CfP: The Anthropology of Play: Encounters and Emergences

What is an anthropology of play? This simple question has drawn the attention of anthropologists working in a panoply of fields, particularly since an appreciation of what play constitutes has broadened far beyond the study of games.

This conference, inaugurating the newly-established AnthroPlay network, seeks to return us to the heart of the anthropological approach: ethnographically driven engagements with play and playfulness. While conceptual thinking on play is attractive due to its broad interdisciplinary nature, we seek to centre anthropological methods, theories, and approaches to its study in this call for papers. Meaningful crossdisciplinary work requires us to first define and reflect on what our discipline can offer before we enter into dialogue with others. With that in mind, we ask: What do we, as anthropologists and ethnographers, bring to the magic circle of play?

In the spirit of experimentation, during this two-day conference we intend to play around in the most earnest way, inviting responses to questions such as:

• How is play understood within the anthropological canon? What surprising and useful places can we look to in order to find tools to think about play?
• Is play a doing or a being? What is play?
• What are the slippages present in how anthropologists approach play? How can we reconcile them – and should we try to reconcile them at all?
• How can we both distinguish ourselves and draw from cognate fields, such as games and leisure studies, while being precise about what an anthropological approach to play means?
• How can we rescue play from being a residual category to other anthropological categories and analytics relating to studies of labour, games, religion, and ritual? (Does it need rescuing at all?)

We also insist on not just reading texts of play, but also playing them. Scholars of play continue to engage with each other primarily through the reading and reception of texts, but this conference is an opportunity to play up the intersubjective dynamism that play can offer. As such, we invite not just presentations on play but things to play with. We invite participants to contribute to a mini-exhibition on objects and materials of play and to bring games experienced or made in the field, and will start our conference with a session of play. A meta-question underlying this conference is whether we can incorporate a sense of playfulness in how we as academics relate to each other–and how this can shape new ways to think and be together.

Please submit a 250-word abstract to Kellynn Wee (kellynn.wee.20@ucl.ac.uk) and Giles Bunch (giles.bunch.20@ucl.ac.uk) by 3 June. If you would like to bring a play object or a game to play related to your presentation, please add a 100-word description of this item or game to your abstract. We aim to
communicate all decisions by 7 June.

This conference will be hybrid, so we welcome virtual and in-person participation. Tea, coffee, and lunch will be provided. We also have a small travel stipend to support precarious scholars, students, and ECRs to attend this conference in person.
 

We are very grateful to the IAS Octagon Small Grants Fund for funding this event.

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