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The Ambiguity Of Play
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Book Synopsis The Ambiguity of Play by : Brian Sutton-Smith
Download or read book The Ambiguity of Play written by Brian Sutton-Smith and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sutton-Smith focuses on play theories rooted in seven distinct "rhetorics"--The ancient discourses of fate, power, communal identity, and frivolity and the modern discourses of progress, the imaginary, and the self. In a sweeping analysis that moves from the question of play in child development to the implications of play for the Western work ethic, he explores the values, historical sources, and interests that have dictated the terms and forms of play put forth in each discourse's "objective" theory
Book Synopsis You Can’t Say You Can’t Play by : Vivian Gussin Paley
Download or read book You Can’t Say You Can’t Play written by Vivian Gussin Paley and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1993-07-16 with total page 95 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who of us cannot remember the pain and humiliation of being rejected by our classmates? However thick-skinned or immune to such assaults we may become as adults, the memory of those early exclusions is as palpable to each of us today as it is common to human experience. We remember the uncertainty of separating from our home and entering school as strangers and, more than the relief of making friends, we recall the cruel moments of our own isolation as well as those children we knew were destined to remain strangers. In this book Vivian Paley employs a unique strategy to probe the moral dimensions of the classroom. She departs from her previous work by extending her analysis to children through the fifth grade, all the while weaving remarkable fairy tale into her narrative description. Paley introduces a new rule—“You can’t say you can’t play”—to her kindergarten classroom and solicits the opinions of older children regarding the fairness of such a rule. We hear from those who are rejected as well as those who do the rejecting. One child, objecting to the rule, says, “It will be fairer, but how are we going to have any fun?” Another child defends the principle of classroom bosses as a more benign way of excluding the unwanted. In a brilliant twist, Paley mixes fantasy and reality, and introduces a new voice into the debate: Magpie, a magical bird, who brings lonely people to a place where a full share of the sun is rightfully theirs. Myth and morality begin to proclaim the same message and the schoolhouse will be the crucible in which the new order is tried. A struggle ensues and even the Magpie stories cannot avoid the scrutiny of this merciless pack of social philosophers who will not be easily caught in a morality tale. You Can’t Say You Can’t Play speaks to some of our most deeply held beliefs. Is exclusivity part of human nature? Can we legislate fairness and still nurture creativity and individuality? Can children be freed from the habit of rejection? These are some of the questions. The answers are to be found in the words of Paley’s schoolchildren and in the wisdom of their teacher who respectfully listens to them.
Download or read book Alexander written by Guy Maclean Rogers and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2005-10-11 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For nearly two and a half millennia, Alexander the Great has loomed over history as a legend–and an enigma. Wounded repeatedly but always triumphant in battle, he conquered most of the known world, only to die mysteriously at the age of thirty-two. In his day he was revered as a god; in our day he has been reviled as a mass murderer, a tyrant as brutal as Stalin or Hitler. Who was the man behind the mask of power? Why did Alexander embark on an unprecedented program of global domination? What accounted for his astonishing success on the battlefield? In this luminous new biography, the esteemed classical scholar and historian Guy MacLean Rogers sifts through thousands of years of history and myth to uncover the truth about this complex, ambiguous genius. Ascending to the throne of Macedonia after the assassination of his father, King Philip II, Alexander discovered while barely out of his teens that he had an extraordinary talent and a boundless appetite for military conquest. A virtuoso of violence, he was gifted with an uncanny ability to visualize how a battle would unfold, coupled with devastating decisiveness in the field. Granicus, Issos, Gaugamela, Hydaspes–as the victories mounted, Alexander’s passion for conquest expanded from cities to countries to continents. When Persia, the greatest empire of his day, fell before him, he marched at once on India, intending to add it to his holdings. As Rogers shows, Alexander’s military prowess only heightened his exuberant sexuality. Though his taste for multiple partners, both male and female, was tolerated, Alexander’s relatively enlightened treatment of women was nothing short of revolutionary. He outlawed rape, he placed intelligent women in positions of authority, and he chose his wives from among the peoples he conquered. Indeed, as Rogers argues, Alexander’s fascination with Persian culture, customs, and sexual practices may have led to his downfall, perhaps even to his death. Alexander emerges as a charismatic and surprisingly modern figure–neither a messiah nor a genocidal butcher but one of the most imaginative and daring military tacticians of all time. Balanced and authoritative, this brilliant portrait brings Alexander to life as a man, without diminishing the power of the legend.
Book Synopsis Man, Play, and Games by : Roger Caillois
Download or read book Man, Play, and Games written by Roger Caillois and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to Roger Caillois, play is an occasion of pure waste. In spite of this - or because of it - play constitutes an essential element of human social and spiritual development. In this study, the author defines play as a free and voluntary activity that occurs in a pure space, isolated and protected from the rest of life.
Download or read book Potential Images written by Dario Gamboni and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2002 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Potential Images Dario Gamboni explores ambiguity in modern art, considering images that rely to a great degree on a projected or imaginative response from viewers to achieve their effect. Ambiguity became increasingly important in late 19th- and early 20th-century aesthetics, as is evidenced in works by such artists as Redon, Cezanne, Gauguin, Ensor and the Nabis. Similarly, the Cubists subverted traditional representational conventions, requiring their viewers to decipher images to extract their full meanings. The same device was taken up in the various experiments leading to abstraction. For example, it was Kandinsky's intention that his work could be interpreted in both figurative and non-figurative ways, and Duchamp's Readymades suggested the radical conclusion that 'it is the beholder who makes the picture'. These invitations to viewers to participate in the process of artistic communication had social and political implications, as they accorded artist and beholder symmetrical, almost interchangeable, roles.
Book Synopsis The Boy Who Would Be a Helicopter by : Vivian Gussin PALEY
Download or read book The Boy Who Would Be a Helicopter written by Vivian Gussin PALEY and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does a teacher begin to appreciate and tap the rich creative resources of the fantasy world of children? What social functions do story playing and storytelling serve in the preschool classroom? And how can the child who is trapped in private fantasies be brought into the richly imaginative social play that surrounds him? The Boy Who Would Be a Helicopter focuses on the challenge posed by the isolated child to teachers and classmates alike in the unique community of the classroom. It is the dramatic story of Jason-the loner and outsider-and of his ultimate triumph and homecoming into the society of his classmates. As we follow Jason's struggle, we see that the classroom is indeed the crucible within which the young discover themselves and learn to confront new problems in their daily experience. Vivian Paley recreates the stage upon which children emerge as natural and ingenious storytellers. She supplements these real-life vignettes with brilliant insights into the teaching process, offering detailed discussions about control, authority, and the misuse of punishment in the preschool classroom. She shows a more effective and natural dynamic of limit-setting that emerges in the control children exert over their own fantasies. And here for the first time the author introduces a triumvirate of teachers (Paley herself and two apprentices) who reflect on the meaning of events unfolding before them.
Book Synopsis The Gameful World by : Steffen P. Walz
Download or read book The Gameful World written by Steffen P. Walz and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2015-01-16 with total page 687 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What if every part of our everyday life was turned into a game? The implications of “gamification.” What if our whole life were turned into a game? What sounds like the premise of a science fiction novel is today becoming reality as “gamification.” As more and more organizations, practices, products, and services are infused with elements from games and play to make them more engaging, we are witnessing a veritable ludification of culture. Yet while some celebrate gamification as a possible answer to mankind's toughest challenges and others condemn it as a marketing ruse, the question remains: what are the ramifications of this “gameful world”? Can game design energize society and individuals, or will algorithmic incentive systems become our new robot overlords? In this book, more than fifty luminaries from academia and industry examine the key challenges of gamification and the ludification of culture—including Ian Bogost, John M. Carroll, Bernie DeKoven, Bill Gaver, Jane McGonigal, Frank Lantz, Jesse Schell, Kevin Slavin, McKenzie Wark, and Eric Zimmerman. They outline major disciplinary approaches, including rhetorics, economics, psychology, and aesthetics; tackle issues like exploitation or privacy; and survey main application domains such as health, education, design, sustainability, or social media.
Book Synopsis Navigating Ambiguity by : Andrea Small
Download or read book Navigating Ambiguity written by Andrea Small and published by Ten Speed Press. This book was released on 2022-04-19 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thought-provoking guide to help you lean in to the discomfort of the unknown to turn creative opportunities into intentional design, from Stanford University's world-renowned d.school. “Navigating Ambiguity reminds us not to run from uncertainty but rather see it as a defining moment of opportunity.”—Yves Béhar, Founder and CEO, fuseproject A design process presents a series of steps, but in real life, it rarely plays out this neatly. Navigating Ambiguity underscores how the creative process isn’t formulaic. This book shows you how to surrender control by being adaptable, curious, and unbiased as well as resourceful, tenacious, and courageous. Designers and educators Andrea Small and Kelly Schmutte use humor and clear steps to help you embrace uncertainty as you approach a creative project. First, they explain how the brain works and why it defaults to certainty. Then they show you how to let go of the need for control and instead employ a flexible strategy that relies on the balance between acting and adapting, and the give-and-take between opposing approaches to make your way to your goal. Beautiful cut-paper artwork illustrations offer ways to rethink creative work without hitting the usual roadblocks. The result is a more open and satisfying journey from assignment or idea to finished product.
Book Synopsis The Ambiguities of Experience by : James G. March
Download or read book The Ambiguities of Experience written by James G. March and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-27 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first component of intelligence involves effective adaptation to an environment. In order to adapt effectively, organizations require resources, capabilities at using them, knowledge about the worlds in which they exist, good fortune, and good decisions. They typically face competition for resources and uncertainties about the future. Many, but possibly not all, of the factors determining their fates are outside their control. Populations of organizations and individual organizations survive, in part, presumably because they possess adaptive intelligence; but survival is by no means assured. The second component of intelligence involves the elegance of interpretations of the experiences of life. Such interpretations encompass both theories of history and philosophies of meaning, but they go beyond such things to comprehend the grubby details of daily existence. Interpretations decorate human existence. They make a claim to significance that is independent of their contribution to effective action. Such intelligence glories in the contemplation, comprehension, and appreciation of life, not just the control of it.—from The Ambiguities of Experience In The Ambiguities of Experience, James G. March asks a deceptively simple question: What is, or should be, the role of experience in creating intelligence, particularly in organizations? Folk wisdom both trumpets the significance of experience and warns of its inadequacies. On one hand, experience is described as the best teacher. On the other hand, experience is described as the teacher of fools, of those unable or unwilling to learn from accumulated knowledge or the teaching of experts. The disagreement between those folk aphorisms reflects profound questions about the human pursuit of intelligence through learning from experience that have long confronted philosophers and social scientists. This book considers the unexpected problems organizations (and the individuals in them) face when they rely on experience to adapt, improve, and survive. While acknowledging the power of learning from experience and the extensive use of experience as a basis for adaptation and for constructing stories and models of history, this book examines the problems with such learning. March argues that although individuals and organizations are eager to derive intelligence from experience, the inferences stemming from that eagerness are often misguided. The problems lie partly in errors in how people think, but even more so in properties of experience that confound learning from it. "Experience," March concludes, "may possibly be the best teacher, but it is not a particularly good teacher."
Download or read book Why We Play written by Roberte Hamayon and published by Hau. This book was released on 2016 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Play is one of humanity's straightforward yet deceitful ideas: though the notion is unanimously agreed upon to be universal, used for man and animal alike, nothing defines what all its manifestations share, from childish playtime to on stage drama, from sporting events to market speculation. Within the author's anthropological field of work (Mongolia and Siberia), playing holds a core position: national holidays are called "Games," echoing in that way the circus games in Ancient Rome and today's Olympics. These games convey ethical values and local identity. Roberte Hamayon bases her analysis of the playing spectrum on their scrutiny. Starting from fighting and dancing, encompassing learning, interaction, emotion and strategy, this study heads towards luck and belief as well as the ambiguity of the relation to fiction and reality. It closes by indicating two features of play: its margin and its metaphorical structure. Ultimately revealing its consistency and coherence, the author displays play as a modality of action of its own. "Playing is no 'doing' in the ordinary sense" once wrote Johan Huizinga. Isn't playing doing something else, elswhere and otherwise ?
Download or read book Play Matters written by Miguel Sicart and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2014-08-15 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why play is a productive, expressive way of being human, a form of understanding, and a fundamental part of our well-being. What do we think about when we think about play? A pastime? Games? Childish activities? The opposite of work? Think again: If we are happy and well rested, we may approach even our daily tasks in a playful way, taking the attitude of play without the activity of play. So what, then, is play? In Play Matters, Miguel Sicart argues that to play is to be in the world; playing is a form of understanding what surrounds us and a way of engaging with others. Play goes beyond games; it is a mode of being human. We play games, but we also play with toys, on playgrounds, with technologies and design. Sicart proposes a theory of play that doesn’t derive from a particular object or activity but is a portable tool for being—not tied to objects but brought by people to the complex interactions that form their daily lives. It is not separated from reality; it is part of it. It is pleasurable, but not necessarily fun. Play can be dangerous, addictive, and destructive. Along the way, Sicart considers playfulness, the capacity to use play outside the context of play; toys, the materialization of play—instruments but also play pals; playgrounds, play spaces that enable all kinds of play; beauty, the aesthetics of play through action; political play—from Maradona's goal against England in the 1986 World Cup to the hactivist activities of Anonymous; the political, aesthetic, and moral activity of game design; and why play and computers get along so well.
Book Synopsis Plato's Hippias Minor by : Zenon Culverhouse
Download or read book Plato's Hippias Minor written by Zenon Culverhouse and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-07-29 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines Plato's most puzzling dialogue, Hippias Minor, in detail, treating Socrates' engagement with both Homer and the sophist Hippias over human excellence as at once playful and deadly serious.
Book Synopsis Play and the Human Condition by : Thomas S. Henricks
Download or read book Play and the Human Condition written by Thomas S. Henricks and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2015-04-15 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Play and the Human Condition, Thomas Henricks brings together ways of considering play to probe its essential relationship to work, ritual, and communitas. Focusing on five contexts for play--the psyche, the body, the environment, society, and culture--Henricks identifies conditions that instigate play, and comments on its implications for those settings. Offering a general theory of play as behavior promoting self-realization, Henricks articulates a conception of self that includes individual and social identity, particular and transcendent connection, and multiple fields of involvement. Henricks also evaluates play styles from history and contemporary life to analyze the relationship between play and human freedom. Imaginative and stimulating, Play and the Human Condition shows how play allows us to learn about our qualities and those of the world around us--and in so doing make sense of ourselves.
Book Synopsis Living with Ambiguity by : Donald A. Crosby
Download or read book Living with Ambiguity written by Donald A. Crosby and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How a religion based on the sacredness of nature deals with the problem of evil.
Book Synopsis A Certain Ambiguity by : Gaurav Suri
Download or read book A Certain Ambiguity written by Gaurav Suri and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-07-01 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While taking a class on infinity at Stanford in the late 1980s, Ravi Kapoor discovers that he is confronting the same mathematical and philosophical dilemmas that his mathematician grandfather had faced many decades earlier--and that had landed him in jail. Charged under an obscure blasphemy law in a small New Jersey town in 1919, Vijay Sahni is challenged by a skeptical judge to defend his belief that the certainty of mathematics can be extended to all human knowledge--including religion. Together, the two men discover the power--and the fallibility--of what has long been considered the pinnacle of human certainty, Euclidean geometry. As grandfather and grandson struggle with the question of whether there can ever be absolute certainty in mathematics or life, they are forced to reconsider their fundamental beliefs and choices. Their stories hinge on their explorations of parallel developments in the study of geometry and infinity--and the mathematics throughout is as rigorous and fascinating as the narrative and characters are compelling and complex. Moving and enlightening, A Certain Ambiguity is a story about what it means to face the extent--and the limits--of human knowledge.
Download or read book Symbolic Loss written by Peter Homans and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historically, many world cultures have linked three disparate phenomena: collective loss; mourning; and the construction of monuments and cultural symbols to represent the loss over time and render it memorable, meaningful, and thereby bearable. In a century of great loss, observers of western culture have commented on the decline of mourning practices and the absence of their associated rituals. The ten essays assembled here by Peter Homans represent, in a genuinely interdisciplinary way, the recent work of scholars attempting to understand this trend. Arranged in sections on cultural studies, architecture, history, and psychology, this accessible collection can serve as an introduction to the uses of mourning in contemporary cultures. Contributors: Paul A. Anderson, University of MichiganDoris L. Bergen, University of Notre DameMitchell Breitwieser, University of California, BerkeleyPeter Homans, University of ChicagoPatrick H. Hutton, University of VermontMarie-Claire Lavabre, National Institute for Scientific Research, ParisPeter C. Shabad, Northwestern University Medical School and Columbia Michael Reese Hospital and Medical CenterLevi P. Smith, Art Institute of ChicagoJulia Stern, Northwestern UniversityJames E. Young, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Book Synopsis The Fallacy of Understanding & The Ambiguity of Change by : Edgar A. Levenson
Download or read book The Fallacy of Understanding & The Ambiguity of Change written by Edgar A. Levenson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Fallacy of Understanding (1972) and The Ambiguity of Change (1983), Edgar Levenson elaborated the many ways in which the psychoanalyst and the patient interact - unconsciously, continuously, inevitably. For Levenson, it was impossible for the analyst not to interact with the patient, and the therapeutic power of analysis derived from the analyst's ability to step back from the interactive embroilment (and the mutual enactments to which it led) and to reflect with the patient on what each was doing to, and with, the other. Invariably, Levenson found, the analyst-analysand interaction reprised patterns of experience that typified the analysand's early family relationships. The reconceptualization of the analyst-analysand relationship and of the manner in which the analytic process unfolded would become foundational to contemporary interpersonal and relational approaches to psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. But Levenson's perspective was revolutionary at the time of its initial formulation in The Fallacy of Understanding and remained so at the time of its fuller elaboration in The Ambiguity of Change. The Analytic Press is pleased to reprint within the Psychoanalysis in a New Key Book Beries two works that have proven influential in the realignment of psychoanalytic thought and practice away from Freudian drive theory and toward a contemporary appreciation of clinical process in its interactive, enactive, and participatory dimensions. Newly introduced by series editor Donnel Stern, The Fallacy of Understanding and The Ambiguity of Change are richly deserving of the designation "contemporary classics" of psychoanalysis.
