Turning the World Upside Down: Playing as the Deliberate Creation of Uncertainty

Abstract

Risk is big business. It has assumed almost universal acceptance as an ever-present reality of life, something out there waiting to cause harm (most notably to political, economic and health systems). It commands vast resources to develop preventative measures that are the preserve of experts issuing often contradictory advice and warnings. Children’s play is caught up in this account. No longer something that children just do, it is subject to adult scrutiny that simultaneously and paradoxically attempts to manage risk and promote “risk-taking” for its perceived instrumental benefits, primarily the development of risk assessing skills. Adults thus guide children’s play, rendering children passive and needy recipients of expertise. This article takes a broader perspective to consider how this contemporary understanding of risk plays out in material discursive practices in relation to childhood, play, health and wellbeing. It then draws on conceptual tools of relationality, materiality and performativity to reconfigure playing as an emergent co-production of entangled bodies, affects, objects, space and histories in ways that make life better for the time of playing. Such moments produce health-affirming potential as an intra-dependent phenomenon rather than an individual achievement. Finally, it considers implications for “health promotion” and health enabling environments.

Beyond Physical Activity: The Importance of Play and Nature-Based Play Spaces for Children’s Health and Development

“…Limiting this diverse and complex behavior to a specific instrumental purpose can marginalize diverse forms of play that are not active, and reshape children's conceptions of play as purposeless-a defining characteristic of play [19,21]. Recent research indicated that this instrumental notion of play has influenced children's descriptions of play.…”

Climbing, Hiding and Having Fun: Schoolchildren’s Memories of Holistic Learning in a Norwegian Kindergarten

“…We didn't tell any one". Children navigated situations of uncertainty (Lester, 2014), engaging with ethi cal decisionmaking and making existential connections to each other and the world around them.…”

A double-bind? Taking new materialisms elsewhere in studies of education and childhood

“…Certainly, it should be recognised that a key charge that may be levelled at attempts to translate new materialism into empirical research is that they risk somewhat endlessly describing manifold ways in which nonhumans 'act'. In one sense, this move might be welcomed: as with studies of children's play, there is a certain politics, ethics and aesthetics to recognising the intrinsic significance of different forms of nonhuman agency (Lester and Russell, 2014). In another sense, however, one might ask what should happen next?…”