Play as the Main Event in International and UK Culture

Play has become a dominant trend in the culture of Western adults. This chapter of Cultural Trends looks at its prevalence and growth

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Play has become a dominant trend in the culture of Western adults. This chapter of Cultural Trends looks at its prevalence and growth. The first section briefly discusses what play is. The second provides an overview of playful varieties of leisure in the US and worldwide, and sums up some of the main trends that have emerged. The third follows the same method in relation to the UK. The fourth section looks at the increasing incidence of play at work, while the final section draws conclusions from the evidence presented. Throughout, special attention is played to the role of information technology in play. Five industries are covered extensively – computer games; gambling; sport; performing arts; and fairs, theme parks and adventure holidays.

Attendance at, participation in and paid employment in play constitute three levels of engagement in it. This chapter tries to measure these levels of engagement by bringing together just some of the vast but disparate literature and statistics on play. The range of sources drawn upon is varied. Inspired by the perspectives of writers in economics, politics, sociology and technology, this chapter uses official government data, and data taken from the business press, to illustrate its ideas.

The chapter asks and answers the following three questions:

• Does play provide spaces and moments of freedom that, fortunately enough, lie beyond the grasp of market forces?
• Is the entertainment provided by play genuinely educational, or does absorption in play instead represent a degraded notion of the Self?
• By favouring mass attendance at, mass participation in and mass employment in playful activities, have UK government policies advanced the cause of culture – or have they set it back?

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