Volume 14, Number 3

The author follows a new materialist approach to consider the informal and collaborative creative gathering called jamming as creative play, and she makes a case for the jam as a transformative event of genuine intrasubjective dialogue. She uses Karen Barad’s theory of agential realism and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s ethics of play to argue for the jam as an ethico-socio-political event that supports the communal and creation-centered aspects of our collective existence and offers an opportunity for learning responsibility (or “response-ability,” as Karen Barad calls it) and accountability. She concludes that jamming, like creative play, offers the kind of cooperative underpinnings essential to our relational and ontological makeup. Key words: agential realism; Hans-Georg Gadamer; jam session; Karen Barad; play as an ethical, social, and political activity; shared agency

The authors consider play to be critical and intrinsic to healthy human life and development, and they argue that children’s right to play should be supported by the environment in which they live. Their study seeks to understand what children do when they appear not to play during free play periods at early childhood education and care institutions. Their analysis of nonplay activities produced five categories: conversations, practical tasks, passive observation, wandering, and conflicts (or crying). These categories, they believe, can help kindergarten teachers become aware of factors in the physical environment that prevent children from playing and detect children who fall outside the play community. Key words: affordances; child friendly environment; early childhood education and care (ECEC); nonplay; play

In what the author calls an autoethnography, he examines two aspects of his love of a favorite childhood toy: G.I. Joe. First, because the author is a contingent pacificist and this military figure—a fundamentally violent toy— played so important a role in his life, he now seeks to reconcile his aversion to (real life) violence with his enjoyment of G.I. Joe. Second, he explores how his experience as a Third Culture Kid (TCK)—born in the United States, but growing up in Africa—was affected by his enjoyment of G.I. Joe. He combines research, reflection, analysis, and narrative in an account of how his experiences with G.I. Joe may have been manifested in his creativity and how they provided a therapeutic catharsis following his exposure to actual violent conflict. Hopkins also argues for the future use of autoethnography in play studies. Key words: action figures; autoethnography; cathartic play; contingent pacifism; creative play; G.I. Joe; TCK (Third Culture Kid); toy soldiers; violent toy play

Using Brian O’Connor’s Idleness: A Philosophical Essay as a point of departure, the author defends a conception of idleness as an expression of play and leisure. The author agrees with O’Connor that idleness constitutes an important and unduly denigrated human good, but not that it is best understood as a distinctive sphere of human freedom. Instead, he argues, idleness would be better considered a form of play and leisure, which he claims both offers further support for the value of idleness and recognizes a neglected sphere of play and leisure. Key words: idleness, leisure; play; recreation