Child Culture - Play Culture

Flemming Mouritsen

The concept Children’s Culture refers to two different types of cultural

manifestation. 1. The cultural products made for children mainly by
adults in different classical and medias, such as children’s literature,
toys, TV and computergames. 2. Children’s oral culture and play culture
produced and performed by children and transmitted within the frames
of a special type of social network. This culture includes aesthetic expres-
sions such as games, tales, songs and a variety of other activities which
play an important role in children’s lives and development. The paper
describes these two types of child culture and their interplay and has its
focus in outlining the field and establishing a framework for the under-
standing of play culture, children’s lore and other symbolic aesthetic
forms of expression.

1
Flemming Mouritsen:
Child Culture - Play Culture.

W orking Paper 2. Child and youth Culture

The Department of Contemporary Cultural Studies
Odense University

Copyright by the author

Edited by Jørn Guldberg, Flemming Mouritsen and Torben Kure Marker

Layout and DTP by Torben Kure Marker
Cover design by LAMA grafik
Printed by Odense University Printing Office

ISBN: 87-89375-78-5
ISSN: 1601-1791

Published by the Department of Contemporary Cultural Studies

Odense University
Campusvej 55
DK-5230 Odense M
Tel. + 45 65 57 34 30
Fax + 45 65 93 06 72
E-mail: kmf@humsek.sdu.dk

Selected Working Papers are accessible on the Internet:

Http://www.hum.sdu.dk/center/kultur/arb_pap/

Typeset: Verdana, Arial Black and Bookman

Printed in Denmark 1998

2
Child Culture - Play Culture

Flemming Mouritsen*

Preface

Child culture is a concept with more than one meaning. It is

used in special senses, for example of the various cultural
products that are made for children, and in a wider sense of
the life contexts in which children are involved. At least two
different concepts of culture and several different types of
cultural expression are involved in the use of the term, so it
is worth delimiting the concept and characterizing various
types of child culture.

Child culture - culture?

The concept of culture itself is difficult to delimit or define.

The word “culture” is used in all sorts of contexts and often
assumes the character of a kind of magic password that can
open all doors. It has become an “in” word. And in the process
its meaning is dissipated, so it is worth demarcating what we
are talking about.
By and large the concept of culture is used in two different
ways. It is used to describe what is peculiarly human in
relation to nature. In this case culture means the human ac-

*Flemming Mouritsen is associate professor at The Department of Contem-

porary Cultural Studies, Odense University. His field is child and youth
culture. He has published the book Legekultur. Essays om børnekultur, leg
og fortælling (Play Culture. Essays on Childculture, Play and Narratives)
1996 and has contributed to several publications, such as „Children‘s
Literature“ in Sven H. Rossel (ed.): A history of Danish Literature, University
of Nebraska Press, 1992. The paper „Child Culture - Play Culture“ is an
english version of the introduction chapter to the book mentioned above.

3
tivities, productions, forms of expression, behaviour and social
institutions generated by the “cultivation” of a raw material,
a “natural” basis. In this sense culture means the processed,
what has been given form, what is embedded in a distinct
formation that is characteristic of a particular time, a particu-
lar group, a particular society. Culture is understood as a
supraindividual entity produced and reproduced by a given
group. Children, for example, grow into and take over a given
culture through a so-called enculturation process (unlike soci-
alization, which is the way society is internalized by the
individual). We speak of Danish culture, local culture, subcul-
ture, corporate culture, institutional culture etc.
When we speak of child culture here, however, the focus is
not so much on this wide concept of culture, for the concept
of child culture has arisen within the framework of a narrower
concept - another general use of the culture concept which
refers to the context embracing artistic genres and artistic
expression, where “culture” as it were expresses itself about
itself in symbolic form.
In this article the use of the concept of culture is limited to
artistic and other symbolic aesthetic products and forms of
expression, and their context. It is the concept of context that
implicates the wider concept of culture, understood as the
cultural framework in terms of which the specific child-cultu-
ral forms of expression are described and understood.
Children’s lives as such, and the life of children with adults,
their activities and networks, are all child culture in the sense
of the broad concept of culture, and anything can be regarded,
described and interpreted as cultural expression. When we
talk about child culture studies in this connection, we do so
in a particular culture-oriented perspective unlike the
sociological, biological, medical, psychological or educational
perspective - to mention some of the most prominent ap-
proaches applied hitherto to children and children’s lives.
It is such a culture-analytical perspective that the sections
of this book apply to child culture in the narrow sense of the
concept, concentrating on a particular part of child culture:

4
the aesthetic, symbolic forms of expression in child culture,
or, to use another term, their play culture.
This type of child culture is the main theme here, but a mo-
re detailed definition of child culture and its main types may
be appropriate, among other reasons to determine and chara-
cterize play culture - in the following also called children’s
culture- in relation to the other types of child culture.

The field of child culture

The concept of child culture and research on child culture

have undergone a process corresponding to the process to
which the concept of culture and childhood have been
subjected in recent decades, as definitions, demarcations and
points of view have changed. The field of study is very diverse,
even if we limit ourselves to the field outlined above - artistic
and other symbolic aesthetic forms of expression.
W e can distinguish three main types of child culture:

1. The culture produced for children by adults - not only

classic media like children’s literature, drama, music and more
recent media like film, TV, video, computer games, but also
phenomena like toys, sweets, advertisements.
These types of cultural products fall unto at least two subty-
pes: the formatively oriented production of “quality” culture
for children, which may be of a mainly educational persuasion,
or may involve artistic self-understanding.
Its counterpart (or perhaps its Siamese twin) is the market-
oriented production of child culture. Although the boundaries
are fluid, the categorization can have a practical function,
since the opposition still plays a central role in the perception
of child culture and in debate about it. Both these types are
historical or current elements in the construction of child
culture as an “institution” in society and what we normally
think of when child culture is mentioned.

5
2. Culture with children, where adults and children together
make use of various cultural technologies and media. This
type of cultural productivity is vital and has a long tradition
behind it in this country. It similarly falls into two types with
fluid boundaries. At one end of the spectrum are the speciali-
zed leisure activities - all those children can “go to” (like sport
and music schools). At the other end of the spectrum there
are informal projects in which children and the young organize
themselves or work with adults (e.g. the so-called “try-for-
yourself” projects or writing workshops and the use of media
workshops).
In the last twenty years or so, such projects have been
common both in institutions and in more informal contexts.
Their function is to open up expressive media to children and
to establish space for them as cultural actors. The perspective
is to mediate in the relationship between the adults’ child
culture and the children’s informal culture, which is the third
type below.

3. Children’s culture. By this is meant the expressions of

culture that children produce in their own networks; that is,
what with an overall term one could call their play culture. It
consists of a raft of expressive forms and genres, games, tales,
songs, rhymes and jingles, riddles, jokes and whatever else
falls within classic children’s folklore; but it also includes
sporadic aesthetically organized forms of expression
associated with the moment, such as rhythmic sounds,
joshing, teasing, walks and sounds. Children’s ways of
adopting various media and “places”, too, belong to this
category (for example writing, video, computers; just as the
ways in which they internalize these media as tools for their
own expression or organize their reception of them as a special
forum for their relations and expression are related to play
activities. It could be a matter of “playing computer games”,
“watching video”, “playing Barbie”, “drawing”, “writing” etc.
The children produce or transform such situations into special
arenas.

6
Siamese twins. Formative culture and the media
industry

Before we discuss play culture, culture for children must be

characterized to obtain certain outlines of the relationship
between the two different types, the formatively oriented and
the market-oriented.
In its origins child culture is part of what has here been
called the educational project with children, although the child
culture concept is of a far later date. Childhood in the modern
sense was established in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies. It has been called a modern construct, and it has been
shown that childhood is not simply a natural category but
has been given a special form in society, marking a crucial
historic watershed. The circumstances of life, especially for
children in bourgeois environments, changed decisively in
the course of the 1600s and 1700s, a time when many other
modern phenomena also have their origins.
Child culture is as old as childhood, just as it is contempo-
rary with pedagogics as a discipline. It is a result of the whole
great project of education and institutionalization that the
bourgeoisie constructed to ensure that children grew up as
useful and well-regulated adults. Child culture was engine-
ered, produced and developed as a parallel to school education
and in a kind of division of labour with it. Whereas the school
primarily dealt with the more instrumental side of child educa-
tion, child culture was oriented towards leisure and the family
with a view to the psychological and moral imprinting of the
children. The cultural products were therefore mainly morali-
zing and edifying, and children’s literature was the central
medium. Children’s literature was produced and regarded as
an instrument for the cultivation of children, which is also its
basic function today, although this is now crossed with a
number of other intentions and orientations - for example
artistic ones. Sometimes child culture products thus became
a medium for opposition and for a critical attitude to the edu-
cational project.

7
After World War II, though, there was a crucial shift in the
point of view, especially in the parts of child culture oriented
towards reform pedagogy and the arts; a change from the
adult educator’s point of view to the child’s. The Swedish Pippi
Longstocking was one of the early examples of this and one of
the most striking. Indeed the book caused a furore when it
appeared, but established a direction which is now the main-
stream.
On the one hand child culture is a formative institution
and is maintained as such, like schools, by the public sector.
On the other hand much of it was market-oriented from the
outset. Today this market or mass culture is on the offensive
and is expanding rapidly. This opposition and these conflicting
interests - education, “the good”, quality and art against econo-
mics, turnover and entertainment - still arouse vehement de-
bate; today about subjects like children and TV, video and
other cultural junk food. The two types of child culture are
yoked together like Siamese twins, although passionate battles
have raged between them over time with the “good guy” and
the “bad guy” in their opposite corners.
The pattern of these debates is as old as child culture itself,
and the new debates are very much repetitions of the earlier
ones. Before and around 1800 it was the oral folk culture, ta-
les and games that were regarded as poisonous to the up-
bringing and the values people wanted to give the children.
The problem was that the children would rather go down to
the kitchen or out in the stables to hear the juicy and tragic
tall tales and songs of the servants rather than stick respec-
tably to the moralistic set pieces that were then the dominant
type of children’s literature.
Later the bogeymen were pulp literature and films. In the
1950s the triumph of the comic books and the American cul-
ture industry triggered off what was probably the most vehe-
ment debate over child culture ever seen. Great passions were
aroused, and there were no limits to what the garish comic
books could drive the children to, especially the boys.

8
Today video, computer games and “splatter” products generate
similar debates, although in a more subdued form. The atti-
tude is the same - that unbridled market forces undermine
the ideal imprinting of children. The media are outside the
control of the institutions and educators, and communicate
dubious values. But the battles are waged within the adults’
sphere of child culture, and express a basic dichotomy and
conflict of interests in modern society, and it is the children
who are the object of the projects and the theme of the adults’
conflicting interests.
In both these cultural products, there is thus a distinction
between producers and consumers, and an intermediate pha-
se has been inserted, consisting of huge technical and financial
apparatuses and institutions. Today there is every indication
that multinational culture industries are taking over produc-
tion. Even in a small country like Denmark the turnover is
enormous. As an example, the toy market is worth some 1.5
billion kroner a year, and a few large multinational firms are
responsible for the bulk of the turnover. About 300,000 Barbie
dolls are sold a year in Denmark (with about a million children
aged 0-18, half of them girls, and about a third of these at the
Barbie-relevant age). These products have a huge distribution.
The TV, video and computer industries have even bigger turn-
overs, and the share of advertising that is oriented towards
children probably corresponds to the percentage of children
in the population, i.e. about a couple of billion kroner a year.
Children and childhood are extremely “interesting” to the cul-
ture industries and not only to them, and in this field there is
a huge, determined body of research, product development
and marketing.
At the same time the modern media industry goes behind
the back of the classic education system and its institutions
and communicates directly with the children. The cultivation
of children through the culture of education and writing is
therefore felt to be threatened - cf. all the talk of the new illi-
teracy.

9
Media, institutions and play culture

It has been claimed that the media live like parasites, sucking
nourishment from the shortcomings of modern children’s
lives. Where play goes out or friends and “meeting-places”
disappear, entertainment comes in. Active involvement and
self-expression are replaced by passive consumption.
A dimension which is often overlooked in the debate, how-
ever, is that children are not simply victims of influence and
exploitation. Children make use of these products, they relate
actively to them. The children use the media as raw material
in their play culture, and this gives it new dimensions, media
and situations. Play culture and its spaces are in turn the
crucial conditions for children’s reformulation of the cultural
products.
The mediation of play culture bypasses the projects and
institutions of the adults, and is channelled through informal
networks among the children themselves and from one gene-
ration of children to the next, from older to younger children,
sometimes with adults as intermediaries. It could be argued
that the media and the conditions of modern life weaken cer-
tain aspects of this mediation; on the other hand it can also
be demonstrated that other aspects are strengthened.
The conditions for children’s culture are not unimportant.
It is after all adult society that creates the framework for the
children. But the debate often goes off the rails and attacks
the wrong targets. Modern life does not only offer tribulations.
For example the kindergartens, when all is said and done,
have perhaps a more important cultural function as a meeting
place for the children (and for the children and adults), i.e. as
a forum for play culture, than as a mediator of “pedagogy”.
The informal forms of play culture (and everyday life) are
the basis for what children acquire in the educational system,
including school, just as we can say that these structures
and institutions have a basic function for play culture.
Play culture and the media are inextricable from one another
from the child culture point of view. The media are today a

10
necessary basis for the children’s play culture. They are a
source of raw material, forms and modes which children take
over and transform for their own use in games and stories,
and they form a common frame of reference for the children,
just as child culture is a necessary basis for the media. This
does not mean that we should just uncritically allow the mo-
dern media and products to flood over the children and our-
selves. On he contrary, there is a need to develop a more ra-
dical critical position and qualitatively-oriented products.
Behind the view of the media and institutions as a threat to
play and the childlike qualities of children lies a view of play
as something almost entirely positive. It has not always been
so; in fact it has taken a century to make this a truism.
The understanding of games and their significance has been
greatly conditioned by developmental thinking. At first, i.e.
in the eighteenth century, they were regarded as poisonous
to the intentions of child education, and were more or less a
forbidden activity for nice children.
One of the classic child culture media, the toy, played an
important role in the transition to an integration of the games
in the educational project. Toys and the like existed not only
for the children’s sake or to stimulate their play. They func-
tioned rather as a tool for disciplining and controlling the
wilder games. The beautiful doll’s houses that can be seen in
museums were not only for the self-expression of the girls or
for their own sakes. The elaborate and frail tableaux were not
at the free disposal of the children, but were involved in com-
plex gift-giving and reward/punishment rituals. The precision-
demanding, quiet games they demanded were an antidote to
the activities in the wild, physical forms of play, and were
part of the disciplined gender education of the girls, their be-
haviour, physical and verbal expression. Similarly, other types
of games and toys were developed as instruments of the
educational intentions, and thus the useful and the enjoyable
gradually learned to walk hand in hand.
This harmony was broken by the market-oriented produc-
tion of various forms of entertaining and experience-oriented

11
toys. The first strong manifestations of the child culture indu-
stry of later times appeared on the scene in the nineteenth
century and from then on took over the role of “the enemy”.
In the nineteenth century a number of game types were
given new functions as tools that could also be used educatio-
nally. The strategy changed from prohibitions and rejection
to the taming of both “wild” games and fictions and “wild”
children. Nowadays both games and tales are regarded as
positive in principle. Imagination, spontaneity and initiative
areregarded as central qualities of children and human beings
in general. This was a change that began in the 1800s with
Romanticism. At the same time the view was established that
play is something that is particularly appropriate to childhood.
The attitude appears to have made a U-turn, but this is among
other reasons because these forms of expression and compe-
tencies were developed in an instrumental direction and spe-
cialized as tools for the pedagogical - or for the commercial -
project.
Play was increasingly seen as a distinctive and necessary
childlike form of activity, and today the games are often viewed
as indispensable phases in cognitive development, as transi-
tional stages on the path of development, as precursors of
thinking, as children’s ways of learning, and as tools that
can stimulate various aspects of the development of persona-
lity cognitively, linguistically, motorically, socially etc. Certain
games also belong to certain ages and phases of development.
Today we associate play directly with children. They belong
together like adults and work. Play is considered a particularly
childlike form of activity, and this view is a historical and
cultural phenomenon. We do not need to go very far back in
history (or out into the world) before things look different.
The oral culture of the peasantry about 150 years ago was a
kind of play culture with a wide spectrum of different
physically and orally transmitted forms of expression (tales,
dances, songs, feasts, games etc.). The Danish word for play,
leg, originally meant such aesthetic forms of expression, and

12
there is evidence that the life-project of adults too had play
as its end.
Just as we can talk about phases of development in certain
specialized directions, we can talk about a phasing-out pro-
cess with regard to children’s competencies. The phasing-
out of play is a factor in what we understand as children’s
“development”. This does not mean that adults do not or can-
not play. They can and do - more than we are normally aware.
But it means that the way the concept of adulthood is con-
structed in our culture does not involve play as a project, as
meaning-bearing in adult life. Other values take priority. Here
adulthood is contrasted with childhood, when play is seen as
a primary medium and project for the children.

Play culture. Typological outline

While child culture is channelled through formal structures,

apparatuses and institutions in the form of products, speciali-
zed and specifically oriented activities and learning processes,
play culture is channelled through informal social networks,
through traditional transmission from child to child (and in
some cases from adult to child). It is fundamentally dependent
on the children’s participation and activity and is predicated
on their acquisition of skills in terms of expressive forms, ae-
sthetic techniques, forms of organization, mises-en-scène and
performance.
This culture does not exist in a fixed form, i.e. as a product,
but comes into existence through the children’s production
in situations. It is situation-dependent, whereas culture for
children is in principle situation-independent in its produc-
tion, if not in its reception.
For play to be initiated, the children must already have a
preparedness acquired from tradition in the form of skills; a
know-how which forms an available store of expressions, gen-
res, aesthetic and organizational techniques. The basic condi-
tion of play is the existence of a supra-individual cultural

13
space which is acquired by the individuals, and which can
function as a store which is available to the current users.
Play is thus not simply something children know. Many of
these expressive forms and especially their staging may re-
quire years of daily practice. This is true for example of the
artistic clapping songs that flourish in the girls’ singing culture
in the 6-10 age group.
The exercises do not take the form of specialized training of
the type we know from sport or the learning processes of
school, where the practice, the use of the skill, is separate
from the training of the technical skills. Play is something
one practices by playing, by taking part. One becomes a story-
teller by telling stories etc. What one knows at a certain level
is usable in its own right.
From the point of view of the children, it is matter of getting
“good at it”. There is status in being a good player or an accom-
plished spitter. What you are good at may be something that
from the educational point of view does not seem to matter.
Good at elastic-skipping? Good at talking like Donald Duck?
Good at joshing? But it does matter to the children.

It is a condition of such a culture that it is based on simple

formulae. This applies to all orally transmitted culture, for
example to the folk tale. The matrix of a folk tale may for ex-
ample begin “There was once a poor man who had three
sons...” We know already how this tale will go in its broad
outline. Another example is the Faroese chain dances to ballad
music. The basic formula is one step to the right, two steps to
the left. That is all. The steps are repeated and repeated for
hours and days. More or less anyone can join in the dance
and participate without previous skills. All the same, the Faro-
ese say that it takes thirty years of constant practice to learn
it properly, and this is probably not wholly untrue if you have
to make the dance swing as the lead dancer.
What the good dancers “know” is not just the steps and the
songs, but how to make them swing and at the same time
how to organize the dance as it progresses. You have to be so

14
good that you can improvise. This is the second main principle
of children’s play: the ability to improvise, and improvisation,
capturing the moment, takes practice. It is not just divine in-
spiration but practiced spontaneity.
W e often perceive these forms of expression as not authenti-
cally childlike, perhaps even as noise or chaos. But if we look
closer, the sounds and physical and social movements of chil-
dren are almost always organized and formed - for example
rhythmically. Children formalize their relations, their situa-
tions and their surroundings, and play culture and its aesthe-
tic techniques are the basis and tools for this. They may take
the form of large-scale expression with overall organization
like games, role-playing games, stories and songs, or they
may be expressed in sporadic actions like sounds, rhythms,
walks and impressions. Play culture is a medium which en-
ables children to “cultivate” themselves and their surround-
ings; they create form and patterns, they form material (langu-
age, body, motions, one another) aesthetically. Simple form s
are the necessary basis for a complex and artistic perfor-
mance.

The cultural geographies of play

There are age-dependent differences in play culture. There

are differences between what older and younger children do
and know. There are age-determined phases of development
which impose certain constraints, also over and above those
imposed by the social and pedagogical categorization of chil-
dren in age-related groups. The play repertoire of small chil-
dren and their ways of playing are different from those of
older children. It is therefore important to consider this - also
when studying children’s forms of cultural expression. The
fact that from a cultural point of view we must be critical of
the form that age-related thinking has taken in the educational
psychology tradition and practice does not mean that it is

15
not a central dimension in the study and understanding of
children’s culture.
There is also a gender aspect in play culture. If we adopt
this perspective we can talk about different gender cultures.
Girls and boys have different play traditions and activities -
as well as a common pool. The gender-specific is a crucial di-
mension in the organization of the games, in the types of play
and in the ways of playing. Looking at the games from this
point of view we find many indications that the children use
the games and other things to create gender identities. The
girls often have clear pictures of how the boys play and do
not play, how the girls do and do not play. The boys, similarly,
have their own pictures. If one delves deeper and analyses
the games at the micro-level, one will find indications of such
differences in the organization down to the smallest details
and aesthetic forms.
It is the same with the differences in the children’s social or
geographical backgrounds. Here too there are differences in
tradition and expression which are significant. They do not
play roles in the same way in different environments. The
children of middle-class suburbia do not play quite the same
games in quite the same way as the children from the housing
projects.
There will be geographical differences: for a provincial child
it will be clear that they play differently in the capital. It is
not certain that a Swede would see this; on the other hand he
would immediately see the differences between Danish and
Swedish children. On the larger scale this would apply to dif-
ferent cultures, for example northern and southern Europe.
Games are not just games, children are not just children,
they are also part of a cultural context.
This does not prevent us talking about play culture as such,
across these differences - just as we can talk about children
as children. Games in different culture have some basic fea-
tures in common. Play culture is at once completely local
and extremely global. Children play everywhere; it is a charac-
teristic human form of expression; and they play differently

16
everywhere. It is striking with games and other manifestations
of play how much they seem to resemble one another every-
where, but at the same time this is a deceptive surface pheno-
menon. The same games, the same rhythms etc. are spread
over vast areas and in different cultural contexts. The “NA-
na-NA-na-NA-na” mocking rhythm is for example at least
spread through the whole Indo-European linguistic area. It
was once believed that it was probably more or less heredita-
ry-species-characteristic. But the theory is untenable; this
too is culturally formatted.
Nevertheless, this oral communication network is extremely
wide and efficient. Games and forms of expression are trans-
mitted over long distances, and it happens relatively quickly.
Sometimes one gets the impression that a new wave of a parti-
cular type of joke (for example the “All the children...” jokes
that were current all over the country a few years ago) or a
scatological version of a Eurovision song, are spread simulta-
neously all over the country. It appears to pop up in the
mouths of children all over the country at once.
Some of the waves of jokes and riddles of recent years have
proved to originate in the USA. This is also true of the artistic
clapping songs which have been a central part of the girls’
singing culture since the 1950s. They too originally came fro m
across the Atlantic. It has been possible to follow their diffusion
from country to country. The “All the children...” jokes emigra-
ted from Denmark to Norway and Sweden, and later to Fin-
land, and had different culmination periods. Where they came
from is still uncertain. Perhaps they were invented here.
This fast, often almost global diffusion, is not dependent on
the modern traffic and communications channels. But often
these provide a common background, while the actual form
spreads, bypassing the media, in an oral cycle which is surpri-
singly efficient and wide-ranging. As for phenomena like
graffiti, break dance, hip-hop and the like, there is often a
reciprocal effect, where even the most modern medium, the
Internet, is used. Through the medium of play culture even

17
the three-year-old in the local kindergarten is in contact with
the wide world.
At the same time the three-year-old’s actual play is entirely
local and tied to the situation and the local tradition. At this
level one would be able to map a local play culture which in
some respects would differfrom that of the neighbouring kin-
dergarten.
Boys play shooting games throughout much of the world.
One of the most important ingredients in these games is the
shooting sound. It is probably global as such - as a rhythmic
aesthetic phenomenon which, with the competent shot imita-
tors, can resemble artistry, often accompanied by ingenious
ways of falling dead and death rattle sounds. But the shot
sounds, the timing and the rhythm are different. In most envi-
ronments there is an available store of different sounds. This
is one aspect. Another is that these sounds are different fro m
those used in other environments. I would venture to claim
that on the basis of a survey one could make a kind of shot
dialect map of Denmark, just as one can make one of the dia-
lects of the languageæand thus distinguish between characte-
ristic regional and subregional forms of expression, all the
way down to the sounds of the institution or the neighbour-
hood. Perhaps fully global or semiglobal basic forms could be
distinguished as a common basis for the characteristic local
variants which produce special meanings.
Besides these dimensions - age-related, gender-related and
social - the historical dimension is also important as a parame-
ter. Here we have a complex relationship like the one I have
tried to outline for the others, with an example from cultural
geography. On the one hand we find games that are played
today and which can be traced as far back as source material
exists. A few rhymes have ancestors way back in Catholic ti-
mes. One sees games in ancient Egyptian papyruses and mu-
rals which correspond to those of today. Many games and
forms of play have a quite venerable age, and there has been
speculation that some actually belong to the primal material
of the species and are as old as it. Play itself, and playing in

18
the way people play, probably are. Whether particular games
and modes of expression have so ancient an origin is rather
more doubtful. On the one hand we have games as a universal
form of expression. On the other hand one can claim that
play is historically determined and in modern times particu-
larly associated with children and childhood.
In Breughel’s famous picture of children playing we can
see a catalogue of recognizable games. The games that are
played today were also played then. This spectrum of play
was at least still intact in the 50s, and is known today. But
does this mean that play culture was the same thing over at
least a five-century period through great political and social
upheavals of society? It does and it doesn’t. The games do not
necessarily have the same meanings and functions and modes
of execution as they had then.
The history has not been researched, and the source materi-
al is scanty - play material has always been at the periphery
of what has interested serious people. The history has not
been written, and will be difficult to write. Recent history can
however be gathered together. Some material has been recor-
ded from recent times, and memories of how things were done
are still available. From these emerges a picture of a few rather
critical shifts in play culture between the fifties and today; as
is the case with life conditions on the whole and the great
cultural upheavals that have taken place in the period.
This is one of the fields where even hardened researchers
on children can fall into a profound sense of nostalgia. A my-
thological picture of the golden age of play in the fifties appears
like moist contact lenses in front of their eyes. The period
stands as something special in the history of play culture:
the local communities were intact and dynamic, the family
pattern had taken on its ideal character (in the imagination).
Mothers stayed at home. The children had on the broad scale
been emancipated from work, there was a great space for ac-
tivity around them. Even nature was close around them, far
into the cities. The institutions had not laid claim to them
and the disposal of their time. The media had not stolen them.

19
And last but not least, there were flocks of children, large
flocks, there have never been bigger generations than those
of the war years. All that.
It is not so strange that people who were children then can
see hardly anything but decline when considering the wret-
ched conditions today for children and their play. Even those
who were outsiders and were bullied and who talk about a
blighted childhood and deprecate the much-touted idea of a
self-organizing children’s world, can fall into romantic nostal-
gia about the broken-down childhood life and play of today.
For they simply aren’t there, the games, and where are the
flocks of children? They are not there either. They are in some
institution or other, or they go to something or other, or they
are with their parents out in the shopping temple or on holi-
day, or they sit staring in their rooms or watching video or
doing their homework because they have to manage in the
rat race, or...or... And where are the children’s places - the
sanctuaries? They are covered with cement and supervised
by adult everywhere. It certainly doesn’t look good for the ga-
mes and for children’s culture. Or does it?
If you look through the spectacles of anything else but the
age of steam radio, and try not to look at what is not there
and the games that have disappeared out of the repertoire,
and look at the places where the children actually are, then
you will see that they still play, and that playing activities are
in full swing or in quiet concentration everywhere children
are together; but as a rule in different forms and in other pla-
ces than in the good old days.
To take one of the mythological places of play - the childhood
brook: what has happened to it? If the stream is still there
you rarely see children there. If you drag some of them out
there so they can experience a little authentic child life, then
they don’t have to be very old before they get bored and ask
when they can get away to the burger bar you have used to
lure them out there. Even the smallest ones may have pro-
blems. They have no idea what to do with the place. Although
the care-worker efforts you resort to may interest them for

20
the moment, this does not mean that the brook is a place
they will seek out for themselves and can do something with
- anyway, isn’t it too dangerous for them to be there for by
themselves? Even as an adult that has grown up with streams,
you have now grown out of that sort of thing. You may think
there was more quality to it then, but when you get down to
it, it turns out you are really only half-hearted about it.
The children may no longer have the store of competency
and know-how they need to use the brook as a place for being
together and playing. What we often overlook is that a basis
of transmitted traditions is involved, even in such apparently
banal activities. On the other hand you might go into a shop-
ping mall and see the children there doing the same things
with the escalator that we did with the stream. The play is
still there, somewhere else, in other terms, with other modes
of expression. Just as we cultivated and used the stream and
integrated it in our bodies, children today cultivate and form
the places of modern life. Something is the same, something
else has been removed, and something else again has been
added. Most has been transformed so it fits modern life and
its circumstances.
They no longer play so much outside, they play more in in-
door spaces. The large flocks are rarely seen, they gather more
in smaller groups. Less happens outside, but all the more
within the framework of the institution, which they are better
able to make use of as an arena. They may not have as large
a register of classic stories, on the other hand a number of
new storytelling forms have been taken for example from the
media and used; for example the media-like “report” form is
a key genre in the boys’ culture. And this is the way it is over
a broad front. Play culture is transformed in many of its fea-
tures. Whether it is poorer or richer is a different question,
although it is very much a question that typifies general de-
bate, while not very many people have actually looked into
the way things really are.

21
They don’t understand we’re just playing!

Although the field of study, children’s culture, can more or

less be demarcated, the angle of approach has not therefore
been characterized. The same phenomenon, for example the
war games of boys, can be recorded, analysed and interpreted
from different points of view. The understanding of the same
game may turn out very differently depending on the angle.
The same phenomenon has or is given different meanings
depending on the interpretative frame. And this can have great
consequences not only for our understanding but also for
any practice that might arise from the interpretation.
The poor war game, for example, will almost inevitably mean
something else in a psychological interpretation than in a “li-
terary” one, not to mention what a medical or pedagogical
analysis could make it mean. The various approaches will
emphasize different things, and this would already affect the
process of recording and what the recorder “sees”. The educa-
tionalist’s “gaze” would for example see and shape a different
“text” from the neurologist’s. In the same way there is a diffe-
rence between the gazes with which a parent and a professio-
nal in the child care business perceive. There will be different
preconceptions determined by the point of departure in theo-
ries, objectives, professional capacities, roles etc. used by the
“understander” in question. These preconceptions may be ne-
cessary tools or prejudices which obscure and distort the view
of what is happening; often there will be both - pure reality
does not unveil itself to us. An example may show the differen-
ce between two different approaches to the same phenomenon.

For the umpteenth time the adults in the institution had been
after the big boys. The boys had again been involved in an
outburst of noise and row and war games. The noise of that
kind of thing is unbearable if you are not part of it. This time
the adults had not been content to try to quieten down the
noise with moralizing remarks about other people having to
be there too. It had become too much for the adults, to the

22
extent that they started asking why the boys absolutely had
to fight and be noisy; whether it was always necessary to play
war and violence; whether that sort of playing was not a bad
thing; whether there wasn’t enough violence already on televi-
sion and in the world. And why they couldn’t play something
else? And so on. It was more or less in the air that there actu-
ally might be something wrong with the boys themselves. Or
that there easily could be if they went on that way.
An adult from the outside became curious and asked the
boys some questions when the conflict was over and they we-
re gradually gathering to begin all over again. He asked what
they thought about what the adults had said, whether it had
made any impression on them, whether they thought there
was any truth in it. One of the boys answered rather indulgent-
ly - the way you answer people who don’t know any better
when it comes to the obvious: “But they don’t understand
we’re just playing!”

In this rather banal episode two radically different points of

view clash. The statements of the children and the adults
reflect the same event, but interpret it differently, and react
to it even more differently. They do not see and hear the same.
It is not only the interpretation that is different. The sensing
of it is too. Where the adults see “war”, a problem, noise or
chaos, the children see “play”, i.e. almost the opposite. They
see through different lenses. The adult gaze - the pedagogical
lens - reads one thing. The child’s gaze - the lens of play -
gives it another sense. They are not only talking at cross
purposes, they have crossed sights and crossed courses of
action.
Clashes of this type between children and adults are very
common, and also occur in situations which are not about
war and games. It might just as well have been about them
seeing something bad on television, or wasting their time
tripping each other up or sitting playing computer games or
looking at Barbie catalogues or pestering the adults for sweets

23
or a particular breakfast cereal they had seen in TV commer-
cials - or so many other things. What children do or prefer is
often rather dubious in “adult” terms. Sometimes we think it
is reasonably good, but rarely good enough. And surely they
cannot always excuse themselves by saying they are just play-
ing?
Behind these reactions lies an ingrained pattern which has
to do with basic views of children and childhood, and with
the role of the adults in that game. Since modern childhood
was shaped, an attitude to children that is in the broad sense
educational has been a kind of “cultural law” in our relations
with them.
Children and their activities have been perceived through a
lens, a filter for preconceptions, whether we are aware of it or
not. Putting it simplistically we could say that we see what
we can see, what we want to see, what we fear, what we wish
to see. We see through a special lens consisting of modes of
understanding, theories, concepts, senses and prejudices. We
understand things in terms of a special context. In Gregory
Bateson’s words we can say that we read the situations in a
special “frame” which determines their interpretation. Where-
as the children’s frame in the above example is “This is play”,
the adult’s is for example “This is learning”.
The children, inevitably, have directly and indirectly resisted
and reacted to our role as agents of the pedagogical project.
This is not only embedded in our reactions to and our under-
standing of children. It has also settled into us as a special
“tuning” of our senses. What we hear, see or smell and perhaps
even more so what we do not sense, is formed by this.
This way of seeing is a basic feature of our culture and an
aspect of the great pedagogical project in which we have invol-
ved our children in recent years, and which has certainly not
slowed down in the most recent period. It has more or less
developed like traffic vehicles - from horse-drawn coaches on
gravel roads past thatched village schools, through the railway
network of the centralized schools, to the motorway systems
and local clover-leaf crossings of the institutions. The pedago-

24
gical infrastructure is not only an external phenomenon em-
bedded in institutions of different kinds; it is equally an inter-
nal mental one.
In recent years these modes of understanding have been
more clearly seen for what they are: period-determined ways
of seeing. What has hitherto been a matter of course is now
less so. Basic perceptions are faced with new departures, and
this is also expressed in the fact that key concepts like “child-
hood” and “development” are not what they once were. This
is certainly a result of the radical changes in society and in
everyday life which are in progress, and which also involve
the children, their life and our organization of childhood. These
new departures are visible in a range of different factors.
Some people talk of a paradigm shift in various contexts.
Something of the sort is noticeable in connection with child-
hood and its circumstances. Basic concepts and forms of
understanding become visible as constructs and by being re-
flected as such lose their aura of inevitability - in fact, of be-
ing basic. In this atmosphere of upheaval a concept of culture
gains urgency as the key to the development of new modes of
understanding alongside the traditional ones of pedagogics,
sociology and developmental psychology. The point of view of
cultural analysis could give us another lens so we can see
things we would not otherwise see. It would enable us to reflect
on and interpret them in another way, and it can make visible
and study the ways of seeing that we use and often unwittingly
take for granted. They are in themselves a part of culture and
cultural history. The view of children and childhood and the
ways in which they are understood and organized are basic
factors in a society. And the same is true of child culture and
the cultural expression of children.

The pedagogical lens or the concept of development

One of the crucial filters for our sensing and understanding

is a view of children as people who lack something. They must

25
be educated and developed before they can become “real” peo-
ple. This is a way of understanding them which is as old as,
or is perhaps the very core of, the construction of modern
childhood. Children are not “real” people, and they must be
developed into real people.
W ith its breakthrough in Romanticism and roots going back
to Rousseau, an apparently diametrically opposite view has
also had an impact. Children are close to being the only beings
who are really human. Along with the “noble savage” they
have not been blunted and dulled by the machinery of educa-
tion and civilization. The child is the original human being
incarnate, the authentic. These views are therefore as closely
related as the front and back of a coin and are constantly
found together like Siamese twins. Our culture has a dual
image of the child which has the character of a mythological
figure. It corresponds to the double image of the savage: the
noble savage and the Devil’s brood - and it resembles the
whore-madonna complex for the female gender; for the sake
of balance it can be added that there is also a similar dualism
in the view of men, although it is less visible - for example as
the good hunter and the wolf.
The image of the divine child is however mostly for Sunday
use in theory and in nostalgic notions, while the myth of the
demonic child is effective, but rarely visible and almost taboo
in the present day except in the horror genre. A pragmatic
compromise in the form of the “incomplete” child, representing
the utilitarian thinking of Rationalism, appears to be the com-
mon one for practical use in everyday life.
The understanding of childhood, the view of children, is
very much an “adult” projection; we often unconsciously see
them as what we are not. As what we fear and what we miss.
As we have seen, the view of children corresponds in many
ways to the view of “the savage”, the so-called primitive. It is
no accident that the concept of “development” is used as a
central metaphor in both areas. The understanding of what
the education of children is corresponds in some versions to
the view of the cultivation of wild nature or, to use another

26
traditional metaphor, to writing on a tabula rasa, not to men-
tion the filling of empty vessels. The child is represented in a
generalized version as a blank object, on which something
has to be written, or as an empty vessel which has to be fil-
led, or a wild nature that has to be tamed.
Such views lie as an implicit basis under the powerful ideo-
logies, pedagogical and psychological theories that have in
many ways determined the view of the children and the organi-
zation of institutions, schools, daily life - and child culture.
In our century developmental psychology in particular has
been of crucial importance. The very concept of development
is a central one. At the same time it implicitly defines children,
childhood and the activities of children (for example their ga-
mes) as something that only has meaning insofar as it leads
to adulthood. We have divided children and childhood and
activities into developmental phases and set up “the adult”
as a yardstick. The division of children by age has for example
had a powerful impact on present-day institutions, which we
organize on the age principle. What children know and do
beyond what is defined within this framework - for example
their games - is considered either as inhibiting or furthering
their development and can be defined as an instrument of
that development.
Children’s education had been radically functionalized,
specialized and rationalized (like an industrial form of pro-
duction) in this century with developmental thinking as the
basis. Children are regarded as “raw material” for the future
and for their adulthood. Through education and its institu-
tions the necessary product development takes place with
the child as material. It is a symptom of this that we often
use industrial metaphors about pedagogy and childhood.
Much theory has developed about socialization. Much re-
search has been done on children (especially on special and
functional developmental aspects and cognitive aspects).
Much sociological research has been done on children and
childhood, and we create institutions on that basis. But at
the same time we do not know very much about the daily life

27
of children with adults and with one another, about what
they do, what they say and especially about what it means
and how. This is a landscape that has hardly been mapped.
What children do, what they know, their social and cultural
networks and competencies have only been sporadically
studied in the cultural context we seek to establish in this
book.
Pedagogy has been based in theory and practice on what
children are to become, before anyone has taken an interest
in knowledge of what children and children’s lives are. What
has not been developed, and what we thus need as a basis, is
a cultural description and understanding of children, their
lives, their participation in the life of society and their
expression of this. Many tendencies in various branches of
research on children are now moving in that direction, and
this will mean a reformulation of the concepts of childhood,
pedagogy and “development”.

The “childhood baggage” of the adults

This change is also being expressed at other levels; for example

the roles of parent or professional educator, of adult and child,
are no longer as well defined. The roles are no longer unequivo-
cally defined, but have been relativized in several ways.
In the first place the classic authority of the adult in relation
to the child is no longer an unshakable principle. It still exists,
but in practice is associated with certain relationships or cer-
tain situations where the adult has greater knowledge,
experience, strength or other competencies. It becomes less
fundamental and more situational. Adults are not what they
used to be. They are involved in “adulthood”. While the concept
of childhood has several hundred years behind it, adulthood
is a new concept which has only been used in recent years.
This is probably a symptom of the way the adults have been
subjected to relativization. It is not just something given as
the obvious goal of everything, which needs no special designa-

28
tion. One element of this modern adulthood is the infantiliza-
tion of the adult; more and more traditionally childlike charac-
teristics are sneaking into the role of the adult - the adult too
is doomed to “development” in modern times. The adult is
not simply the person who sees; the adult is seen, the adult
isreflected. Adulthood becomes visible like childhood, youth
and old age. And as a concept it is used in everyday language.
Adulthood is a judgement.
Nor is childhood what it used to be. We can lament this or
think things have gone too far; at all events it is a theme that
has forced its way in recent years into various accounts and
debates. One example is the discussions that were generated
by Niels Postman’s book, The disappearence of Childhood.
One of the themes of the book is that classic childhood is
being undermined amidst the problems of modern times, one
element of which is the “adultification” of children.
As one aspect of this shift, the child’s own competencies,
ideas and intentions play a greater role in relation to the
adults. The relationship is developing from one of authority
with fixed principles to one of negotiation with changing term s
from situation to situation. The result is more uncertainty,
bordering on powerlessness and confusion - but also greater
openness and a tendency to respect children’s special compe-
tencies. In the transitional process the adult experiences a
problem of legitimacy. The adult becomes a problem, not least
for himself. It is not only the child and its education that ap-
pears as a problem or project. Parenthood becomes a project.
This is another expression of the relativization of the adult
role and of the self-reflection of it that is a characteristic
feature of the period.
Secondly, the role of the professional educator loses its
clarity, as do education and the learning programme in
general. Formerly, there could be different views and school
formations. They could differ passionately about the proper
type and method of teaching, but they had a fixed reference,
a learning/teaching system, an educational ideology, an insti-
tution - if nothing else, a tradition of practice. In the pedagogi-

29
cal field, after the struggle of the seventies among different
ideologies and “schools of thought” (“Which pedagogical school
do you belong to?”) a kind of vacuum developed in the view of
what to do with children and institutions. This generated on
the one hand perplexity and confusion, and on the other open-
ness, a searching attitude and curiosity, for example as re-
gards looking at what children do and know, and how they
express themselves about all this.
Thirdly, as we have seen, the role of the child and the way
childhood is organized is in transition. The children have made
their appearance as actors on the stage in a different sense
than before. A concept like “the child’ perspective” is develo-
ping into a key concept, not only in research, but also in pe-
dagogical, political, social and cultural contexts, where there
is a trend towards involving children as participants, not only
as objects of stimulation, education or control.
Fourthly, these tendencies are being expressed in research
on children and child culture, and in the role of the researcher.
The researcher’s position as an outside objective describer
and interpreter of various child-related phenomena is being
relativized, like the classic division between the researcher
and the object of research; a problem that becomes more ur-
gent for cultural research than for quantitative data gathering
or interpretation. A movement away from thesis-governed or
theory-governed studies towards more open theory-developing
studies of the life situation, relations and forms of expression
of children is visible in many disciplines, including sociology
and psychology. In these cases the researcher is not simply
faced with a child as object, but as in recent anthropological
studies is placed in a relationship and reflected in it. The
researcher becomes involved in a participatory relationship
with his project and his object. And vice versa.
There are a couple of other issues which relate to the resear-
cher’s - and the adult’s - involvement in his object in the field
of research on children.
Everyone has a childhood in his or her baggage, with the
memories, the knowledge, the attitudes, the sensory and cog-

30
nitive mind-sets this involves. This means that one is an out-
sider (one is no longer a child), and one cannot become a
child again - at most “like” a child again. The door is closed,
but one can look in through all the windows or be overwhelmed
by memories - paradisiac as well as demonic; for some one
aspect is dominant, for some the other (there is a dualistic
complex here which also has an effect on research on chil-
dren). Some long for childhood, some are stuck in it, some
seek to be rid of it. Whatever the case may be, one does not
escape the fact that one has had a childhood. One is at once
outside and a party to the object, which means that one both
sees through filters and has the opportunity for in-sight.
In addition, many people have or have had their own chil-
dren. Parenthood creates its own filters and experience. Others
have also had professional dealings with children, with the
attitudes that gives them. All these points of view and positions
may be present together and be interwoven, and often one
does not know whom one represents at any given time, while
on the other hand they are a prerequisite of being able to
“see” anything at all.
The relativization of roles, perceptions and practices is a
recurrent feature in the modern picture of the relationship
between children and adults. It becomes a new, essential adult
competency just to be able to relativize oneself and thus to
reflect one’s own role and perception as well as the children
and the situation. This also means a relativization of the per-
spective applied. For example, it becomes possible to trans-
cend the pedagogical perspective and to open up that of the
children. The pedagogical “gaze” or “frame” becomes one
among many possible ones.
These changes in basic conditions and ways of seeing, and
the problem of maintaining stable definitions are the back-
ground of the above-mentioned new departures, including
those in research and professional areas, and they also leave
their mark on child culture, its media, texts and history. An
example of this can be taken from children’s literature, where
we can observe a striking shift in this century from books

31
which take the point of view of the “educator” to texts which
take the point of view of the child. In recent years children’s
own texts have appeared on the market. Whether or not this
makes it more of a “children’s perspective” is another matter.
However, it shows that there is movement in the perspectives.

Play, story and fiction as point of view

It is characteristic that the understanding of play and thus

the development of theories of play have played a central role
in the shift in points of view and has paved the way for the
identification of a different perspective than the prevalent one
on children and their lives, and for a different research ap-
proach. Play, the study of its specific manifestations and its
analysis, have come into focus, and the attempt to understand
it has meant going beyond the developmental psychology ap-
proaches to and theories of play. The rooting of these in indivi-
dual development has proved inadequate in the attempt to
understand the phenomenon of play and its meanings. They
reduce play to a special childlike, individual competency asso-
ciated with particular stages of development. If on the other
hand we turn the perspective around and look at what play
actually is, at how and what it means, we gain a different
understanding. In a way this is a shift from a utilitarian view
of the matter (“What use is it?”) to the view that play is some-
thing in its own right. In this sense it is more a matter of ap-
plying the perspective of play than the child’s perspective.
Play is something in its own right with the consequences this
has for understanding. It is something different from “the
useful”, what is oriented towards reality. It is something diffe-
rent from a tool of education, more than a vehicle of develop-
ment. That it then has many useful side-effects, for example
in the form of competencies, is another matter.

32
References

Ariés, Phillipe 1962: Centuries of Childhood. London.

Bahktin, Mihael 1984: Rabelais and his World. Indiana University Press.
Bateson, Gregory 1972: „A Theory of Play and Fantasy“.In Steps to an
ecology of mind. New York.
Baumann, Richard 1986: Story, Performance and Event. Cambridge.
Benjamin, Walther 1980: »Der Erzähler«. In Gesammelte Schriften, Band
II, 2. Frankfurt.
Benjamin Walther 1987: Über Kinder, Jugend und Erziehung. Frankfurt.
Berger, John 1983: Pig Earth. Århus.
Berentzen, Sigurd (ed.) 1989: Ethnografic approaches to Children’s
worlds and peer culture. Trondheim.
Brostrøm, Torben 1987: Folkeeventyrets moderne genbrug. Kbh.
Björkvold, Jon Roar 1985: Den spontane barnesangen. Oslo.
Bregenhøj, Carsten 1988: Blodet droppar, blodet droppar. Helsinki.
Cook-Gumperz, Jenny; Cosaro, William and Streeck, Jürgen (eds) 1986:
Childrens Worlds and Childrens Language. Berlin.
Corsaro, William 1985: Friendship and Peer Culture in the early Years. New Jersey.
Cross, Gary 1997: Kids´ Stuff. Cambridge.
Danbolt, Gunnar og Enerstvedt, Åse 1995: Når voksenkultur og barns kultur møtes.
Oslo
Ehn, Billy og Løfgren, Orvar 1982: Kulturanalys: Et etnologisk
perspektiv. Lund.
Enerstvedt, Åse 1982: Kongen over gata. Oslo.
Enzenberger, Magnus 1962: Allerleirauh Kinderreime. Frankfurt.
Frykman, Jonas/Løfgren, Orvar 1979: Den kultiverade Människan.
Lund.
Geertz, Clifford 1973: The Interpretation of Cultures. Selected Essays.
New York.
Gleerup, Jørgen 1991: Opbrudskultur. Odense.
Goody, Jack 1987: The Interface between the Written and the Oral.
Cambridge.
Hansen, Jens Ager 1990: Voksenværk. Om voksnes forhold til børn og
barndom. Kbh.
Hastrup, Kirsten og Ramløv, Kirsten (red.) 1989: Kulturanalyse.
Fortolkningens forløb i antropologien. Århus.
Hastrup, Kirsten 1992: Det antropologiske projekt om forbløffelse. Kbh.
Holbek, Bengt 1987: Interpretation of Fairy Tales. Helsinki.
Fjord Jensen, Johan 1988: »Det dobbelte kulturbegreb – den dobbelte
bevidsthed« in Hauge, H. og Horstbøll, H (eds): Kulturbegrebets
kulturhistorie. Århus.
Herron, R. E. and Sutton-Smith, B. 1971: Childs Play. Florida.
Horstbøll, Henrik og Kaare Nielsen, Henrik (red.) 1990: Delkulturer.
Århus.

33
Huizinga, Johan 1963: Homo Ludens. Kbh.
Jessen, Carsten og Saugmann, Lisbeth 1992: Der var engang to tosser.
Århus.
Kildegaard, Bjarne 1981: »Hvis Columbus opdagede Amerika – hvem
opdagede så barndommen?« Kontext. nr. 41.
Kline, Stephen 1993: Out of the Garden. London.
Klintberg, Bengt av (ed.) 1987: Folklorens betydelser. Stockholm.
Klintberg, Bengt av 1987: Råttan i pizzaen. Stockholm.
Merkel, Johs. og Richter, Dieter 1978: Eventyr, fantasi og social
indlæring. Kongerslev.
Mouritsen, Flemming 1984: „Børnebogsforfattere“ i Brostrøm, Torben og
W inge, Mette (red.): Danske digtere i det 20. årh. bd. V. Kbh.
Mouritsen, Flemming 1992: »Children’s Literature«. In Sv. H. Rossel
(eds.): A History of Danish Literature. Seattle.
Mouritsen, Flemming 1996: Legekultur. Odense
Nielsen, Erik Kaas 1965: Det lille folk. Kbh.
Opie, Iona and Peter 1987: The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren.
Oxford.
Opie, Iona and Peter 1969: Children’s Games in Street and Playground.
Oxford.
Pellegrini, Anthony D. (ed.) 1995: The Future of Play Theory. New York.
Piaget, Jean 1962: Play, Dreams and Imitation. London.
Postmann, Neil 1982: The Disappearence of Childhood.
Propp, Vladimir: The Morphology of the Fairy Tale. University of Texas
Press 1990.
Richter, Dieter 1990: Till Eulenspiegel – den asociale helt. I BUKS nr. 15,
Århus.
Roberts, Alaisdair 1980: Out to Play. The Middle Years of Childhood.
Aberdeen.
Rodari, Gianni 1987: Fantasiens grammatik. Kbh.
Rönnberg, Marg. 1989: Skitkul. Uppsala.
Schwartzman, Helen B. 1982: The Anthropology of Children’s Play. New
York.
Stybe, Vibeke 1983: Fra billedark til billedbog. Kbh.
Sutton-Smith, Brian 1981. The folk stories of children. Philadelphia.
Sutton-Smith, Brian 1989: Toys as Culture. New York.
Tidsskrift for Børne- og ungdomskultur. Århus 1983-1997.
Tjukovskij, Kornej 1980: Fra to til fem år. Om børns sprog, digt og fantasi,
Kbh.
Trevarthen, Colwyn and Hubley, P. 1982: »Secondary intersubjectivity«
in Lock, I. A. (ed): Action, Gesture and symbol.
Turner, Victor W. and Bruner, Edward M. (eds.) 1986: The Anthropology
of Experience. University of Illinois Press.
V ygotsky, Lev S. 1973: Das Spiel und seine Rolle für die psychische
Entwiklung des Kindes. Ästhetik und Kommunikation nr. 11, Berlin.
Zipes, Jack 1994: Fairy Tale as Myth - Myth as Fairy Tale. Lexington.

34
W orking Papers

The publications can be collected or ordered at the Department of

Contemporary Cultural Studies as long as editions are available.

1. Jørn Guldberg: Tradition, modernitet og usamtidighed.

Om Børge Mogensens FDB-møbler og det modernes
hjemliggørelse.

2. Flemming Mouritsen: Child Culture - Play Culture.

35
UDSPIL

Previously published:

UDSPIL 1: Jørgen Gleerup: Opbrudskultur.

Odense 1991, 5. oplag 1997.

UDSPIL 2: Lars Qvortrup: Kedsomhedens tidsalder.

Odense 1991, 2. oplag 1993.

UDSPIL 3: Niels Kayser Nielsen: Krop og oplysning.

Odense 1993.

UDSPIL 4: Jørgen Gleerup og Finn Wiedemann (red):

Kulturens koder - i og omkring gymnasiet.
Odense 1995.

UDSPIL 5: Lars Qvortrup: Mellem kedsomhed

og dannelse.
Odense 1996.

UDSPIL 6: Flemming Mouritsen: Legekultur.

Odense 1996, 2. oplag 1998.

UDSPIL 7: Niels Kayser Nielsen: Krop og kulturanalyser.

Odense 1997.

UDSPIL 8: Jørgen Gleerup: Organisationskultur som læreproces

og kommunikation. Svendborg Fingarveri 1931-1990.
Odense 1998.

Odense University Press:

Tel. +45 66 15 79 99 - fax +45 66 15 81 26 - e-mail: press@forlag.ou.dk

36