PLAY AND MEANINGS

One of the recurrent issues in the debate about humanity and cultural development is the phenomenon of play. Despite this perpetual attention of philosophers, educators, psychologists, and pedagogues to the element of play in human activities, there is still much controversy about the conceptualisation of the relationship between play and human cultural development. In his famous study of the role of play in human cultures, Homo Ludens, the Dutch historian of culture Johan Huizinga investigated many cultures from antiquity until the beginning of the twentieth century and concluded that play is most certainly the basis for all human culture. Institutions such as the law, constitutions, art, crafts, science, sport, and trade are basically rooted in human playful activities (Huizinga, 1938). “Human civilisation,” he writes, “emerges and develops in play, as play.” In his analysis he stipulates that play has a culture-creating function, and the major determinant in this process is the element of competition, which is intrinsic to all playful activities. In this competition, new or modified meanings are attributed to familiar objects and actions, which subsequently become the basis for new objects and actions.

It is interesting to note that in the beginning of the twentieth century this connection between play and human cultural development was made independently by many academics at different places. For Bakhtin (1964/1994), for example, the element of play was essential for cultural innovations.