Play and the Human Condition

by Thomas S. Henricks

In Play and the Human Condition , Thomas Henricks brings together ways of considering play to probe its essential relationship to work, ritual, and communitas. Focusing on five contexts for play--the psyche, the body, the environment, society, and culture--Henricks identifies conditions that instigate play, and comments on its implications for those settings. Offering a general theory of play as behavior promoting self-realization, Henricks articulates a conception of self that includes individual and social identity, particular and transcendent connection, and multiple fields of involvement. Henricks also evaluates play styles from history and contemporary life to analyze the relationship between play and human freedom. Imaginative and stimulating, Play and the Human Condition shows how play allows us to learn about our qualities and those of the world around us--and in so doing make sense of ourselves.

Genres: Plays, Nonfiction

264 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 2014

Reviews

[Victoria Hawco · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was supposed to finish this book two weeks ago, and it felt like it was punishing me for that fact.

[Malcolm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Building on Hendricks’ Play Reconsidered this is an attempt to build a comprehensive social science theory of play, which is concurrently its very great strength and its weakness. In drawing on classic social theorists, in the previous book Hendricks proposes that play be understood as a social practice in relation to work, ritual and communitas where, although there are overlapping characteristics, each of those four forms is distinct. Developing his four part model, Hendricks develops the notion that all play is about self-realization into a five part model of play as a set of behaviours.

These behaviours are composed of five aspects incorporating personal orientations, which he labels psyche, physical realities (a realm of sensation) made up of the physical capacities of the body and the material resources of the environment and of symbolic realities (a realm of conception) made up of behavioural formats provided by society and the publicly accessible ideas of culture. The substance of the book – the core five chapters – are Hendricks’ exposition on these five aspects through a discussion of key writings and analyses of play through those lenses. Therein lies the weakness; as much as the model is potent the book itself amounts to an extended literature review, not that there is anything wrong with that approach – except that in Play Reconsidered Hendricks is comfortably on home turf with a rich and sophisticated engagement with sociological theory. In this case, however, he is stepping out into other arenas, to ethology, to psychology and neuroscience, to physical anthropology, where his sociological dispositions are strained making the chapters on the psyche and especially the body and the environment weaker than in his more comfortable spaces, society and culture. This lack of comfort also makes those areas a more difficult read, mainly because the text lacks the fluidity that comes from being comfortable with a body of work.

All this adds up to a situation where notable parts of the argument Hendricks is making are quite nuanced and subtle, and others seem to lack that level of sophistication. This is frustrating because the model itself is compelling, although I would have liked him to have drawn on more philosophical analyses of play, especially those that explore notions of dispositions – but then that is the patch I am more comfortable in and where all my work on play has been centred. Given the interdisciplinary reach of Bernard Suits’ work on ludic disposition, that omission is surprising.

That the model is compelling is what makes this a useful text, although the relative discomfort in some aspects of its underpinning means that it must be subjected to rigorous critique – so despite my comfort with his case that play is about self-realisation, this is at best a sacrificial text in the social sciences for the rest of us to pick over.

[jb-rand · Rating 2 out of 5]

Probably should have read this before other play theory books... Explains its concepts well and the examples are interesting. Wish there was more elaboration on sports and play workers but that's a different scope. I haven't read Huizinga but I get the feeling this isn't exactly laying that work to rest. It was an easy and nice read.