The Ocean Run: Stage, Cast, and Performance in a Public Park Basketball Scene

Abstract

This article investigates the production and re-production of a recurring pickup basketball game at a public park in Santa Monica, California. I argue that it is best understood as a recurring "scene"-an ecologically shaped, biographically significant, interactionally accomplished, and narratively organized pattern of social life-colloquially known as the "Ocean Run." Drawing on Kenneth Burke's dramatism, I suggest that the scene is constituted by the interrelation of the park's socioecological landscape ("stage"), the diverse personal meanings that players construct through their participation ("cast"), and the practical work of re-creating the scene through situated interactions ("performance"). The park stage facilitates a sense of intimacy for players with very different personal relationships to each other and to the scene. Those players then actively mix themselves up, re-creating the scene through an "improvisational" style of team formation. Place, people, and action are dialectically related in the patterning of public life. This method of analysis is replicable in a wide variety of public scenes and sets up concrete grounds for comparison and theoretical generalizability.

Going Out: A Sociology of Public Outings

“…And as outings combine and conflict, the collective patterning of park life comes into fuller view. Drawing from our own (DeLand 2012(DeLand , 2013(DeLand , 2016Trouille 2013Trouille , 2014 and other studies of parks and public places, we emphasize emergent organizational properties that are missed when parks are studied as static containers of public life.…”

“…Oftentimes park collaborations stabilize into consistent “scenes” where a set of informal norms and schedules becomes known in common (DeLand 2016). It is up to those who arrive on any given day to enact those norms and sustain their relevance as enforceable rules.…”

“…Critically, the full significance of the interactions at the park came into view only by shadowing the players away from the park and understanding how they anticipated and then reflected on particular aspects of park life. Doing so allows us to see meaningful distinctions between players who are part of the crowd of “regular” participants but situate the games very differently within their lives (see DeLand 2016).…”

Men and Their Moments: Character-Driven Ethnography and Interaction Analysis in a Park Basketball Rule Dispute

“…There was no formal league organization and so no uniforms, schedules, referees, or premade rosters. The scene was built over and over again as men would show up to the same place at the same time to organize informal games together (DeLand 2018).…”

Neighbors as distal support for individuals with serious mental illnesses.

“…The concept has since developed, and the presence of these recognizable faces has increasingly been regarded as a tool for increasing sociality of public spaces (Lofland, 1973, 1998). A variety of spaces, including restaurants (Duneier, 1992), laundromats (Kenen, 1982), bars (Cavan, 1966), clothing stores (Wiseman, 1979), parks (DeLand, 2014; Jacobs, 1961; Kriegel, 2017; Low, Taplin, & Scheld, 2005; Robins, Sanders, & Cahill, 1991; Wolch & Rowe, 1992), trains and buses (Pearce, 1980), and street corners (Anderson, 1978; Duneier, 1999) have been shown to accommodate positive, communal, and often fleeting interactions. These interactions are tied to greater civic engagement and improved well-being (Cattell, Dines, Gesler, & Curtis, 2008; Francis, Giles-Corti, Wood, & Kniuman, 2012; Leyden, 2003).…”