a detailed illustration, consider painting as a general leisure activity, the core activity of which is, for some painters, portraying a still life of flowers. Augmentative play in the core activity (there may be several) is evident in the artist’s expressing on canvas a personal interpretation of the flowers’ color, arrangement, backdrop, and the like. Nevertheless, the core activity is comprised of more than augmentative play, for the artist must also select the best brush for the job, ensure that the ambient lighting is adequate, and assemble all the colors of paint needed for (playfully) mixing the final shades to be placed on the canvas. Augmentative play, specialized as it is, drives and motivates – as it is enormously fulfilling – the spur-of-the-moment maneuvers in sport, interp...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The Scientific Studies of Play and Leisure
• 2 The Serious Leisure Perspective
• 3 Play as Casual Leisure
• 4 Play in Art and Entertainment
• 5 Scientific Play
• 6 Play in Sport
• 7 Hobbyist Play
• 8 Whither the Interdisciplinary Study of Play and Leisure?
• Notes
• References
• Index