Leisure as Source of Knowledge, Social Resilience and Public Commitment

Leisure as Source of Knowledge, Social Resilience & Public Commitment Specialized Play LISE KJØLSRØD

LEISURE STUDIES IN A GLOBAL ERA

Leisure Studies in a Global Era

Series Editors Karl Spracklen Leeds Beckett University Leeds, UK Karen Fox University of Alberta Edmonton, AB, Canada

In this book series, we defend leisure as a meaningful, theoretical, framing concept; and critical studies of leisure as a worthwhile intellectual and pedagogical activity. This is what makes this book series distinctive: we want to enhance the discipline of leisure studies and open it up to a richer range of ideas; and, conversely, we want sociology, cultural geographies and other social sciences and humanities to open up to engaging with critical and rigorous arguments from leisure studies. Getting beyond concerns about the grand project of leisure, we will use the series to demonstrate that leisure theory is central to understanding wider debates about identity, postmodernity and globalisation in contemporary societies across the world. The series combines the search for local, qualitatively rich accounts of everyday leisure with the international reach of debates in politics, leisure and social and cultural theory. In doing this, we will show that critical studies of leisure can and should continue to play a central role in understanding society. The scope will be global, striving to be truly international and truly diverse in the range of authors and topics. Editorial Board: John Connell, Professor of Geography, University of Sydney, USA; Yoshitaka Mori, Associate Professor, Tokyo University of the Arts, Japan; Smitha Radhakrishnan, Assistant Professor, Wellesley College, USA; Diane M. Samdahl, Professor of Recreation and Leisure Studies, University of Georgia, USA; Chiung-Tzu Lucetta Tsai, Associate Professor, National Taipei University, Taiwan; Walter van Beek, Professor of Anthropology and Religion, Tilburg University, The Netherlands; Sharon D. Welch, Professor of Religion and Society, Meadville Theological School, Chicago, USA; Leslie Witz, Professor of History, University of the Western Cape, South Africa. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14823

Lise Kjølsrød

Leisure as Source of Knowledge, Social Resilience and Public Commitment Specialized Play

Lise Kjølsrød Department of Sociology and Human Geography University of Oslo Oslo, Norway

Leisure Studies in a Global Era ISBN 978-1-137-46286-2    ISBN 978-1-137-46287-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46287-9 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018950520 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Mimi Haddon / Getty Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Limited The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom

For Elin, Espen and Erle

Preface

Today, play is highly differentiated. Among its many social forms is a set of complex and often long-lasting practical activities. Varieties of collecting, mountain climbing, birdwatching, long-term ocean sailing, live role-­ playing, backpacking, and numerous other game-like endeavors are part of the cultural repertoires of modern societies. Over time, each activity gives rise to distinct social worlds among enthusiasts with extensions across national and international boundaries. This book gives a bottom­up contribution to contemporary cultural analyses and political theory by showing how citizens can achieve much for themselves and for society by participating. What they do in play essentially assists democratic efficacy. Every research effort has its story of origin. Engrossment in an apparently esoteric activity can be hard to comprehend, even for the closest. I used to be painfully aware of not understanding my ex-husband’s involvement in a world of objects. Why such passion? Why take on the considerable extra efforts in an already hectic life? Why accumulate more than space allows? In a pensive and somewhat angry moment, I scribbled these and other comments on an index card and put it among other cards in my beautiful wooden box. Not fieldwork in any strict sense but I did pay attention to what he was doing for nearly three decades, until, grateful for university freedom and generosity, I could in fact study collecting and vii

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other related activities. The answers I finally arrived at did not reflect my initial animosity. Play is an expressive mode with roots beyond humanity. In human societies, the type of play this book addresses resembles art by relying on some culturally conceived form, adapted to the capacities of imagination and the energies of emotion. Like art forms, individuals and groups can make use of play forms for their own purposes. These game-like activities are for fun and not intended to change mind-sets or influence lives. Yet, the tradition from Simmel, via Mead, to Goffman and beyond, recognizes their potential as catalysts of internal and external dialogue. Thus, audiences are normally involved, real, and virtual, and there can be practical experimentation and mental simulation. Acts of expression and interpretation always hinge on the culture where the gaming takes place. The medium itself emerges on the collective level; its rules, procedures, symbols, outcomes, and aesthetics evolve in relation to the tastes and ideologies of the times. There is a long-standing worry in academia that people are fleeing from social and political responsibility into secluded spheres of esoteric diversion. Moreover, the alleged ascendancy of the narcissistic personality fits hand-in-glove with notions of dominant consumerism. Other forceful beliefs highlight how commercial, professional, and bureaucratic forces transform the world into a locus of instrumentality, leaving little admiration for behaviors of ambiguous utility. By adopting this cluster of ideas, contemporary men and women may appear less devoted, inventive, and resourceful in their individual and collective lives than they actually are. Could it be that these and related conceptions have made social science less sensitive to peoples’ deeper concerns and more subtle solutions, and thereby misguided our assessment of the human condition in late modernity? The aim of this book is to demonstrate that there are other interpretations with no less credibility. The case illustrations suggest that specialized play conveys not only opportunity to shape supportive images of real-world concerns in play but also educates people by bringing surprising amounts of knowledge, cooperative and other skills, and also value commitments. Thus, participants in play develop significant cognitive, social, and political resources.

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Civic associations—also those that are not explicitly political—are generally considered essential to democracy because they build social capital and enhance trust, and when such qualities become part of the political system, they help to underpin integrative policies. I argue that players’ activities, their social worlds, and associations constitute an alternative political channel in itself. By conveying information, moral orientation, symbols, and networks, playgroups are in a sense pre-mobilized for political activity and even activism, and can, if called upon, act much like social movements. Thus, more widespread engrossment in leisure does not necessarily imply an escape from the harsher outside realities. Quite the contrary, it is likely to improve the distribution of the cognitive, cultural, and political resources citizens use to fashion their own responses to adversity and influence society in numerous smaller and sometimes larger ways. Chapters 1 and 2 introduce the perspective and detail the specifics of entering and staying involved. Chapter 3 compares the notion of specialized play with related conceptions, noting that choice of scientific conception makes a difference to our understanding of what modern men and women are capable of doing in their freest moments. Chapter 4 shows the significance of cross-domain mapping between play and life and discusses the character and consequences of metaphoric communication in play. Chapter 5 investigates how the play medium is occasionally turned into a political instrument, and shows how the public voices of playgroups are not essentially different from those of social movements. The two last chapters give in-depth presentations of specific activities, individual art collectors and well-organized birdwatchers. Chapter 6 shows how careers in leisure emerge; how players read themselves into what they do and become fascinated. Chapter 7 emphasizes how an apparently humble activity can develop over time and acquire influence. Oslo, Norway

Lise Kjølsrød

Acknowledgments

The series editor Karl Spracklen encouraged the shaping of this material into the format of a book, for which I am extremely grateful. I am heavily indebted to Andrew Abbott for his valuable contribution to what later turned out to be the earliest sketch of Chap. 2. During more seminars than I care to remember, my wonderful colleagues in the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo have energized the project through discussions of various ideas and drafts. Bjørn Schiermer deserves deep respect and gratitude; with the greatest insight and tact, he took the trouble to read and comment on the final manuscript. A belated word of appreciation is due to Vilhelm Aubert (1922–1988) whose teaching and essays in The Hidden Society made me and other students understand the great sociological value of simply keeping our eyes and ears open. Without Per-Olaf Ødegaard’s curiosity and practical support, the enjoyment of writing had certainly not been the same. Gratitude also goes to authors and publishers who allowed me to quote excerpts from the following publications: Careers and Creativity by Harrison White, San Francisco, Oxford: Westview Press, copyright © by Taylor and Francis Group; Deep Play by Paul Pritchard, copyright © 1997 by Paul Pritchard; Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville, New  York: Vintage Books, copyright © by Penguin Random House; Homo Ludens by Johan Huizinga, Boston: The Beacon Press, copyright © 1950 by Roy Publishers; Illuminations by Walter Benjamin, New York: xi

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Schocken Books, copyright © by HMS Trade Publishing; Infinitely Demanding by Simon Critchley, London, New York: Verso, copyright © 2007 by Simon Critchley; Moral Entanglements by Stefan Bargheer, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, copyright © 2018 by Stefan Bargheer; Multiple Acts of Birding by Gavan P.L. Watson, Toronto: York University, copyright © 2010 by Gavan P.L.  Watson; On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder, New York: Tim Duggan Books, copyright © 2017 by Timothy Snyder; Strange Birds by Jens Lachmund, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, copyright © 2015 by Cambridge University Press; Taking Time and Making Journeys by Torun Elsrud, copyright © 2004 by Torun Elsrud; The Adventurer by Georg Simmel, Chicago: Chicago University Press, copyright © by Ohio State University Press; The Ambiguity of Play by Brian Sutton-Smith, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, copyright © 1997 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College; The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt, Chicago: Chicago University Press, copyright © 1958 by University of Chicago Press; The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig, copyright © by University of Nebraska Press and Pushkin Press; Toys and Reasons by Erik Erikson, New  York: W.W Norton & Company Inc., copyright © 1977 by W.W. Norton & Company Inc. Oslo Lise Kjølsrød March 2018

Contents

1 The Hidden Democracy   1 2 Structural Dynamics and Bounding Potential  33 3 Conceptions of Complex Leisure  61 4 Collectivity, Poetics, and Agency  83 5 Contingent Activism, Mediated Through Play 101 6 ‘Well, I become very fond of these works and have to touch, stroke and feel—sculptures and everything’ 123 7 ‘You can really start birdwatching in your backyard, and  from there the sky’s the limit’ 145 Index 169

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 an All the Gifts Be Turned to the Advantage C of Democracy? From the perspective of political philosophy and ethics, resourceful citizens in our time are often portrayed as seeking mental shelter in esoteric quarters. By concentrating their passions and energies on their own particular activities of self-actualization, they appear to be leaving the world to itself rather than trying to improve it: […] whether through discovering the inner child, manipulating pyramids, writing pessimist-sounding literary essays, taking up yoga, birdwatching or botany, as was the case with the aged Rousseau. In the face of the increasing brutality of reality, the passive nihilist tries to achieve a mystical stillness, calm contemplation: ‘European Buddhism’. In a world that is all too rapidly blowing itself to pieces, the passive nihilist closes his eyes and makes himself into an island. (Critchley 2007, pp. 4–5)

People of the well-fed West become disappointed, overwhelmed, and scared by observing corrosion of established political structures through corruption and violence, and a diet of sleaze and deception on top of © The Author(s) 2019 L. Kjølsrød, Leisure as Source of Knowledge, Social Resilience and Public Commitment, Leisure Studies in a Global Era, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46287-9_1

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that. They respond, argues Critchley, by turning their backs on society and starting to cultivate some private sanctuary instead. In contrast to those who become passive nihilists in this way, the active nihilists find most things utterly meaningless. Far from retreating to their private havens, they aim to destroy this world and bring another into being. As both categories agree on the essential unreality of things, he sees the two as a kind of Siamese twins.1 A crucial historical lesson from the twentieth century is that ethics can collapse, and the trajectory of modern democracy can also be one of decline and fall, the historian Snyder (2017) reminds us. This calls for careful consideration of the fundamentals of social and political participation. Words, gestures, and capacity to get engaged—or absence of this—can make a difference as there is defense of freedom and voice in commitments, even when the public involvements appear insignificant and are not expressly political: Sharing in an undertaking teaches us that we can trust people beyond a narrow circle of friends and families, and helps us to recognize authorities from whom we can learn. The capacity for trust and learning can make life seem less chaotic and mysterious, and democratic politics more plausible and attractive. (Snyder 2017, pp. 93–94)

Social science and philosophy have profound knowledge of work, and rather less of leisure. Of course, this is not a fact of nature but a subsisting condition based on social history, traditions of thought, and the relative absence of a scientific vocabulary that could give presence and credence to a more nuanced and differentiated perception of what people actually do outside work. The aim of this book is to enrich the field by examining how modern citizens relate to complex leisure, and by suggesting what I hope can be a productive concept—specialized play. My guiding perspective is different from Critchley’s and closer to Snyder’s. A notion has persisted that play is losing ground. According to Huizinga (1955 [1938], p. 4), the great archetypical endeavors of human society—  To be sure, there are other and less dystopian perceptions of the gratifying pursuits people choose for themselves than Critchley’s. Chapter 3 in this book compares four relatively recent sociological conceptions of complex leisure, presented to the scientific community with distinct names. But there are also more disillusioned versions, like Adorno’s (1991) analysis of how the culture industry seduces people and homogenizes cultures. 1

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language, law, science, philosophy, poetry, war, and  politics  among them—were all permeated with play elements from the start. But more and more, the sad conclusion forces itself upon us that ever since the eighteenth century, culture has lost most of its play impulses due to the formal training of unimaginative minds, and the exchange of relatively unimportant sums of money. Some decades ago, Sennett (1974, pp.  314–315) feared that modernity was gradually depriving human beings of their ‘art’, that the mastery and sophistication of self-distance through artistic narration was practically destroyed by a cult of shallow intimacy and too few adult settings available for play. Whereas most societies continue and enrich the energies of childhood play as adult ritual, also Sennett was saddened to note that advanced capitalist society did not call upon but rather distrusted and worked against these valuable energies. Erikson (1977, p. 18) concurred: ‘The notion prevails that playfulness has little to do with the vital centre of adult concerns.’ Today, play abounds. Increasing numbers find their way to complex leisure; broad segments consider it eminently worthwhile to spend time in artistic creation, performance, and other intellectually and sometimes physically challenging endeavors. Although choice of ‘game’ and ways of playing are usually related to class, ethnicity, gender, and culture, there is a pursuit for almost everyone. How the social sciences understand and conceptualize the astonishing commitment many have to what they do outside work is anything but trivial. Conceptions open doors to understanding and experience and at the same time narrow and restrict (Wertsch 1998). To define and highlight a category of leisure in order to gain insights, is no less than a move towards shaping the world we live in. Culturally speaking, the pursuits this book addresses belong to a range of socially constructed activities people can enter or avoid as they please. Politically speaking, they are part of civil society and supply actors with a medium for reflection and deliberation of actual situations and issues. My overall thesis is that citizens who apply their freedom and capacities in complex leisure—guided by its character and collectivity—are likely to generate surprising human, social, and political resources. The graces of the mind that astounded de Tocqueville at the birth of modern ­democracy nearly 200 years ago still come into play in play, and can be turned to the advantage of society.

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Poetry, eloquence, and memory, the graces of the mind, the fire of imagination, depth of thought, and all the gifts which Heaven scatters at a venture turned to the advantage of democracy; and even when they were in the possession of its adversaries, they still served its cause by throwing into bold relief the natural greatness of man. (de Tocqueville 1945 [1835], p. 5)2

Although quite theoretical, the presentation in these chapters takes advantage of a wide-ranging yet interconnected set of empirical materials, consisting of four source categories: the author’s study of collectors and collecting, published ethnography from diverse activities, players’ autobiographies, and leisure associations’ self-presentations and communications on the Internet. The book contains many case-based descriptions intended to illustrate the structure of the play form, the inherent narrativity of social life in playworlds, as well as aspects of the participants’ cognition, interactions, and commitments in relation to the external world. The overall analysis integrates, extends, and supplements the author’s earlier contributions (Kjølsrød 2003, 2004, 2009, 2013, 2015).

Specialized Play What climbers, long-term sailors, collectors, role-players, backpackers, birdwatchers, and many other energetic men and women do in their leisure is knowledge-based and often surprisingly demanding. No one can navigate the seven seas without knowing about seasonal variations, winds, currents, and maps, or without ability to improvise and mend sail and motor. Serious amateur3 sailors even learn how to read the stars for safety if satellite communication should fail. Thus, the book explores a type of leisure in which one must ‘work’. Investments of time, learning, determination, and money can be substantial. These pursuits are still play in  de Tocqueville wrote in the midst of the French revolution, lasting with different peaks from 1792 until 1848. The adoption of the United States Constitution in 1787 had provided for an elected government and protection of civil rights, but had not ended slavery nor extended the voting rights beyond white male property owners. 3  Throughout, I am using the term amateur to mean someone who participates in an unpaid avocation, while normally holding an occupation in another field. 2

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Huizinga’s (1955 [1938], pp. 8–9) sense. That is, the activity is superfluous—an end-in-itself—and not subject to any economic necessity or moral duty. It is placed outside the normal rounds; players are granted a social license to depart from ordinary expectations and responsibilities. The existence of internal rules protects this freedom.4 To endure tension for some delimited period, to bear uncertainty, to dare, are all essential features of playing, notes Huizinga. Because something is at stake, participants must be able to defer gratification until an outcome is clear. In other words, players enter, take advantage of, and elaborate a bounded space with elements of suspense and flexible rules and procedures. The constellation of characteristics that describes Huizinga’s definition of play differ from the usual dictionary definition which emphasizes enjoying or amusing oneself, or taking part in an activity for recreation. Play can also imply some kind of ‘keying’, that is, normal content put in ‘brackets’ (Goffman’s 1986 [1974]).5 I am using the word play in all of these ways; the context will hopefully explain each instance. Simmel’s famous essay ‘The Adventurer’ (1971 [1911], pp. 187–198) provides a still valid understanding of how people are able to create opportunity in a space outside the normal rounds. Faced with the inevitable task of molding individuality—not through deliberate choice of subjectivity rather through ‘a movement towards freeing one’s inherent potential’— individuals relate to what Simmel considers society’s most significant social forms, and that is work, art, and adventure. In work, value must be extracted slowly, with careful consideration and systematic effort. In adventure, chances can be captured quickly and pleasurably, without too much consideration or intent. An adventure is ‘like an island in life’, says Simmel (p. 188), it is certainly a part of our existence but in its deeper meaning, it occurs outside the usual continuity of this life. It demands both knowledgeable undertakings and self-abandonment to chance  and allows elements from normal life to be abstracted and dealt with from a distance. Something becomes an adventure solely by virtue of two conditions:  According to Sutton-Smith (2001 [1997], p.  133), the idea that play is an end-in-itself was brought into the social sciences by Herbert Spencer (1896 [1855]) who considered child play and child art to be for scientific study. Spencer saw an underlying surplus energy in the child as the driver of both, and considered the two in close conjunction because neither in any direct way ‘serves the processes conducive to life, and neither refers to ulterior benefits, the proximate ends are the only ends’. 5  See Goffman’s 1986 [1974], p. 45 for a full explanation of keying. 4

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… that it is a specific organization of some significant meaning with a beginning and an end; and that, despite its … extraterritoriality with respect to the continuity of life, it never the less connects with the character and identity of the bearer of that life—that it does so in the widest sense, transcending, by a mysterious necessity, life’s more narrowly rational aspects. (Simmel 1971 [1911], p. 190)

The concept specialized play is inspired by Simmel’s notion of adventure, it incorporates the characteristic combination of knowledgeable undertakings, self-abandonment to chance, and connection—‘in the widest sense’— to the participant’s real-world being and concerns. Whereas Simmel mainly describes relatively brief, singular and solitary  experiences, the category specialized play includes activities that are often long-lasting and have concrete presence on the ground, and the individual can normally relate to some kind of collectivity of like-minded. Thus, we shall have to pay attention also to a game’s duration and materiality, to more or less shared ways of thinking, and to audiences. A study comprising object- and dialogically orientated perspectives on individual and group processes emerges as a key to the understanding of what is going on in complex leisure. Anyone who is willing to take on the practicalities, endure the learning efforts, withstand the inherent elements of chance, and spend considerable amounts of time and sometimes money may enter one of these activities. To the outsider, it may be an enigma why someone does. To embark on an enterprise of taxing leisure may seem a waste when there is ample opportunity in work. Large investments and considerable strain are rarely outweighed by external rewards such as money, social status, or power. Standard utility theory is not very helpful when it comes to explaining why, say, climbers of challenging mountain walls persevere despite exposure to exhaustion, squalid conditions, sleeplessness, hunger, fear, ­altitude sickness, snow-blindness, sunburn, and if not death, then at least unrelenting misery and danger (Loewenstein 1999). How has social science explained such apparently bizarre engrossments? Bourdieu (1984 [1979], pp. 328–329) remains faithful to his overarching theory and considers much of this an investment strategy largely applied by the petite bourgeoisie to boost their cultural capital. He coins the phrase ‘legitimate autodidactism’ to indicate a difference in principle

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between the valued extra-curricular doings of the holders of academic qualifications and the not so appreciated efforts of the less educated who more easily suffer the misfortunes of knowing too much or too little in their fields of interest. Other authors have interpreted such engrossments in various other ways: as indication of latent or subconscious needs for control, reprieve, and ontological security (Baudrillard 1996 [1968]; Giddens 1992; Muensterberger 1994); as one among many potentially excessive appetites (Orford 1985); as consumerism writ large (Belk 1995); as a testing of existential and social limits (Lyng 1990); and more recently as withdrawal from the burdens of social awareness and responsibility (Critchley 2007). My aim is to understand what players carve out of their involvement and how they do it, not to explain why they get involved and sometimes stay involved for decades. Nevertheless, the analysis of gaming dynamics in the next chapter points to certain incentives for carrying on, which spring from the characteristic structure of this particular play form. To model the development of leisure careers, I borrow from an understanding of processes in specialized work. When a bird-watcher at some point decides on a line of specialization, say, to map every variety and quantity of migratory waterfowl that follow one or more of the known corridors between breeding areas in the north and wintering areas in the south, a long series of possible observations—or virtual spaces—emerge. Some of these spaces are ‘empty’, others are already ‘filled’ as a result of previous sightings of specific species in particular places at certain times. A defined or redefined series of sightings, or actions in Goffman’s (1967) more general term, orders what has already happened, and drives new activity. A combination of series and actions that shape distinct lines of specialization can be found in many though not in all activities, and serves, along with a strategy of reducing uncertainty, as criteria of ­inclusion in the category specialized play. Chapter 2 discusses this in more detail. The term ‘job crafting’ refers to workers’ proactive identification of information and opportunities; steady selection and construction of tasks, roles, and contacts; renewed allocation of efforts; and changing performances over time (Nielsen and Abildgaard 2012). Our players have to do a fair amount of such crafting. Pursuing a dynamic activity for a long time entails numerous arrangements, such as defining one or more lines of specialization, approaching contacts and arenas, developing a

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personal style, negotiating a rhythm of attention on a weekly, monthly, and yearly basis, and much more. Because every action leaves an imprint in the shape of a visible event and/or an object, one of the rewards is that these games become storages of past learning and constitute biographical memory systems on the individual level. Trying to capture how  actors bring real-world fragments into their games, I borrow from an understanding of art. Chapters 4 and 5 illustrate how  they transform what they do from just pleasure to a personalized medium. Obscure, inherently problematic, and disturbing fragments from life can emerge as more concrete and bearable images in play, that is, participants discover representations with reference to their real-world concerns and audiences. The codes players apply in such cross-domain mapping seem to be largely inspired by the character of the game itself, by shared imaginaries among peers, and by  personally charged items. Simplicity aids perception and helps actors and audiences get the message. Thus, the codes tend to have the clarity of masks.6 Yet, an almost infinite range of communications can be carved out because images in play can be used like words in ordinary languages, with polysemy.7 Whatever the concern is, it is possible to compose individual and collective responses in this sphere apart. Thus, I follow Sennett’s (1974) identification of play as a type of ‘art’, as a significant medium that allows elements from life to be abstracted and dealt with from a distance.8 I am, however, more optimistic than he was nearly half a century ago when it comes to the destiny of this type of ‘art’. More strongly stated, rather than being in danger of losing their ‘art’, I believe modern citizens are actually in a position to enhance their cognitive and emotional faculties through play.  Numerous objects and activities are, for instance, gendered. Weaponry, cars, and other means of transportation evoke connotations of male vitality, while dolls, teddies, costumes, and porcelain direct attention to feminine identification, be it in males or females. Books, stamps, furniture, art, and even puppets are more neutral. There is also a range of expressive modes: realism, heroism, rivalry, fantasy, irony, satire, humour, transgression, and more. 7  Whereas polysemy is considered a feature of the code in a particular context, ambiguity is a feature of the discourse. 8  Applying some kind of artistic narration when dealing with social concerns and issues within the subject-self is considered an advantage because artifice is superior to reality in expressing emotion. A person who believes in his own tears, says Sennett (1974, p. 111), who governs his performance according to his sentiments, who has no distance from the projected emotions, cannot act consistently. 6

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Play and art are both extraterritorial and somehow above other social forms. Turner (1982 [1967]) treats this as a phenomenological fact, and describes how participants in these forms are not judged by normal standards but allowed to be and do what they cannot elsewhere: ‘Liminality enfranchises speculation, it is the realm of primitive hypothesis, where there is a certain freedom to juggle with the factors of existence’ (p. 106). Upsetting questions, unspeakable issues, challenging dilemmas, and even pre-reflective emotions can be ‘juggled’ with. A major labor of enunciation may take place. He suggests a difference between the liminal and the liminoid. Although separate from the total social process, the former is nevertheless integrated, forming with all other aspects a complete whole. The latter emerges outside and in opposition to mainstream institutions, often by exposing neglect, injustices, inefficiencies, and immoralities. Studying both the liminal and the liminoid implies examining symbols in action, in praxis, ‘not entirely at a safe remove from the full human condition’ (Turner 1982, p.  54). Whereas the liminal is bound up with an actor’s loyalty to some corporate group, the liminoid is a matter of choice, not obligation. Consequently, one works with the liminal, and plays with the liminoid. This distinction is confusing in our context. I agree with Huizinga (1955 [1938], p. 213) that play in itself lies outside morals; it is neither good nor bad, neither inside nor outside loyalty. The touchstone lies in how individuals and groups come to act on their gratifications and concerns. For simplicity and precision, I talk only about liminal space. Whereas liminality serves to interrupt everyday hierarchies and power structures for some period, tournament speaks to status differences. Liminality and tournament are mutual extremes, yet in this type of play and in art both enactments are present at the same time (White 1993, p.  192). Because victories in these forms can be converted to self-­ confidence, individuals can take advantage of the aspect of tournament that emphasizes competence and achievement. It may be more trying to live with the corresponding and inevitable pecking order that exists among peers. Recent decades have seen an impressive growth in the so-called games industry, induced by sophisticated computer technologies. Professional game designers, developers, educators, and marketing firms have applied their talents to areas inside and also outside entertainment, including

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health promotion, practical instruction, and the military. Computer games invite players into panoramas never seen before, and encourage creation of fascinating identities and relationships in worlds apart. Yet, these worlds are not considered here, mainly for reasons of capacity. My excuse is that computer games are industrially made, and I limit myself to what can be considered ‘naturally’ emerging activities, ‘natural’ in the same sense as languages are natural.9 Some of ‘our’ game-like activities have well mapped social histories, others are more opaque; some are very old, others quite young. All undergo incremental changes as players make use of them for their own purposes.

Emerging Social Worlds Contacts among specialized players are not confined to any geographic entity but crisscross borders. The entire world is literally a stage for big wall climbers, backpackers, BASE jumpers, various collectors, and many others. Even someone who specializes in stamps from a tiny and, to outsiders, esoteric country like Moldova looks for treasures anywhere, and discusses principles of classification and other challenges with international peers. Thus, players’ extended networks clearly add to the global horizontal ‘mobility’ that could and should transform the historic subject matter of social science (Urry 2000). Autodidact as these players are, they have much to learn from each other by sharing objects, skills and ‘tricks of the trade’; engaging in transactions;  Thought is impossible without language but imagination is the source of all, claims Rorty (2005, pp. 5–6). He advises scientists and everyone else to get rid of the idea that the human mind is divided into a good part that puts us in touch with the really real and a bad part that engages in flimsy fantasy, and not-to-be-taken seriously self-stimulation and auto-suggestion. Language began when it dawned on some prehistoric genius that noise, rather than physical compulsion—persuasion rather than force—could be applied to get others to cooperate. It got off the ground, according to Rorty, not by people giving names to things they were already thinking about, but by proto-­ humans using noises in innovative ways. Gradually, it was enlarged and rendered more flexible, not by adding the names of abstract objects to those of concrete objects, but by finding ways to use marks and noises that were not directly connected with environmental exigencies. We can probably think likewise of games that emerge over time. Imaginative players do novel things with artifacts, actions, metaphors, and narratives, which is interesting on the spot and may later, if it survives the test of time, be absorbed into the group’s standard. 9

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bartering spare parts, tools, and gear; negotiating rules of the game; and discussing aesthetics and ethics. It is possible to build contextual knowledge by searching for information in books, in journals, and on the Internet, by visiting archives and museums, and by extracting help from vendors and professionals in the field. Yet, face-to-face interaction among peers is essential to keep energized over time and to figure out how to bear the strains and savor the gratifications. Experienced participants usually have sizeable networks, with off-line and on-line communications. When Finnegan (2007 [1989], p. 305) studied diverse yet overlapping traditions of amateur music-making in an English town, she found that there were in a sense given routes, at least in the beginning of a career, that existed as part of the social form rather than as something newcomers had to calculate afresh. These pathways included formal settings as well as open and personal networks. Today, largely because of the Internet, routes have become more individual, more  varied, and more international. There are contacts that remain only faintly familiar, but there are also long-lasting groups with multistranded relationships: It is really strange, but this interest that we share keeps the four of us together. We meet in each other’s home about once a month; help each other with practical things; discuss certain topics; go to auctions and fairs together. It gives us a lot! It’s nice to be with somebody who understands your interests, isn’t it! (From interview with collector of vintage dolls)10

Much peer interaction is corporeal with sensory aspects. In this case, enjoyment of a common interest and general sociability was enough to bridge large differences in age. Hardly surprising, trust and generosity seem to be essential features of small group cohesion. Senior collectors may be openhanded towards novices, but may expect some return of favors later on. Recruits to the risky business of hunting for and eating wild morels commit themselves to the activity by deciding to trust experienced members (Fine 2003 [1998]). Securing recruitment is essential; peers and dealers have much to gain by being encouraging to potential  Throughout this book, the author is responsible for interviews when no further information is given. 10

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devotees. When the likely outcome is winning a colleague or a customer ‘for life’, social inclusion, practical assistance, and amiable prices are easy to offer. Any successful event among peers—be it a fair, a special weekend, a competition, or just an outing—tends to transpire in line with Durkheim’s conception of social ritual (1965 [1912]). What takes place is not only about practicalities but corroborates what the activity is about by infusing objects, practices, and achievements with renewed significance. People become connected, symbols are polished, and participants’ emotional batteries are recharged. In short, part of the output is heightened intersubjectivity. Basically, it is the existence of an interested peer group that makes an activity possible and meaningful in a wide sense. Playworlds, like artworlds (Becker 1974), are composed of different kinds of people and institutions, not only peers and their associations but also producers of equipment, dealers, menders, publishers, museums, media, professionals in the field, and sometimes public authorities. Whereas the peer group points to the existence of a collectivity with shared conceptions of tasks, principles, and imaginaries, the other categories exist as separate entities, ordered through a familiarity with what they are supposed to do. Local, national, and sometimes international organizations within the field disseminate information, enforce and change standards, arrange events, and, if necessary, develop infrastructure and represent members’ interests vis-à-vis society. It follows that some of the most controversial activities have the most pressing reasons to organize. The Norwegian BASE Association, for example, was founded in 1996 after a number of fatal accidents. Hoping to achieve legitimacy for the activity, it accepted the tasks of setting up logistics at selected jumping sites and trying to educate newcomers (Mæland 2002). Organizations sometimes renew themselves by extending their efforts to new arenas: for instance, the National Audubon Society, widely known for its Christmas bird-­counting tradition, currently applies its influence to a much broader specter of environmental concerns (more in Chap. 7). Any self-respecting organization or entrepreneur in the twenty-first century maintains a carefully tailored website with links of interest. Devotees and the not so advanced can obtain information as well as spot

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events and artifacts quickly. The adverse effect is that it becomes harder to make a surprising coup. Growth in social media encourages decentralized ties; connectivity between people of similar interest has never been easier. Digitalization and use of personal computers combined with innovative software makes a difference to the activities as such. Birdwatching, for instance, has become more rewarding with access to portable mini-­ guides with images and sounds and small although high-quality digital cameras. New scenarios open up, not only for recruitment but also for resolute activism and so-called citizen science. Each year, legions of birders around the world supply millions of observations through a single web application, resulting in fine-grained monitoring of bird populations in real-time over large spatial expands, as we shall see in Chap. 7. Playworlds are not subcultures; it is better to think of them as social worlds (Fine 1983). Granted, participants do cut part of their lives off from ordinary existence and may feel they belong to a world apart, a recognizable social order with insiders and outsiders, particular standards of achievement and ethics, heroes, symbols, and distinguishing stories, but they do  join with smaller or larger slices of the self, are geographically dispersed, and other categories contribute. In this field, the importance of new communication technologies cannot be overstated. Not only has the Internet narrowed distances and increased interactions, but it follows that peers’ capacity to act in concert is also enhanced, be it for their own interests or for public and political purposes. Perhaps social science should begin to think of players’ social worlds as a type of modern polis? The political philosopher Hannah Arendt (1958) applied the metaphor polis to denote all those instances in history where a public realm of speech and agency is set up among a community of in principle free and equal citizens. For Arendt, this space was not only created for the Greek city-states but for all human beings to conduct consequential deliberations and make statements in public. Fragile as such spaces are, they must be actualized through the performance of deeds and the utterance of words.11 This book’s title—Leisure as Source of Knowledge, Social Resilience and Public Commitment—points to what transpires when players charge their games 11

 For more, see d’Entreves (2016).

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in meaningful ways. The democratic relevance emerges as pragmatic consequences of what they do, and can be assessed along the three dimensions. Let us take a closer look at each.

Play as Source of Knowledge Historically, museums—of fine arts, crafts, documents, ethnology, technology, natural history—have relied heavily on ‘museum quality’ contributions from enthusiasts (Blom 2003, Levitt 2015). This continues, even to the extent that institutions develop policies reflecting their limited capacity to take care of things. Moreover, restoring ancient houses, characteristic boats, old railways, mills, weaponry, and even making vintage airplanes fly again are all well-known niches for playgroups. To accomplish state-of-the-art repairs, it is necessary to rediscover how every part used to be originally, and sometimes to revitalize half-forgotten crafts. Does this imply that self-taught players become competent; can amateurs really be trusted to know things? What value does informal learning have for society? In academia, such questions have been asked more than once. In his time, Russell (1935) called for a thorough reappraisal of the belief in the virtuousness of work as opposed to that of leisure. A more evenly distributed leisure would be advantageous not merely for the pleasures it would give but for the potentially innovative and civilizing effects, he argued. The leisure class enjoyed benefits for which there was absolutely no justifiable basis, and this made the class oppressive, limited its sympathies, and caused it to invent theories to defend its privileges. Overall, the existence of a hereditary segment without duties was exceptionally wasteful in Russell’s eyes. The class produced one Darwin, but against him had to be set an infinite number of country gentlemen whose minds were concerned with little more than fox-hunting and punishing poachers. Yet, without this class, society could never have progressed. It cultivated the arts and discovered the sciences; wrote the books, invented the philosophies, and refined social relations. Even social reforms were usually inaugurated from above. Praising idleness, in the sense of liberation from the slavery of excessive labor, was Russell’s agenda. If people were liberated from oppressive work, they would not demand only such

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amusements that were passive and vapid; every person possessed of scientific or artistic curiosity could then be able to indulge. Since they would not depend on these pursuits for their livelihood, their originality and innovative potential would be unhampered. Writing from the vantage point of more socially dispersed leisure, Bourdieu (1984 [1979], pp. 328–329) was infinitely more skeptical to the fruits of autodidactism. In a hierarchical society of marked class cleavages, self-directed efforts outside the formal systems of education and training are little more than a largely futile strategy of social recognition. Competence acquired through leisure tends to reveal itself as inferior to formalized knowledge. Poorly considered choices of topics, arbitrariness of decisions, anxiety about classifications, and ignorance about the right to remain ignorant will too easily taint its value. Bourdieu makes a distinction between an old style and a new style autodidact. The former is defined by a reverence for the establishment, which leads to an exalted and misplaced piety, inevitably perceived by the possessors of legitimate culture as a sort of grotesque homage. The latter is educated but has in the course of an ill-rewarded association with the educational system acquired a relation to legitimate culture that is at once liberated and ­disabused, familiar and disenchanted.12 The two types are different but their efforts may lead to equally passionate investments. Rhetorically, both Russell and Bourdieu made the most of their arguments. Indulge is certainly what specialized players do. They are free to follow their own curiosities as their livelihoods come from elsewhere, and learning by doing is their method. For a long time, society’s obsession with formal training overshadowed the value of autodidactism.13 Today, however, players’ method of learning is in the height of fashion.  The preferences of the new style autodidacts tend to challenge the establishment by seeking out that which is disclaimed or abandoned by them. Bourdieu’s examples are strip cartoons or jazz rather than history or astronomy, parapsychology or ecology rather than archeology or geology. 13  Prior to the nineteenth century, education was mainly acquired in the crafts and/or through purely autodidact efforts. Instrument makers, mechanics, and surveyors got basic mathematical training in their workplaces, and even notable inventors learned what they knew outside school or university (Braverman 1974, pp. 131–132). James Watt for example, whose improvements to the steam engine spurred the Industrial Revolution, was a surveyor and instrument maker, considered largely self-taught. Biographies of novelists, poets, and painters of the time often give accounts of what they read. Take Mary Ann Evens, who wrote one of the truly great novels of the English language, Middlemarch, under the pen name George Eliot 1994 [1874]. Unlike most, she was tutored 12

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Self-­directed and inquiry-based approach is a favored didactical principle and much used by companies as well as universities. Students in disciplines such as medicine, law, and social work are asked to solve case-based problems as they arise, or, rather, as they receive them from their professors, which points to a difference of some consequence.14 The actual value of players’ projects for society has to my knowledge never been seriously assessed. There are certainly innovative persons among them, like one of my informants, a gun collector and an engineer who applied his extra-­curricular knowledge of ballistics to invent a patented and award-­winning system for igniting gas flames on oilrigs, essential to curb CO2 emissions. Competence and achievement  influence players’ social status in the eyes of society and also in the internal pecking order among peers. Knowledge is one aspect, social status inside and outside the group is another, and quality of life is a third. For the individual, benefits of autodidact learning can materialize as improved chances in the labor market, as social and political resources, and also as richness of experience. In Chap. 6, we shall meet two art collectors who have exposed themselves to half a century of learning and sensitizing, resulting in wonderful and enigmatic moments with art and artists: I cannot explain why a picture is bad, but I can see it. It kind of falls apart, slides into a mere sophisticated design. And I don’t know why something is good; I don’t have a proper answer. What shall I say? Well, I enjoy things my own way. Ahhh, when those wooden boxes arrive in the end […] I have to be alone. I can spend a full night finding some old catalogues and looking in a few books, ‘isn’t this really related to that’, and so on […] with something in my glass. And when it hangs there! My god, this yellow (points to the closest painting). It has such temperature! And often, when I come down the stairs, I see how it changes throughout the day. I sometimes ask myself if it extracts energy or gives energy. The shapes are someto the age of 16 but was given little formal training after that. Before the twentieth century, only a tiny minority received any academic education. 14  Educators struggle to device tasks with sufficient appeal. Savery and Duffy (2001) augments a model where learning is anchored in some larger and authentic task. To enhance dedication, self-­ discipline, and reflective capability, the student is encouraged to develop ownership to this larger task.

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how balanced. If you look at the walls in this house, there are plenty of wholes because I move works around to see things. (From interview with collector of concrete and geometrical art)

Play as Source of Social Resilience Even if games are for fun and not intended to induce reflections, influence mind-sets, or mobilize action, a potential along such lines was long since theorized by Mead (1934) as part of his understanding of how human beings begin to grasp the social world by moving between positions and taking the perspective of the other. In this tradition, symbolic interactionists recognize that games can reflect aspects of society and social situations, and be turned into ‘rich instrumentations’ of particular value in internal dialogues, with the self as both actor and audience. Artfully constructed and filled out with meaning as games can be, they can provide challenges and resistances which actors can exhaust, and apply to put themselves into play, and extract new graces from it (Perinbanayagam 2006, p. 28). In recent years, a number of carefully designed experimental studies with four- and six-year-old children have provided surprising empirical support for this perspective. Harris (1998, 2000), a developmental psychologist, concludes that involvement in fiction does not imply detachment or a move away from the real world, as generally assumed in the long-standing traditions from Freud and Piaget. Quite the contrary, make-believe play seems to encourage an analytical approach. Furthermore, children process events within fictional domains in much the same way as events in life. They are also clever contra-factual thinkers, that is, they are able to compare an observed outcome with what might have occurred had events taken a different course. Highly relevant in our context, they make causal judgments about reality in light of such comparisons. When traveling mentally back and forth between different domains, mindscapes of reality tend to look different after returning from an excursion into the imagined. Deducing from Harris (2000), the activities we are concerned with share certain features that serve to transport participants out of their normal life and into the imaginary: (i) rules and objects are collectively constructed

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and socially recognized; (ii) there is a difference, a discrepancy or mismatch between the objects of play and the actual world, and (iii) it is possible to move back and forth between the imagined and the real when creating meaningful representations or images. What can we learn from this? First, apparently bizarre items and strange criteria of success and failure in play protect the separation between the two domains; such elements are firm and necessary guardians of liminal freedom. Second, when it comes to finding paths across the rugged territories of life, traveling back and forth between fictional and real domains will most likely generate cognitive benefit. The human ability to envision alternative possibilities in fictional domains and work out the implications seems to begin as early as towards the end of the second year of life, around the same age as speech emerges, according to Harris. Ability to make judgments about our normal life within a fictional framework is hardly a short-lived phenomenon of childhood, rather a characteristic of the human species throughout our years of intact mental faculties. If pre-school children are capable of maintaining an epistemic distinction between the two domains, while activating cognitive reasoning and emotion from both, adults should be able to do the same. Involvement in liminal space, then, can be expected to prove valuable in most circumstances, also when people hurt, when they have to defend themselves in the face of scarring forces, trauma, loss, or other experiences that leave disturbing feelings of injustice, shame, or sorrow. Specialized players, I argue, have furnished themselves with a medium they can use with good effect to negotiate specific feelings of anguish and distress: Teddies talk to me in a different language than dolls do. There is something about them; they have more soul. While dolls—especially the exclusive French ones that are copies of adults, never babies, they are chillingly cold! They look a bit haughty, too ‘elegant lady’ in a way, they appear unkind, almost vicious. Teddies never do that. Each has a different expression, one has eyes a little too tightly set, another is cross-eyed and looks a bit special, really, they all seem so much nicer. (From interview with collector of vintage toy)

By attributing human qualities to her own collectibles, she discovers an unbridgeable gap between the elegant and almost vicious dolls and the

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plainer but more sympathetic teddies. Unintentionally at first, she embarks on reflections about the overrated compared to the underrated, leading to thoughts on preferential treatment of the smug compared to the nice, and eventually to a realization that this imagery captures harrowing feelings of unfairness from her own early years. Thus, by being attentive to objects in play, she is able to process issues in life. This corresponds to Schiermer’s contention that objects and activities provide guidance and makes the subject more susceptible and responsive, ‘[…] we are dealing with forms of practical, aesthetic or conceptual “logic” which is projected by us, but which simultaneously “guide” us, determine us or inform us’ (2016, p. 1). Our actors characteristically engage in  such cross-domain mapping between play and life. They can find images in play in support of their self-respect, as in this case, or they can address other concerns. Metaphorical constructions, illustrated here by the relationship between dolls and teddies mirroring the relationship between two girls who grew up together, seem to be the preferred vessel to negotiate felt pressures, and the specific images tend to be derived from the concrete gaming practices. Backpackers have strong ideas about what can be achieved by traveling to faraway and risky places, long-term solo-sailors construct consequential logics around navigating the seas alone, and collectors find ulterior rationales for what they do. Players read themselves into such conceptions.  Whereas conventional metaphors are mostly used as rhetorical figures, we shall see in Chap. 4 how these metaphors are more like substitutive images, consisting of something audiences are familiar with and likely to perceive as commendable. An amount of pre-fabricated metaphors exists in peer groups, reflecting conceptions of self and society. Thus, an individual player can tap directly into the basic meaning of one of these, make an adaptation, or create a more personal poetic. Collective imaginaries move among peers by words of mouth, in books and journals, and on the Internet. They are not constant but evolve over time as participants interact and make use of the form. Years of playing result in admired accomplishments, memorable episodes, and fascinating encounters, all with a time- and place-based history attached. There is no shortage of concrete evidence of character, nor of materials for storytelling. By extending the self to comprise outcomes, objects, relationships, and anecdotes of biographical value, players are

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not only able ‘to do’ something in the external world but also ‘to be’ someone. Fields of interest, achievements, styles, network, stories, and other culturally understandable elements are interpreted by audiences— including the self—as reflections of the person’s competence, originality, moral fortitude, taste, ‘coolness’, social status and more. Clearly, considerable confidence emerges automatically just by extending the self to comprise such content. Access to cultural resources is increasingly recognized as important for social resilience (Hall and Lamont 2013). Play is interesting in this respect. I argue that those who have read themselves into a lasting game with an accommodating collectivity are better equipped than most to confront and deal with adversity. From this point of view, their involvement in an apparently esoteric activity can be seen as anything but woeful escape.

Play as Source of Public Commitment The issues our actors regularly take on may not seem like much compared to the institutional weight of formal political and bureaucratic apparatuses, the flamboyance of ad hoc activism, and the loud agency of social movements. Yet, as numerous players stretch their commitments into the real world, their voices and projects are quite noticeable in sum. There are lovers of extreme sports who offer explicit criticism by opposing the safety-oriented lifestyles of Western modernity. There are dedicated rescuers of cultural heritage such as noteworthy buildings, boats and machinery, tools belonging to old crafts, musical instruments, ancient puppet theaters, and much more. Chapter 6 introduces an art collector who strives to enrich not only his own identity but also the oeuvre of a certain artist and cultural life in their rural community. Chapter 7 explains why birds are one of the best-protected taxonomic groups of wildlife; the popularity of birdwatching helped. Thus, as Huizinga (1955 [1938]) hoped for, civilizing elements in modern cultures can and do still arise in and as play. From time to time, overt activism breaks out. Among birdwatchers, there are relatively frequent instances of both planned and spontaneous

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actions to save threatened species or protect land, and there are also long-­ term organized efforts in cooperation with scientists and professional biologists. Rather than joining a social movement, a group of climbers may choose to reframe their already nature-friendly methods as environmentalism and communicate this in public. Players may also take on a highly controversial agenda in need of camouflage, like the live role-­ players who adapt their about the craft metaphors and performances to fit an ongoing struggle over their nation’s political leadership. Infrapolitics is the term for such resistance within oppressive contexts (Scott 1990), but similar micro modes of defiance can be applied in any context. In these and numerous other ways, players find themselves augmenting political concerns beyond their own immediate interests. Participants in play can legitimately be self-indulgent and satisfy their personal desires; only political philosophers will object if they silently turn their backs on society. Yet, pure normativity sometimes drives them into battle. Take this admirer of white embroidery who will not call herself feminist but cares deeply about the largely overlooked, anonymous, and too easily discarded creations of nameless women: I have collected quite a lot of needlework, because I have felt that it was not appreciated nearly as much as it should have been, considering the incredible amount of work that went into making it. People bring me bed linen, which their aunts and grandmothers had crocheted and embroidered for weddings, things they practically couldn’t afford to use. That’s tragic! (From interview with collector of needlework and curiosities)

Chances are that her engagement will strengthen a corpus of existing knowledge about the craft; she may end up writing a book on certain needlework to show its wonders and increase its significance. Thus, what goes on in playworlds become part of society’s ethical life; they are moral—and sometimes immoral—communities. Emotion is often paired with normativity. ‘Emotions, like desires and beliefs, are intentional: they are about something. They differ in this respect from other visceral feelings, such as pain, drowsiness, nausea, and vertigo’ (Elster 1999, p. 35). Delving into a sophisticated craft with an interesting social history gives rise to feelings of awe, but the

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fact that the wonderful creations are barely socially recognized spurs corresponding harm. Both feelings energize this collector’s project. Her approach fosters mutual enforcement between cognition and emotion. Feelings do not always follow judgment, it can probably just as well be the other way around. For the most part, players’ political agency has a close resonance with the group’s core activity on the ground, and their main contributions are seldom rhetorical and loud but embedded in their usual approaches. There are several advantages in this, most obvious; they need not build much from scratch. Primed by the knowledge and information they already have, by their symbolic proficiency, modes of cooperation, and ability to network, they are in a sense pre-mobilized for political action. They can commit themselves without large investments, and if remonstrations fail, they can rest their case without much notice. What is noteworthy is that inconspicuous political resources emerge as a consequence of citizens being enmeshed in a specialized activity other than a political organization or social movement. Originally, the term leisure did not connote indolence or quiescence; what Cicero had in mind so long ago was the valuable access to some measure of surplus time and energy as a requirement for being able to live worthy lives.15 Today, leisure is differentiated; modern societies have a large repertoire of specialized activities for men and women to pursue outside work. The aim of this book is to investigate such activities as a type of boundary that assists human beings to come into being over time, and to act on essential ideas of self and the world in which they live. Thus, getting into a game is synonymous with obtaining a multi-purpose mediating device that can be used in various ways, also political. Players’ astonishing production of skills and knowledge, social resilience, and value commitments give social science and society at large good reasons to consider their activities more carefully. Not only leisure is changing, so is work. In the mid-1970s, contemporary capitalists were portrayed as torn between declining markets and increasing sensation seeking. A new character, Bell (1976) writes, ­introduces to the world an unprecedented way of living, and that is the  Id quod est prestanissinum maximeque optabile omnibus sanis et bonis et beatis, cum dignitate otium. (Cicero) (That, which is the most outstanding and chiefly to be desired by all healthy, good and well-off persons, is leisure with honour). 15

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modern artist who searches out more profound sensations and identities. Following the lead of the artist, individuals seek to realize their full potential. Yet, unmoored from the puritan tradition and role requirements, that is, the necessity of delayed gratification, careful enterprise, and patient selfdenial, they end up as cultural wanderers without a home to return to, hence the cultural contradictions of capitalism. When external rewards from work were no longer enough, play theorists pointed to the value of intrinsic motivation. We learned that pleasurable flow episodes inside and outside work was desireable, and most frequently obtained when the challenges correspond optimally to the actor’s skills (Csikszentmihalyi 2000 [1975]). Currently, demands for authenticity and self-realization seem to be so profoundly integrated in contemporary culture that there is no real division between work and play (cf. Boltanski and Chiapello 2005 [1999]). The play spirit is increasingly part of the very processes of production. An apparently softer and some say more cognitive phase of capitalism invites individuals to ‘brand’ themselves for the labor market through original and self-initiated projects. Despite this, I have two reasons for holding on to separate arenas: freedom and collectivity. If not manifest, then latent power structures are always present in work and likely to affect players’ moves, and in coming chapters we shall see how their agency often hinges on interaction and group processes among the like-minded.

 hy Players Belong in the Political Landscapes W of Modern Democracies The democratic relevance of organizations, associations, clubs, and social groups is rich in historical connotations; political thinkers regularly deposit their importance to society. In his excavation of the intellectual history of the notion of civil society, Kumar (1993, p. 381) points to de Tocqueville as its most incisive contributor. He made us understand that social and political development must draw upon that which is the most important ‘law’ controlling human relationships: ‘the art of association’. In civilized society on its way to democracy, there are political institutions and associations, such as local self-government, juries, parties, and public opinion, and there are equally indispensable civil associations such as

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churches, moral crusaders, schools, literary and scientific societies, newspapers and publishers, professional and commercial organizations, not to forget organizations for leisure and recreation. What de Tocqueville did for social science was to refine the state-society dichotomy and introduce a vibrant political level below, or more precisely around, the state. This insight was never entirely lost, although it fell into the shadows as political science rose to the stars. In the early 1990s, however, the broad conception of civil society was revived in studies of post-communist societies as a hopeful alternative to the totalitarian one-party state. Why people would turn their attention to areas of society they can manage to change even if the state is ­unresponsive, is easy to understand, notes Kumar. The deeper issue is whether the idea is at all profitable under other circumstances. Civil society sounds good, it has the flavor of fine old wine, full of depth and complexity, but like wine, is it not an idea to get drunk on? Would not an expansion of social rights be more to the point? It is hardly a question of one or the other, I will answer. Overall, modern citizens have become less willing to feed their political energies into traditional channels, such as parties and unions, but readiness to engage in direct action have surged. Using time series from the World Value Survey, Norris (2003) demonstrates how political agencies, channels, and targets have diversified and evolved during the entire postwar era, especially in the more affluent and democratic societies. Educated populations living in postindustrial societies have many opportunities to engage in diverse repertoires, including combining electoral activities with participation in ad hoc social movements, activism through the Internet, and transnational policy networks, Norris concludes. This, I argue, is only part of the picture. Players regularly address societal concerns as an integral part of what they do, and sometimes they convert an essentially non-political form into a political instrument. Thus, even more varied avenues are accessible for citizens’ direct participation and activism than the social sciences usually have in mind. Social scientists are largely convinced that agency is spurred and energized by micro-interaction (explicitly stated for instance by Tilly 1996, Putnam 2000, Collins 2004, Fine and Harrington 2004). The implication is that a proliferation of small groups represents a healthy development in

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any society, creating crosscutting networks of affiliation and involvements. Can democracy thrive through its micro foundations, even if the more explicit political channels deteriorate? The less vigorous corporate and electoral activities turn this into more than a purely hypothetical question. A relatively recent turn in democratic theory sees proceduralist views of political systems as insufficient. Political life in dynamic, complex, and differentiated societies should no longer be conceived of as formal representation on the one hand versus either passivity or overt activism on the other (Bang 2003, 2004, Bang and Dyrberg 2003). Lay actors’ contributions to micro-processes of action and interaction should be recognized as valuable sources that supply politics and governing with initiative, direction, and content. Thus, democracy should be seen as a dimension of what is going on within any socially constructed domain, not as a set of specific institutions versus direct actions. Men and women participate in society by getting involved in things, by discussing ideas and developing perceptions, by exploiting existing institutions and organizations, and by forming new. Such personal and communal endeavors are not always ‘programmed to produce and deliver politics; they unfold as self-referential activities, more fluid, opaque, and impulsive than are planned strategies’ (Bang 2004, p.  10). Concrete practices that came into being mostly for the sake of creating a space to exercise one’s freedom, may still show how things could have been otherwise. Thus, what does not necessarily imply any principled version of phenomena should nevertheless be taken into political account. Democratic effectiveness, it is argued, increasingly hinges on citizens wanting to practice their freedoms in such ways, however minimally. The perspective fits this book.

Concluding Comments Simmel saw adventure as an antidote to all forms of otherness, as a way of freeing one’s inherent potential. Our players are also practicing their freedoms in self-fulfilling ways. Moreover, they identify strongly with what they do, which is clearly related to large investments of time and effort but could also stick deeper. According to Taylor (1989, p.  22),

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making sense of life depends on obtaining a believable framework. To think, feel, and judge within a believable framework is to function with the sense that some mode of life, some action or feeling, is more worthy than other and more readily available modes. If hesitant about traditional frames—be it religion, family, tradition—a solution can be to discover a sense of life through articulating it, or more precisely, through inventing it, for instance, by granting importance to one’s own original creations. There is an idea of authenticity in our society, Taylor (1991) points out, that makes this possible. In other words, seeking expressive opportunity in play or art can be read as quests for meaningful existence in modern, complex, and rapidly changing societies. Autonomous forms can also be part of an anti-authoritarian ethos in our times and attractive because they allow emotional energies and reflexive images to be set in motion with little interference from everyday expectations and power structures. From a biological point of view, play is context-sensitive behavior, most likely to occur in resource-rich environments (Pellis and Pellis 2009, p. 151). Human beings and other higher primates have a healthy, natural taste for puzzles they have a fair chance to solve. Stimuli that offer moderate arousal appear especially attractive. The large human brain ‘does not necessitate that play be more complex but allows that option to be explored if the appropriate conditions permit the complexity to be increased’, they argue (p. 132). Specialized players take on long strings of actions as best they can, guided by the character and dynamics of their game (more in the coming chapter). Over time, learning processes along several dimensions expand the person’s capacities. A trained human brain finds well-known delights in attacking also highly intricate problems—in work and leisure. The habit of playing does not sap skills and energies like drugs and alcohol do, rather the opposite, but increasing salience can still be a problem. There are accounts of electricity bills that could not be paid (Chap. 6), and passionate engrossments that deprived children of parental presence (Koeppel 2006 in Chap. 7). Trying to curb pressures from one’s own internal appetite and/or external conflict, some players arrive at what Orford (1985) calls an attraction-deterrence equation. They attempt to exercise control by introducing rituals such as allowing themselves only a given number of travels each year, by entering into agreements with

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household members, or by administering economic obstacles. Players’ eccentricity, obsession, and mania are favored themes in literary plots (in de Balzac 1968 [1899] Canetti 1978 [1935], Sontag 2004 [1992], to name a few), and as biographical anecdote.16 The question remains if players can actually lose self-control, or if their preferences can be so strong that they simply ignore other concerns.17 It must be mentioned that these games can also be vehicles for illegal and malevolent pursuits. To harvest or trade with birds’ eggs, several species of birds and other items from nature are deemed unlawful by international regulations, and the same applies for much cultural heritage. Theft, fraud, and corruption follow when objects are rare, valuable, or illegal. Activity in conflict with moral and/or legal norms do not proceed very differently from what this book describes, although the output is obviously less desirable from a normalized point of view. The democratic potential of all kinds of voluntary and civic associations has been perceived as sadly volatile in the wake of Sennett’s (1974) influential The Fall of Public Man and Putnam’s (2000) famous Bowling Alone thesis. I hope to convey a more optimistic picture. Those who practice their freedoms as live role-players, base jumpers, mountain climbers, long-distance sailors, birdwatchers, collectors, or in any related activity do not join to gain influence in certain matters. By contrast to those who identify with a political party or a social movement, they enter for the  It is, for instance, said of Carl Jacobsen (1842–1914), affluent second-generation proprietor of Carlsberg Breweries, that he pursued his collection of the Danish neoclassical sculptor Thorvaldsen almost to the point of bankruptcy. Jacobsen became the founder of the museum Glyptoteket, still sponsored by Carlsberg Breweries. 17  As far as I know, there is no professional agreement on this. Based on clinical cases, the psychiatrist Muensterberger (1994) is among those who trace the puzzling yearnings of ardent collectors back to early experiences in life. A simplified version of his theory points to an analogy between the support and measure of independence from others a hurting child may find in a favored object such as a stuffed animal, and the escape a grown-up may find in cherished possessions. ‘Objects in the collectors experience, real or imagined, allow for a magical escape into a remote and private world’ (p. 15). Psychiatry believes that it is not enough to escape to this world only once, or from time to time. Since it represents a triumph and a defense against anxiety and fear of loss, the return must be effected over and over again. In this perspective, the function of the collectibles is to be easily accessible for immediate gratification. Internal factors and social situation produce a particular pattern for each individual, but there is always a drive that has to do with an often unconscious demand for reparation. All sorts of presumably magical objects provide a feeling of contentment because they temporarily keep the re-emergence of traumatic anxiety at a distance. 16

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sake of being able to do what they do, for the pleasures of giving play to the imagination, or for any other meaningful, gratifying, or adventurous reason. In addition to what they achieve for themselves in terms of gratification, identity, and belonging, they grow a surprising crop of socially valuable resources, ranging from autodidact skills and knowledge, contributions to the natural environment, to social institutions and cultural heritage, and they construct analytical models with personal and/or political implications. Not ‘loss of art’ but democratization of expressive and participatory opportunity seems to be in the current soil. What men and women do in their playworlds is profoundly consequential beyond its borders, and this is what justifies the notion of a ‘hidden democracy’.

References Adorno, T.  W. The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture. London: Routledge, 1991. Arendt, H. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. Balzac, H. de. Cousin Pons. Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1968 [1899]. Bang, H. P. “Governance as Political Communication.” In Governance as Social and Political Communication, edited by H. P. Bang, 7–23. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2003. Bang, H. P. “Culture Governance: Governing Self-Reflexive Modernity.” Public Administration 82, no. 1 (2004): 157–190. Bang, H. P., and T. B. Dyrberg. “Governing at Close Range: Demo-Elites and Lay People.” In Governance as Social and Political Communication, edited by H.  P. Bang, 222–240. Manchester and New  York: Manchester University Press, 2003. Baudrillard, J. The System of Objects. London and New York: Verso, 1996 [1968]. Becker, H. “Art as Collective Action.” American Sociological Review 39, no. 6 (1974): 767–776. Belk, R. W. Collecting in a Consumer Society. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. Bell, D. The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. New York: Basic Books, 1976. Blom, P. To Have and to Hold: An Intimate History of Collectors and Collecting. London: Penguin, 2003. Boltanski, L., and E. Chiapello. The New Spirit of Capitalism. London: Verso, 2005 [1999].

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Bourdieu, P. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984 [1974]. Braverman, H. Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974. Canetti, E. Auto-da-Fé. London: Pan Books, Ltd., 1978 [1935]. Collins, R. Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004. Critchley, S. Infinitely Demanding. Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance. London and New York: Verso, 2007. Csikszentmihalyi, M. Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: Experiencing Flow in Work and Play. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2000 [1975]. d’Entreves, M.  P. “Hannah Arendt.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2016. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arendt/. Retrieved December 2017. de Tocqueville, A. Democracy in America. Volume 1. New York: Vintage Books, 1945 [1835]. Durkheim, E. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York: The Free Press, 1965 [1912]. Eliot, G. Middlemarch. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics, 1994 [1874]. Elster, J. Strong Feelings: Emotion, Addiction and Human Behaviour. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1999. Erikson, E.  H. Toys and Reasons: Stages in the Ritualization of Experience. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1977. Fine, G. A. Shared Fantasy: Role-Playing Games as Social Worlds. Chicago: The G. A. University of Chicago Press, 1983. Fine, G.  A. Morel Tales: The Culture of Mushrooming. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003 [1998]. Fine, G. A., and B. Harrington. “Tiny Publics: Small Groups and Civil Society.” Sociological Theory 22, no. 3 (2004): 341–356. Finnegan, R. The Hidden Musicians: Music-Making in an English Town. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2007 [1989]. Giddens, A. Transformation of Intimacy. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992. Goffman, E. “Where the Action is.” In Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior, edited by E. Goffman, 149–270. New York: Pantheon Books, 1967. Goffman, E. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1986 [1974]. Hall, P., and M. Lamont. “Introduction.” In Social Resilience in the Neoliberal Era, edited by P.  Hall and M.  Lamont, 1–31. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

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Harris, P. L. “Fictional Absorption: Emotional Responses to Make-Believe.” In Intersubjective Communication of Emotion in Early Ontogeny, edited by S. Bråten, 336–353. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Harris, P.  L. The Work of the Imagination. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 2000. Huizinga, J. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Boston: The Beacon Press, 1955 [1938]. Kjølsrød, L. “Adventure Revisited: On Structure and Metaphor in Specialized Play.” Sociology 37, no. 3 (2003): 459–476. Kjølsrød, L. “Om kalde dukker, noble sverd og erobrende sprang—Metaforisk kommunikasjon i spesialisert lek” (On Cold Dolls, Noble Swords and Seductive Jumps—Metaphoric Communication in Specialized Play). In Dialog, Selv og Samfunn (Dialogue, Self and Society), edited by I. Frønes and T. Schou Wetlesen, 87–112. Oslo: Abstrakt forlag AS, 2004. Kjølsrød, L. “How Innocent is Our Scientific Vocabulary? Rethinking Recent Sociological Conceptualizations of Complex Leisure.” Sociology 43, no. 2 (2009): 371–387. Kjølsrød, L. “Mediated Activism: Contingent Democracy in Leisure Worlds.” Sociology 47, no. 6 (2013): 1207–1223. Kjølsrød, L. “Kultursosiologiske studier av lek og fritid” (Cultural Sociology and Studies of Play and Leisure). In Kultursosiologisk forskning (Research in Cultural Sociology), edited by H. Larsen, 108–119. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2015. Koeppel, D. To See Every Bird on Earth: A Father, a Son, and a Lifelong Obsession. New York: Plume, 2006. Kumar, K. “An Inquiry into the Usefulness of an Historical Term.” The British Journal of Sociology 74, no. 3 (1993): 374–395. Levitt, P. Artifacts and Allegiances: How Museums Put the Nation and the World on Display. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015. Loewenstein, G. “Because It Is There: The Challenge of Mountaineering…for Utility Theory.” Kyklos 52, no. 3 (1999): 315–344. Lyng, S. “Edgework: A Social Psychological Analysis of Voluntary Risk Taking.” American Journal of Sociology 95, no. 4 (1990): 851–886. Mæland, S. B.A.S.E. En studie i samtidskultur (B.A.S.E. A Study of Contemporary Culture). Høgskolen i Telemark: Department of Culture Studies and Humanities, 2002.

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Mead, G.  H. Mind, Self, and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934. Muensterberger, W. Collecting: An Unruly Passion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. Nielsen, K., and J. S. Abildgaard. “The Development and Validation of a Job Crafting Measure for Use with Blue-Collar Workers.” Work & Stress: An International Journal of Work Health & Organizations 26 (2012): 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/02678373.2012.733543. Norris, P. Democratic Phoenix: Reinventing Political Activism. New  York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Orford, J. Excessive Appetites: A Psychological View of Addictions. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 1985. Pellis, S., and V. Pellis. The Playful Brain. Venturing to the Limits of Neuroscience. Oxford: Oneworld, 2009. Perinbanayagam, R. Games and Sport in Everyday Life. Dialogues and Narratives of the Self. Boulder, CO and London: Paradigm Publishers, 2006. Putnam, R. D. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Shuster, 2000. Rorty, R. “Pragmatism and Romanticism” (Columbia version), Paper given in Oslo, 2005. Russell, B. In Praise of Idleness. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1935. Savery, J. R., and T. M. Duffy. Problem Based Learning: An Instructional Model and Its Constructivist Framework. Indiana University: Center for Research on Learning and Technology, 2001. Schiermer, B.  Project Description: Creative Action in Different Cultural Settings. Submitted to Department of Sociology and Human Geography, The University of Oslo, 2016. Scott, J.  C. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1990. Sennett, R. The Fall of Public Man. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1974. Simmel, G. “The Adventurer.” Translated by David Kettler. In George Simmel, On Individuality and Social Forms, edited by Donald Levine, 187–198. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971 [1911]. Snyder, T. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2017.

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Sontag, S. The Volcano Lover. New York: Picador, 2004 [1992]. Spencer, H. Principles of Psychology. New York: Appleton, 1896 [1855]. Sutton-Smith, B. The Ambiguity of Play. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001 [1997]. Taylor, C. Sources of the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Taylor, C. The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1991. Tilly, C. “Citizenship, Identity and Social History.” In Citizenship, Identity and Social History, edited by C.  Tilly, 6–8. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Turner, V. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: PAJ Publications, 1982 [1967]. Urry, J. “Mobile Sociology.” The British Journal of Sociology 51, no. 1 (2000): 185–201. Wertsch, J. V. Mind as Action. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. White, H. C. Careers and Creativity. Social Forces in the Arts. Boulder, CO; San Francisco; Oxford: Westview Press, 1993.

2 Structural Dynamics and Bounding Potential

The Case of the Puppet Collector When Fritz Fey, a young German, encountered a set of wooden, carefully crafted, large Sicilian marionettes from the nineteenth century, instant affinity arose: ‘A magnificent Saracen warrior looked at me with his piercing eyes, and before I knew it, I had already bought him’ (Fey 1999, p. 2). This precious, antique object came to be the founding stone of a large assembly of international marionettes, rod puppets, hand puppets, and shadow puppets from the eighteenth century and onward, and eventually of a private museum in the city of Lübeck. Contrary to popular belief, puppets were originally not ‘something for children’, Fey tells me. They were ancestral figures, fetishes, magic puppets, and symbols of fertility for use in cults and rituals—existing on every continent throughout the millennia. Puppet theater as entertainment originated in Ancient Greece and was brought to central Europe by the Romans. Later, similar characters could be found under different names; the jester, for example, Pulcinella in the Italian commedia dell’arte tradition, gave his name to the English Punch but was called Kasper in Germany. The encounter with the warrior made Fey look for related © The Author(s) 2019 L. Kjølsrød, Leisure as Source of Knowledge, Social Resilience and Public Commitment, Leisure Studies in a Global Era, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46287-9_2

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objects and study whatever literature he could find on puppet traditions and practices. The timing was excellent, I learned in our interview. Being single at the time, and having a job that required traveling, he was able to trace items throughout several European countries, and in some Asian and African cultures. Not only the puppets were interesting, so were everything else that could throw light on the different traditions: entire stages, tools for crafting figures, manuscripts, announcement posters, and musical instruments for use during performances. Families of puppeteers used to make a living by staging productions and traveling with their troupes, like circus dynasties. When Fey started out, a few members and inheritors of such families were still alive, some with boxes of puppets and equipment stored away in their attics and outhouses. By applying his professional skills as documentary filmmaker, he could record rare narratives of how these families used to work and live, make ends meet, and adapt to major wars and other crises. A race began against pending destruction. Spurred by his own growing enthusiasm, and by increasing competition from dealers, Fey began to interpret what he did as no less than a task of rescuing world heritage. Its importance and urgency made him buy more than he could pay for through his salary. Bank loans swelled despite occasional sponsors. At some point, the musical instruments sadly had to go. When we met, nearly 40 years after the entrance of the Saracen, the activity had culminated: ‘Today I am more relaxed, the effort is not like a heavy stone any more, and I don’t get a cramp in my stomach for everything I don’t get hold of!’ The remaining puzzle was to figure out how the collection could stay intact and thereby contribute to a better understanding of puppet traditions and practices.1 (From interview with Fritz and Saraswathi Fey.) Starting out, the widely known activity of collecting—culturally handed down through the centuries—lent direction and purpose to otherwise fragmented acquisitions. In other words, at this particular and critical moment an existing strand of culture supplied some understanding as well as a rudimentary conception of methodology, useful to negotiate present experiences and contemplate possible actions (cf. Swidler 2003).  At the time of the interview, the museum was made possible by the joint efforts of the couple, supplemented by contributions from the government of Schleswig-Holstein, the City of Lübeck, the foundation ‘friends of the museum’, a few individual sponsors, and an entrance fee. 1

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After some years, the slice of the self that Fey invested in his interest grew, as did the significance he ascribed to it. In this case, a development is noticeable from unspoiled pleasure to more mixed feelings as the rescuing operation gained weight and led to debt and responsibility. As play became duty, the puppet collector lost some of his freedom.2

A Social Form with Three Interacting Elements ‘Adults through the ages have been inclined to judge play to be neither serious nor useful, and thus unrelated to the center of human tasks and motives, from which the adult, in fact, seeks “recreation” when he plays’, argued the great psychologist and student of human development Erik H.  Erikson (1977, p. 18). In his view, maintaining a sharp division between play and reality ‘makes life simpler and permits adults to avoid the often awesome suggestion that playfulness—and thus indeterminate chance—may occur in the vital center of adult concerns, as it does in the center of those of children’. In line with Erikson’s conviction, this book attempts to demonstrate why play is actually quite close to the center of adult concerns. But we shall have to make a detour to get there. Understanding a distinctive structure, which seems to be at the core of a relatively large set of otherwise very different game-like activities, helps to explain the surprising possibilities play offers, not least in relation to our deepest and most serious concerns. The present chapter examines this common structure in some detail. The existence of three key properties—chance in opportunity, seriality in the ordering of outcomes, and flair in ability— implies that the basic way of becoming a collector, be it of puppets, pins, records, art, or ancient manuscripts, is much the same as becoming a birdwatcher, long-term sailor, backpacker, live role-player, graffiti painter, and more. Even those who cherish extreme bodily sensations and physical risks, like base ­jumpers and certain mountaineers, enter game-like activities with surprisingly related structural dynamics. 2  Drawing a line between play and reality is essential to maintain freedom. Collectors, for instance, can achieve this by looking differently on transactions among peers than on the normal business of buying and selling objects, and by convincing themselves that they are motivated more by the process of playing than by external rewards or particular aims. Economic gain can certainly be substantial. Collections are often split up and sold, or people find employment due to what they have learned in play. Moreover, the question of profitable appropriation of cultural heritage can be relevant.

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However, each of these practical endeavors evolve as ‘a distinct social world’. Goffman (1997 [1974]) credits Schutz and Garfinkel for having advanced the idea that distinct worlds come into being when particular rules are followed. ‘A game like chess is a habitable universe, generated by those who are able to abide by the rules’, says Goffman (p. 5), ‘it is a plane of being with a cast of characters and a seemingly unlimited number of different situations and acts through which participants can realize their natures and destinies’. Much of this is reducible to a small set of interdependent rules and practices. Also when it comes to winning or losing, only a few simplified procedures and straightforward conceptions of good and bad outcomes may be needed to prove oneself (Goffman 1967). Within each world, particularities arise when individuals start reading themselves into their game. At some point in the process of playing, we shall see in the coming chapters how participants charge their often long-­ lasting and complex games with references to their own lived experiences and deeper concerns. In this chapter, however, we shall continue to dwell on structure and similarity.

Chance in Opportunity In play something is always at stake, something can be won or lost, something that ‘transcends the immediate needs of life and imparts meaning to the action’ (Huizinga 1955 [1938], p.  1). Each activity contains an active principle, which makes up its essence. This active principle could be a chance to prove oneself as a lucky and/or skilled winner, opportunity to demonstrate physical mastery and courage, ability to solve challenging puzzles, occasion to produce a grand narrative with objects, another way to build social status, or whatever. Every action the player takes on sets this active principle in motion. Although there is no immediate similarity between the enterprises of skilled collecting or advanced mountaineering and the offhand bets made at racetracks and in casinos and gambling halls, any search for an object or attack on a summit may still be seen as an action in Goffman’s (1967) sense. An action is an act of taking chances and grasping opportunities, undertaken outside the normal rounds, and possessing a consummately end-in-itself character. The greater the fatefulness of the event, the more

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serious the action. Someone who enters a once-in-a-lifetime race for an ancient West African terra-cotta figurine, perhaps once looted from the caves of the Tellem people of Mali, will certainly perceive this as a fateful event. Even a bid for a cherished Beatles record may qualify. Each action is full of dramatic opportunities for loss or gain, says Goffman. Intense emotion is involved because the effort may fail due to incompetence, lack of information, strategic ineptness, or bad luck. When it succeeds, however, the actor is able to demonstrate knowledge, perseverance, daring, or other admirable qualities. Tension is released when the outcome is clear. Tracing the inheritors of a puppet dynasty and reaching or not reaching an agreement could take a week or so, a figurine deal can perhaps be pulled through in a month, and conducting a well prepared attack on a summit may take a year or more. Goffman describes the benefit of taking chances in games as having to do with relatively fast outcomes and calculable risks, and with the possibility of showing what one is worth without having to jeopardize as much as one would have to in real-world situations. Even if actions in specialized play may take much longer than most bets and races, most are still quickly resolved compared to the chances people take in real life; when one job is preferred to another, when a relationship is continued or broken off, when major investments are made. Real life determination phases—the period during which the consequences of a fateful act are determined—tend to extend over years or even decades, followed by disclosure and settlement phases that are themselves lengthy.

Seriality in the Ordering of Outcomes As first pointed out by Baudrillard (1996 [1968]), collectibles are often, though not always, objects that belong to a limited series, such as the works of a particular artist or the products from a certain company. The line of objects can also be within a classic style, such as Art Nouveau lamps, jewels, silver, and furniture, or a craft, trade, or function, such as artisan drinking bowls or puppets from chosen countries, or representations of an animal, live, stuffed, or in symbolic form. What drives someone to travel to 60 countries and spend a fortune to sight birds, wonders

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the biographer of a so-called big-lister. The answer is related to the phenomenon of competitive observation of as many avian species as possible (Koeppel 2006).3 There is some sort of seriality in most adventures. Backpackers may end up ‘collecting’ countries, performers build up a certain repertoire, and mountaineers may count their peaks above a certain height, or concentrate on a particular type of assault: I wanted to do only hard climbs, great north faces, impressive and daunting rock routes. I wanted a thick list of hard routes under my belt…. (Climber Jo Simpson, quoted from Loewenstein 1999, p. 321)

It is not hard to see that a serial structure facilitates specialization, invites ambition, and drives the efforts.4 The pressed glass produced by a given factory from 1875 to 1933 offers possible variations in the lines of glass, ranging from ordinary drinking glasses to vases, chandeliers, and so on, with or without color, marked or unmarked. The finer the classification, the rarer and more attractive the object, the harder to obtain. Actual lines of specialization tend to emerge as one goes along, and be redefined when the empty spaces become too hard or too costly to fill. It is seldom possible to complete a series. To avoid boredom, the enthusiast would in any case have started to look for better specimens, expanded the chosen theme, or branched off in a new direction long before then: ‘It is nice to have something you don’t have!’, as stated by a lover of original Beatles records.

Flair in Ability Chance—like making a surprising find or a daring coup—is valued as the golden source of peak experiences. Yet, qualifications—historical,  In this case, seriality is the name of the game. There are 10,404 or 10,546 recognized bird species living today, depending on which taxonomy is used. A list of people with the largest number of observed species in the world is regularly updated. The top lister has seen 9414 of them (World Bird Species Life List 2015). 4  Series appear to be an organizing heuristic in several areas. For instance, the respected Danish poet Inger Christensen (2008) applies a similar method in her book Sommerfugledalen (Butterfly Valley: A Requiem). Using a fixed form throughout, she inserts one new butterfly into each sonnet. 3

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technical, aesthetic, and others—are vital when evaluating, preserving, and presenting artifacts or reaching a summit. If we view these activities as games of mixed skill and chance, the skill component is clearly dominant. With limited competence, many activities are not accessible at all. Even relational skills can be essential, for instance to secure a steady flow of interesting items or opportunities. However, skill and chance are not seen as independent of one another. Rather, a competent player is believed to have a superior intuition about a risky move, or more precisely, adventurers trust they have an amount of what Walter Benjamin, himself a collector of books, called flair: I am not exaggerating when I say that to a true collector the acquisition of an old book is its rebirth. […] The acquisition of books is by no means a matter of money or expert knowledge alone. Not even both factors together suffice for the establishment of a real library, which is always somewhat impenetrable and at the same time uniquely itself. Anyone who buys from catalogues must have flair in addition to the qualities I have mentioned. Dates, place names, formats, previous owners, bindings, and the like: all these details must tell him something—not as dry isolated facts, but as a harmonious whole; from the quality and intensity of this harmony, he must be able to recognize whether the book is for him or not. (Benjamin 1988 [1955], pp. 61, 63)

Seeking adventure is essentially exposing oneself to a degree of strain, stress, and possible loss in the hope of gaining something of value. Placing trust in one’s own flair is one way of tackling risk. Another and supplementary check on the subjective feeling of risk is to take into account only the predictable uncertainty one faces in each action. Once climbers feel confident they are going to succeed, they seem to forget the relentless miseries and dangers they are exposed to time and again; they erase anxiety and tension by feeding themselves with only positive recollections (Loewenstein 1999, p. 319). The initial chapter in this book told how the term/category of specialized play was inspired by Simmel’s notion of adventure. To incorporate later theoretical contributions and empirical insights, I have taken the liberty to revise and rename the original. Thus, specialized play incorporates the three

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interactive elements above: action, series, and flair. Regardless of how, say, graffiti painting, base jumping, and art collecting is considered by society, and irrespective of the various participants’ social standing, I postulate certain structural similarities at the core of these and numerous other endeavors. A visible edifice evolving in an extended space-time continuum is not what Simmel nor Goffman had in mind, quite the contrary. An adventure can be felt rather ‘dreamlike’, states Simmel (1971 [1911], p. 188); it remains outside the meaningful context of life-as-a-whole, and may move so far away from the center of the ego and the course of life, that the person may think of it as something experienced by someone else. Even when the person recognizes him- or herself in it, it is destined to be forgotten because it has fewer threads to memory than ordinary experiences. Not so with specialized play. As the puppet collector illustrates, each action is clearly connected to other actions in a lasting endeavor that becomes part of the person’s social identity. A long line of acquisitions stages the player in a dynamic relation to self and others and sets many memories and considerations in motion. Thus, I extend the original notion of adventure to cover a defined enterprise of related actions, and not merely singular occurrences. Even if the adventures take place outside the normal rounds and are sometimes unconventional, such evolving endeavors become fully assimilated into the persons’ social and psychic lives. As we learned from Harris (2000) in the previous chapter, it is not only possible but also cognitively beneficial to travel mentally in and out of them.

Space for Formlessness The social play form, then, is structured and dynamic but only up to a point. Making space for relaxation, sensual experience, and simply allowing the mind to drift through streams of memory, emotion, and sensation is probably a prerequisite for creativity as well as lasting engagement: In the summers, I live here alone, and sometimes I spread perhaps 20–30 prints on the floor and just walk around and look, perhaps with a glass of

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good wine in my hand. I like that; it is very… perhaps I discover something…. Of course, I put them away again, so they can rest for a while. Q: You are alone with your art; you do not need others to experience it with you? No, the way I am built, quite the contrary. I say to myself ‘wow congratulations, that’s great!’ Even if I know, no one is here. That is so good…. (From interview with collector of concrete and geometrical art)

A few hours of solitary relaxation brings him into contact with himself. Allowing the mind to drift is a precious interlude, an apparently non-­ purposive state in complete contrast to the numerous active aspects of his game: searching for interesting objects, identifying past and future tasks, learning, networking, etc. Winnicott (1971, p. 134), renowned psychiatrist and firm believer in play, argues that life entering vitality is best nourished when the person’s experience is one of formlessness.5 In any cultural field, it is not possible to be original except on a basis of tradition, but entrance to the unintegrated parts of the personality from which authenticity as well as creativity can emerge requires something else. The experience of formlessness allows a succession of impulses, sensations, ideas, and thoughts that are not linked ‘except in some way that is neurological or physiological and perhaps beyond detection’ (ibid., p. 74). Modern neuroscience sees human decision-making as less dependent on the deliberate weighing of the pros and cons of options, and more like a ‘neural parliament’ where rival sentiments fight each other with variable outcomes from case to case: ‘Brains are composed of multiple, competing networks, each of which has its own goals and desires’ (Eagleman 2015, p. 108). During a lifetime, networks become ‘carved out’ or ‘rolled back’, depending on what we do. ‘Although the adult brain isn’t quite as flexible as a child’s, it still retains an astonishing ability to adapt and change’ (ibid., p. 181). Specialized play, like specialized work, can be expected to impact the brain and expand some areas, even physically. Thus, our art  Thus, non-purposive states should not be limited in treatment or elsewhere. Winnicott held that people were only their true selves in play. It followed that for psychoanalysis to be effective, it needed to serve as a mode of playing. He saw a danger in how psychoanalysis was practiced in his time. Patients could feel pressured to comply with their analyst’s authoritative interpretations, whether or not the patient experienced them as useful or enlivening or true to their own experience, and in this way analysis could end up reinforcing a false-self disorder. 5

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collector illustrates something beyond himself. The complexities and nuances serious players feed into their brains over time enable them to harvest even unexpected emotions and insights by exposing themselves to the right situations. Relaxing, daydreaming, and simply existing in a world apart is clearly an important part of playing. Yet, specialized play is basically a type of leisure in which one must ‘work’, ‘learn’, and ‘know’. Though it is possible to sail around the world, climb Mount Kilimanjaro, or explore the polar ice on a packaged tour, those who do will not be recognized by peers as true adventurers. Nor will someone who simply inherits or buys a ready-made collection be fully respected and included among the like-minded.

Sequential Adaptation of a Dynamic Form Looking at developments and turns in careers of playing, we see that persons start to read themselves into the activity only after they have (1) encountered particular actions and objects of affinity and learned to relate to them; (2) began to ascribe meaning to events, artifacts, and achievments; (3) acquired a taste for the practicalities, including being able to savor the gratification and bear the strains; and (4) started to sensitize themselves to nuances. Passing through the four ‘stages’ not once, but over and over again, is a process of gradual adaptation, usually implying considerable sophistication of knowledge, tastes, and style. There are many feedback loops along this road: for collectors, when peers admire an achievement or oddity; when a high-quality performance is appreciated in a fair, exhibition, or competition; when positive validation is obtained from mentors. 1. Affinity to an activity is hardly accidental. The choice of style, objects, and activity may be related to family history, ethnic traditions, occupation, sexual preference, political, or other values.6 There are Jews who specialize in Judaica, medical doctors who become experts on pharmaceutical or surgical instruments, homosexuals who restore  The puppet collector’s father was a puppeteer.

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antique dolls, ex-communists who concentrate on stamps from the former Soviet Union. There are those who seek the company of others or prefer more solitude, establishment styles or subversive irony, safe or unsafe kicks. Some find relief in humor and may exploit the paradoxes of communication. Others will denounce the accumulation of capital, or optimize exactly that. The symbolic value of extreme effects, like a collection of samurai swords or empty beer bottles, may be exploited by those who wish to pose as ‘more than human’ or ‘human after all’.7 2. Placing activities, objects, and achievments within a larger historical or ideological context aids specialization and supplies motivation. Reading books and journals, getting to know the social history of artifacts and achievements, visiting museums, looking at photos, exchanging information and anecdotes with peers and others are means by which an activity becomes both personally and socially meaningful. Finding some reason for what one is doing lends purpose beyond the mere gratification. The Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig (2011 [1942]) gives an account of how he started to collect autographs from the greatest personalities of literature, philosophy, music, and art as a 15-year-old, and later moved on to fragments of manuscripts and eventually to entire ‘first’ works, preferably written by hand. The idea by then was to capture the essence of creation before a work was completed and the knowledge of how it came about was forever lost, even to its creator. Early sketches, edited fragments of text and music, and first e­ ditions gave glimpses of moments of inspiration and struggles for a final form. All of this was part of studying the intellectual history of Europe, but Zweig also thought of it as something of great value in itself: Of course I never considered myself as owner of these things, only their custodian for a certain time. I was not tempted by a sense of possession, of having them for myself, but was intrigued by the idea of bringing them together, making a collection into a work of art. (From author Stefan Zweig’s autobiography 2011 [1942], p. 377)  Like the hard-hitting business leader who seeks to obtain an internal balance through humor.

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Certainly, the purpose besides enjoyment is not always altruistic. A female accountant by profession and self-made owner of a successful company takes pride in her personal pragmatism and apparent lack of sentimentality: I joke about this being my pension fund! (Laughs) Ok, I do care about value for money; the price has to be right. I have to like what I buy, though. I have children, you know. They may want to keep some of the dolls and sell the rest. Perhaps I’ll do that myself one day! (From interview with collector of vintage dolls)

3. Ability to bear the strains and savor the gratifications do not come natural but have to be trained. Learning to care by investing time, labor, money, and emotion; learning to appreciate nuance and purpose by becoming knowledgeable; learning to see by gradually developing an aesthetic view—all of this is part of making a practical activity on the ground come alive and preparing to translate oneself into it. The fact that it takes place in one’s free time does not negate the hard work involved: the never-ending toil of perfecting skills; the necessity of mending, storing, and cataloguing artifacts and/or equipment; the strain of always having numerous unfinished jobs waiting; the anxiety of having to act quickly on a chance that may turn out to be a bad one; the constant buttering up of dealers and contacts; the ever-present temptation to take a shortcut to obtain what one must have or must do; the recurrent and restless urge for new action; and so on. In order to continue, these and other exertions have to be outweighed by pleasures and purposes. Quite a few drop out at this stage. Things are fun for a while, but to persevere requires much more of an effort and deeper involvement. 4. Those who persevere sensitize themselves to nuances. Passion for an activity is something that emerges from complex practical and personal attachments, involving a rich and highly varied constellation of elements. In art collecting, for example, seeing, touching, and experiencing materials, colors, formats, and techniques and corporeal interactions with significant people make a difference. Thus, the

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shaping of someone’s passion for an activity can be seen as a type of reflexive effort, made in alignment with this actor’s attachments, and based on ability to synthesize knowledge, vision, and experiences. Evolving tastes and capacities reflect apparently idiosyncratic, yet trained and collectively derived, understandings. This sensitizing process is a rather elusive yet essential part of the learning that takes place as involvement matures and grows deeper (cf. Hennion 2010, this is illustrated in Chap. 6). The four repeated stages suggest an adaptation, which is not too different from the introduction to the pleasurable use of, say, marihuana: ‘The presence of a given kind of behavior is the result of a sequence of social experiences during which the person acquires a conception of the meaning of the behavior, and perceptions and judgments of objects and situations, all of which make the activity possible and desirable’ (Becker 1953, p. 235). Learning by doing is the main mechanism of both. Skills, knowledge, and emotional attachment evolve through interactions with the environment, broadly speaking. Practical challenges and cognitive puzzles stimulate insights and determine what participants learn. Hardcore validation occurs in both competitive and cooperative situations, when a team manages to survive a nasty storm on a mountain wall or rebuild a vintage aircraft to the point where it can fly again. Players are gradually drawn in and become identified as they acquire knowledge and skills, develop informal and formal relationships with peers and others, sophisticate their tastes for the calculated risks, develop an urge to understand and do more. After years of building competence and depth, visions grow bolder, and larger challenges appear on the horizon: Meru Central! An unclimbed peak by its hardest line. And we could try and free it. Naïve? Maybe. Then I hope we never ‘grow up’. We looked further into the future. Trips to all corners of the world—Asgard, Dickey, Antarctica, the Trangos, Spitzbergen. The plans spiralled and I recon we shared the same broad vision of what these trips meant. Not single accomplishments one after the other, but an urge to explore deeper and deeper. Elemental forces and toil […]. (From climber Paul Pritchard’s autobiography 1997, p. 164)

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Value in Reciprocity and Ethical Behavior Valuable contacts improve the learning process by conveying ‘tricks of the trade’ and providing validation. Senior mycologists may share their ability to find and prepare otherwise noxious morels with newcomers (Fine 2003 [1998]). Advanced amateur ornithologists may train the less advanced to differentiate birds’ song in spring from calls. Birders have to sensitize themselves to ‘sound qualities’ as well as the song’s ‘structure’, and even before hearing anything, they benefit from learning to identify the birds that can be expected to sing in a particular environment at a particular moment of the year and day (ten Have 2013). Feedback makes a difference in every field; and experienced peers, experts, and dealers promote skills and prevent mistakes. Professional boat-builders, cabinet-­ makers, and gunsmiths may rather spend time assisting an amateur than seeing irreplaceable vessels, unique furniture, or good arms suffer damage in inexperienced hands, though they will not do so automatically. The relationship has to be mutually satisfying.8 Relational competence with a talent for generating sociability and even friendship while extracting practical support and sound advice is a success factor in careers of leisure, as in careers of work. Likewise, ethics are important in both spheres. In activities such as mountaineering and birding there are performances that do not lend themselves to formal measurement or inspection. Yet, prestige hierarchies are based on achievement, and one’s position in the hierarchy is contingent upon having claims accepted. Sometimes it is necessary to act on incomplete information. Safety is at stake when climbers or long-distance sailors are not correctly informed about a partner’s competence; accidents and rescue operations are not infrequent in either field. Avoiding forgeries can be difficult; there are legendary stories of transactions of art, stamps, weaponry, and more that turned out to be fake. Questions of legitimate or illegitimate acquisition of cultural heritage are encircled by international law and UNESCO involvement. Several objects in Martin  Professionals often benefit from what amateurs do. Having spent hundreds of hours restoring an historic aircraft, skilled enthusiasts may have acquired the necessary background for testing it in the air, long lost by all professionals in the field. Another example is special biodiversity projects, which trains birders. 8

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Schøyen’s amazing collection of ancient handwritings—which includes papyri and ostraka from Ptolemaic to Arabic age; biblical manuscripts in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin; seals, cuneiform tablets, and materials from the Dead Sea; Coptic and Ethiopic manuscripts, that is, materials illuminating human writing throughout history—were handed back to the countries of origin (http://www.schoyencollection.com/). In 2012, when 60 items from this collection were presented for sale at Sotheby’s, great care was taken to document provenience, but concerns were then raised about the risk of damage in the care of anonymous buyers and reduced access for research. Learning to play, then, is partly a process of learning the signs of validity and invalidity. Assessments of the veracity of claims are essential (Donnelly 1994, p.  235). A novice may be an easy prey, although the lore among insiders in many fields is full of stories about exposed cheats and gossip about the reliability of individuals.

F or Insiders, Meaning, Knowledge, and Dedication Grow from Within For the puppet collector, each hunt for a treasure with ensuing evaluation and negotiation was a situated challenge, a problem-oriented concrete case involving possible solutions and decision-making. After the Saracen came a long string of other acquisitions. Each rendered direct, first-hand, and different information and provided another chance to learn. Books and other materials were additional sources. Self-initiative and receptiveness are prerequisites for such learning by doing. Because our players are active and in possession of analytical skills, they conceptualize and reflect on what they are doing on the ground, and seek further understanding. For the outsider, the meaning of objects and actions travels from the abstract concept to the concrete, Bargheer (2011) argues, while for the insider the process runs the other way around. Over time, past actions amount to a storage of context-based experiences the player can make use of. Like the playing itself, extracting meaning can be done independently or guided by mentors and peers. Coming challenges will most likely activate relevant aspects and associations, stored in individual and/or collective memory. Incremental, sustained learning from past

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experience typically draw specialized players into their game. When their actions ebb out, the learning- and meaning-generating processes are no longer sustained, or at last not as well.

Structure Supports Motivation When Sennett (1974, pp. 315–318) studied children at play, what particularly aroused his curiosity was their experience of frustration, sustained attention to what was happening, and gratification—all at the same time. A game can hold the players in its spell. The children were taken over by what was serious within the game, regardless of what the non-playing audiences were thinking. Hence, they must have been the very picture of Gadamer’s (1982 [1960], p. 92) axiom: the player does not play the game, rather, the game plays the player. We have already seen how a motivational drive emanates from the way players perceive and order their projects as a defined series of challenges with empty spaces to be filled in. As beginners, their orientations are usually broad, either in the extreme sense, as someone who is interested in stamps from all over the world, or in a moderate sense, as someone who concentrates on a particular country. After a while, the task is usually more precisely defined. One who starts out with transportation stamps may gradually limit the theme to transportation stamps from the British Commonwealth or only from Ireland. By concentrating the effort, the activity gains direction and profile. As in sports, or science, the initial rounds are comparatively easy and many will manage. To stretch their capacities and be able to reap further gratifications, players will soon start to look for more difficult challenges. Much more work is required as soon as they look beyond a stamp’s rarity, quality, and edging towards watermarks and phosphorization and even further to postmarks, first-day letters, and autographs on the cover of a letter. Even a trivial topic can be made more challenging by placing demands on the individual items: ‘mint’ Beatles records are much harder to get hold of than used records. Ambition is whetted by the more or less complex tasks of identifying what should be included in a defined line, by filling up its empty spaces, and by substituting what are already there by ever better specimens.

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More fresh action can be found by changing the level of measurement, though not indefinitely. As players set themselves increasingly difficult tasks, it takes longer and longer to find the desired treasures or reach the more difficult summits. The rarer and more difficult the challenge, the harder it is to achieve. Making ‘a coup’ in a very select area can be so infrequent or costly that it ruins the fun. A lover of Japanese woodblock prints who embarks on the search for Katsushika Hokusai’s (1760–1849) Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji will soon be out of action. For this reason, mature collectors, climbers, or base jumpers often work on several themes, some of which may almost come to a standstill, at which point they are faced with the option of either concluding or turning to something else. The energetic will not only branch off in a different direction within a field but may turn to collaterals. As a parallel effort in his most ambitious phase, Stefan Zweig assembled not only autographs but all that was published about autographs, adding up to a personal library of more than 4000 books and catalogues. Thus, activity is often spread across lines of specialization and even across fields. According to modern motivational theory, perseverance has to do with how much of an unpleasant emotion someone is willing to endure in the hope of reaching pleasant or gratifying emotions. The pleasant emotions being relief, inspiration, insight, pride, comfort, amusement, fellowship, and ‘other vaguely defined feelings that are nevertheless well known in the day’s particular context’ (Ainslie 1992, p. 9), and the unpleasant emotions being anxiety, embarrassment, loss, tedium, doubt, confusion, apprehension, resentment, and so forth. In this type of play, such feelings can be influenced by the defining and redefining of lines of specialization and attuning of aspirations. What amounts to the right amount of action at any time can be understood as a sort of running adjustment between a flow of challenges and changing ambition. If there is too much action compared to ambition or means, the player will be put under pressure. If there is too little action, he or she will be bored (cf. Csikszentmihalyi 2000 [1975]). As in any career, there are points of positive and negative decisions. The serial structure nourishes motivation best in the middle of a defined chain, and less in the beginning and towards the end. The games this book addresses exist as ready-made social constructions to be filled out and adapted by those who enter. I believe it is true that

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people do not, or at least not all the way, organize action via enduring drives or preferences implanted in them. ‘Rather, culture guides action through its vehicles of meaning, including art forms, ritual practices, ceremonies, beliefs, and more’ (Swidler 1986, p. 283). These games are such cultural vehicles. Their structural dynamics and integrative qualities assist participants to process and communicate their concerns in life.

Bounding Selves Inescapably, it is part of human destiny to be both self-actuating and acted upon, to remain incorporated within society and yet stand against it. This was the lesson Simmel drew from the long lines of history and the urban scene he witnessed. Individuality has to be actively attained, guarded, and mediated in the flow of social forces and change. He chose the analogy of a picture frame to illustrate the necessity to counteract overpowering external influences. A well-functioning frame has to perform two tasks: it must guard the work of art (the self ) from being disturbed or invaded by the surroundings, and it must help to preserve the idea of the work itself. Thus, a good frame must symbolize and strengthen the weaker part through construction of antitheses to the stronger environs and thereby emphasize the idea of the work and give meaning to its inner unity (Simmel 1994 [1902], p. 12).9 A frame or boundary sets premises in communication; it sends signals to self and others (Bateson 1972 [1954]). What kind of boundary does play provide? Our actors face a dualism between forgetting themselves in a world apart and discovering symbols and images in play of relevance to their own situation in life and relationship to audiences. Complexity and change may be more normal states than unity and stasis in personalities,  Not all frames are good frames. Simmel extends the picture frame analogy and discusses three unsuccessful solutions to the tasks of mediation. The first type of failure refers to frames that create a competing world because they are shaped as autonomous pieces with too much artistic value. The second type overstresses pronounced effects or obscure styles, and thus suppresses the work of art. The third kind covers too fragile constructions without symbolic closure and muddles the distinction between the external and internal. Certain artifacts in our context may be experienced as morally offensive, say Nazi effects, or the frame may simply be too dominant, like when the player’s mind and/or dwelling seem filled with little else. 9

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biographies, and social systems. Thus, Abbott (2001 [1995]) advises social scientists to start with proto-boundaries and dynamic processes within social entities, including the subject self, rather than assume stable unity. A succession of instantaneous or planned proceedings may over time ‘yoke’ proto-boundaries in the shape of fragments of belonging, experiences, aspirations, or formative events into some sort of solid entity, or help to preserve ‘the idea of the work itself ’ as Simmel would have it. What kind of ‘yoking’ can emerge from play? The following accounts give us some hints.

Mediating Life Through Play In each of the three accounts, play helps to integrate and lend some coherence to the person’s existence. Apparently, some bounding of different parts of the personality and social situation has occurred as these actors have ‘cut out’ and mediated selected aspects of their lives through play.

A Grounded Account An ability to support subjective perception with documentation is an advantage under most circumstances. Storytellers have certain tricks in their bags, which help them map the order of things, explain why occurrences took place, and produce evidence. Looking back on her travels, this young backpacker is proud and pleased about the risks she took: I was naïve, took many risks, but it was part of it all and I should have regretted it if I hadn’t taken those chances or those risks (…) I was not out to follow a specific track or to see that specific temple, or see whatever. I sat down on a bus and went. (…) If I got into a difficult situation, I said to myself ‘This you have to fix. Hang in there’ (…) I really wanted adventure. I wanted to live the unexpected, no plans, no responsibility, no…I wanted this freedom, the full freedom, and it is largely because of that, I travelled alone. Had I travelled with somebody else, I would have lost that freedom. (From interview with female solo backpacker, aged 25, quoted from Elsrud 2004, p. 100)

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‘Living the unexpected’ was ‘part of it all’; part of proving herself able to navigate rough and unknown waters. The courage and grace she demonstrates can be read as real-world capability. This connection may be factual; performance in play may indicate general competence. Or, the connection may be fictional; she may be a less adequate performer in other situations. In either case, documented ability to manage risk makes a difference to her sense of self. This can be interpreted as a variety of Cooley’s classic ‘looking-glass self ’, the self one understands as a result of information reflected back, in this case not from assessing other peoples’ judgments but from actual performance. It goes without saying that audiences can accept or reject this depiction. Evaluation of performances in play may either support a theory whose origin is elsewhere or be based on the reading of the ‘evidence’. The latter is certainly the stronger: In saying that a belief is based on particular evidence, we would mean not just that someone has the belief and can defend it with the evidence but that the belief is there because of the evidence (Williams 1976, p. 141). If one ceases to believe the evidence, other things being equal, the belief will vanish. Thus, more or less tangible expressions of the self in play may not only articulate but also create identity and self-respect in this rather literal sense. Interpreting outcomes of a long-lasting game as valid evidence of a person’s traits and capacities is probably quite common among specialized players themselves. When the collector of geometrical and concrete art in Chap. 6 recalls the once ‘inexperienced youngster from the woods’, he looks to the characteristics of his art and ascribes an ability to shun ‘frills’ and ‘hypes’ as relevant for his business career as well.

A Textual Account A game can be charged so that it welds together and integrates real-world materials that might otherwise seem totally unrelated. Being an ex-­ member of a communist party and also a researcher manqué are non-­ trivial experiences in someone’s biography. Both aspects are dealt with during hours of daily study and systematization of stamps from countries of the former Soviet Union:

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Anarchistic gangs had been active in a little area in the Pacific, near Siberia. So for some reason or other, the post offices were shut down. When the Japanese invaded the area and set up their own government, they didn’t want to use the same stamps that had been in use before. So what they did was gather the old Czar-stamps that were left in town, and re-marked them to the value of 10, 15 or 20 kopecks, no matter what kind of stamp they were initially. Coincidentally, there were only 10 old 10-kopeck stamps left, and they were re-marked 10 kopecks. The largest number issued was only 300. I have some, but hardly anybody collects them, so the value is not high. (From interview with collector of stamps from the former Soviet Union)

Through painstaking research to understand the historical background of these stamps, a so-called text-person analogy emerges (Cave 1995, pp. 102–103). The many albums on his shelves are carefully edited and arranged as chapters in a great history book on the rise and fall of a vast nation. The themes are ordered so that they visualize the political history of a troubled nation and thereby trace and give an account of the reasons for his own youthful fascination. Thus, the substance of this ‘book’ embodies a complex identity, a grand chronicle of the once Promised Land and of himself.

A Remedial Account Loss of financial well-being after end of marriage and subsequent shifts between occupations, homes, and communities are somehow reflected in this woman’s unusually wide range of ‘smaller’ treasures made into larger exhibits: Yes, it’s the little finds that are the driving force. I like to make a tableau of things, but I don’t really like finishing! The objects don’t need to cost much. You don’t need much money, if you have a little imagination. Of course you can go to an expensive shop and buy a dining room set, which will cost you the world. But that isn’t a find! I’ve never done that. I’m also impatient. I want things to have happened yesterday; I don’t like things to be unfinished but will work around the clock if I have fun! I shut out the world then. I do not know enough about anything, but I read about markings, about paintings, and furniture, and everything. (From interview with collector of porcelain, silver, embroidery, paintings, furniture, and more)

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She takes great pride in being able to mold various odds and ends into interesting and beautiful compositions. In hindsight, she believes this documented ability to ‘make something out of nothing’ can explain why the fragmented architecture of her own biography turned out much better than could be expected. In this, she arrives at a similar poetic ­settlement with pain as the German collage artist Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948), who after World War I converts fragments of ‘dirt from the gutter’ into interesting compositions on the spotless walls of galleries. As he was committed to the anarchistic Dada movement and at some point spoke of his presentations as a campaign to combat chaos by salvaging the broken pieces which were left humanity, his compositions were often interpreted as a redemption of what society overlooked or belittled, and as statements of what it would take for civilization to survive (Cardinal 1994). By transforming humble and discarded items into something entirely different, innovative, and beautiful, both emphasize new opportunity. Through play, the three have found ways of integrating diverse fragments from life. The backpacker reads her own risk-taking adventure as evidence of mental strength and coping ability. The ex-communist opens a grand and unsentimental historic narrative told in stamps, which in a sense is also his own biography. The creator of tableaus composes a socially viable solution to cover her own past, present, and future situation. Documentable achievements—trips, albums, and beautiful arrangements—are put in the memory bank. When it comes to breeding present feeling, actual memories are more useful than mere fiction, according to Ainslie (2006, p. 19). The materiality of their games as well as the extensive time-space range seem important. The process of finding a footing can be allowed to take its time, and each is left with credibility and grace. The psychiatrist McDougall (1986) applies the metaphor of psychic theater to illustrate how an individual can be able to relate to the inevitable conflicts of the past and present and manage to create some perception of personal coherence, identity, and self-esteem.10 Building an integrative theory of the self requires some essential discovery that can be communicated to significant audiences, she argues. Our actors stand a  ‘The theatre as metaphor for psychic reality owes its beginning to Breuer’s celebrated patient, Anna O’, writes McDougall, ‘whose treatment gave Freud many of his first brilliant insights into the workings of the unconscious mind’ (1986, p. 19). 10

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good chance of making this essential discovery, and being able to substantiate it through their specialized medium. Artifacts are often conspicuous with a clear symbolism, so not only our players but also novelists use them as boundary or framing device in their character constructions and literary plots.11

Concluding Comments Specialized play exists as a characteristic social form with many varieties, which men and women can enter, enjoy, fill out, and charge with meaning. However, it is a form no one can activate and operate in the long run without substantial training. No newcomer is simply acquainted with its many practicalities. Learning to interpret ‘the rules of the game’, getting to know the techniques, mastering and perfecting the necessary and desirable skills, finding relevant information, acquiring helpful contacts, making the right decisions, all of this and much more involve lengthy and sequential pursuits. Nor is any newcomer familiar with the collective stories, heroes, imaginaries, metaphors, and myths that exist and evolve among peers. To make headway and have enough action lined up; individual participants define a series of challenges, either from a naturally existing universe or as a personal invention. When the remaining openings in a defined series become too difficult or too costly to fill, the player may improve what is already there, redefine the series or start another, or do all of this at the same time. These often enduring game-like activities are dynamic and adaptable to changing tastes, biographies, and inspirations. Their structural combination of a long-term captivating pattern and numerous short-term actions nourishes individual perseverance over time, as Chap. 5 illustrates in more detail. Dedication can also spring  In The Vulcano Lover, Susan Sontag (2004) lets the English consul to the Neapolitan court concern himself with two accomplishments: an assembly of perfect art and an intense study of the local volcano. The privileged art aficionado’s cold mania highlights a total lack of compassion, whereas the presence of lava prefigures violent emotional and social eruptions in the shapes of destructive erotics and revolution. Elias Canetti (1978) lets a collection of rare books characterize the distinguished, yet naïve and insulated sinologist Peter Kien, whose subtly destructive housekeeper instigates horror. The situation culminates with symbolic consequence in a suicidal Auto-da-fé. 11

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from some underlying project or drama of life, which participants can translate into representations in play. In any case, what drives the involvement will most likely change in the course of someone’s leisure career. By contrast to work and politics,  players can get involved only because the activity offers opportunity to be creative, apply imagination, find beauty, experience humor or feelings of strength, in short, because it gives a chance to extract whatever satisfaction or solution he or she seeks. According to Goffman (1997 [1974], p. 149), definitions of the situation are almost always to be found, but ordinarily those who are in the situation do not create the meaning. Even if people negotiate aspects of the arrangements under which they live, once these are negotiated, they go on mechanically as though the matter had always been settled. Specialized players, we may note, have other options in this respect, and also other inclinations and structural incentives. Although social status and also money, are often valued by-products, meaning, competence, determination, and achievement grow from within. Thus, motivation is largely intrinsic. I believe the character and structural dynamics of this type of play make participants less dependent on external rewards than social scientists tend to believe, which does not imply that they necessarily turn their backs on society. In addition to what our actors do for themselves, they often end up contributing materially or politically to the external world, as evident in the  previous as well as the  coming chapters.12 There are striking similarities between specialized play and art. Both exist as dynamic and expressive social forms that invite skilled actors to engage in dialogue with self and others about personal and/or collective concerns. Both are oriented towards the actor, but encourage enactments beyond the participants’ own gratification. ‘Artworks, along with arts themselves with their styles and genres, can be seen as narratives available for use by identities and in constructing other identities’, states White (1993, pp. 187–188). He relates increasing social complexity to increasing complexity in expressive forms, and sees such forms as equally varied,  Perhaps it could be productive to think of this as unintended, positive consequences? Yet, implications are sometimes negative, as mentioned in the previous chapter. 12

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messy, and fascinating as the social worlds they help us to experience and reconstruct. One implication is that the lines of division between the arts and other forms become increasingly fuzzy. Play, I will add, is a related but much more accessible form than art.

References Abbott, A. “Things of Boundaries.” In Time Matters: On Theory and Method, edited by A. Abbott, 261–279. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001 [1995]. Ainslie, G. Picoeconomics: The Strategic Interaction of Successive Motivational States within the Person. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Ainslie, G. “Motivation Must be Momentary.” In Understanding Choice, Explaining Behaviour, edited by J.  Elster, O.  Gjelsvik, Aa. Hylland, and K. Moene, 9–24. Oslo: Unipub forlag, 2006. Bargheer, S. Moral Entanglements: The Emergence and Transformation of Bird Conservation in Great Britain and Germany, 1790–2010. The University of Chicago: Dissertation submitted to The Faculty of the Division of The Social Sciences, 2011. Bateson, G. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New  York: Ballantine Books, 1972 [1954]. Baudrillard, J. The System of Objects. London and New York: Verso, 1996 [1968]. Becker, H. S. “Becoming a Marihuana User.” American Journal of Sociology 59, no. 3 (1953): 235–242. Benjamin, W. “Unpacking My Library: A Talk about Book Collecting.” Translated by Harry Zohn. In Illuminations, edited by W. Benjamin, 59–82. New York: Schocken Books, 1988 [1955]. Canetti, E. Auto-da-Fé. Translated by C. V. Wedgewood. London: Picador, 1978 [1935]. Cardinal, R. “Collecting and Collage-Making: The Case of Kurt Schwitters.” In The Cultures of Collecting, edited by J.  Elsner and R.  Cardinal, 68–96. London: Reaktion Books, 1994. Cave, T. “Fictional Identities.” In Identity, edited by H.  Harris. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. Christensen, I. Sommerfugledalen (The Butterfly Wally, A Requiem). København: Gyldendal, 2008.

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Csikszentmihalyi, M. Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: Experiencing Flow in Work and Play. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2000 [1975]. Donnelly, P. “Take My Word for It: Trust in the Context of Birding and Mountaineering.” Qualitative Sociology 17, no. 3 (1994): 215–241. Eagleman, D. The Brain: The Story of You. Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2015. Elsrud, T. Taking Time and Making Journeys: Narratives on Self and the Other among Backpackers. Lund: Lund Dissertations in Sociology 56, 2004. Erikson, E.  H. Toys and Reasons: Stages in the Ritualization of Experience. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1977. Fey, F. Historische Theater-Figuren (Historical Theater Characters). Lübeck: DrägerDruck, 1999. Fine, G.  A. Morel Tales: The Culture of Mushrooming. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003 [1998]. Gadamer, H. G. Truth and Method. New York: Crossroad, 1982 [1960]. Goffman, E. “Where the Action is.” In Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior, edited by E.  Goffman, 149–270. New  York: Pantheon Books, 1967. Goffman, E. “Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience.” In The Goffman Reader, edited by C.  Lemert and A.  Branaman, 149–166. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997 [1974]. Harris, P.  L. The Work of the Imagination. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 2000. Hennion, A. “Loving Music: From a Sociology of Mediation to a Pragmatics of Taste.” Dossier (2010). https://doi.org/10.3916/C34-2010-02-02. Huizinga, J. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Boston: The Beacon Press, 1955 [1938]. Koeppel, D. To See Every Bird on Earth: A Father, a Son, and a Lifelong Obsession. New York: Plume, 2006. Loewenstein, G. “Because It Is There: The Challenge of Mountaineering…for Utility Theory.” Kyklos 52, no. 3 (1999): 315–344. Martin Schøien Collection. http://www.schoyencollection.com/about-schoyencollection. Retrieved May 2017. McDougall, J. Theatres of the Mind: Illusion and Truth on the Psychoanalytic Stage. London: Free Association Books, 1986. Pritchard, P. Deep Play: A Climber’s Odyssey from Llanberis to the Big Walls. London: Bâton Wicks, 1997. Sennett, R. The Fall of Public Man. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1974.

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Simmel, G. “The Adventurer.” Translated by David Kettler. In George Simmel, On Individuality and Social Forms, edited by Donald Levine, 187–198. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971 [1911]. Simmel, G. “The Picture Frame: An Aesthetic Study.” Translated by Mark Ritter, in Theory, Culture and Society 11, no. 1 (1994 [1902]): 11–17. Sontag, S. The Vulcano Lover. New York: Picador, 2004 [1992]. Swidler, A. “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies.” American Sociological Review 51, no. 2 (1986): 273–286. Swidler, A. Talk of Love: How Culture Matters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. ten Have, P. T. “Identifying Birds by Their Song.” In Ethnomethodology at Play, edited by I. P. Tolmie and M. Rouncefield, 75–88. London: Ashgate, 2013. White, H. C. Careers and Creativity: Social Forces in the Arts. Boulder, CO; San Francisco; Oxford: Westview Press, 1993. Williams, B. Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers 1956–1972. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Winnicott, D. “Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena.” In Collected Papers, 229–242. New York: Basic Books, 1971 [1951]. World Bird Species Life List. 2015. Surfbirds.com. Retrieved 6 April 2015. Zweig, S. The World of Yesterday. Translated by Anthea Bell. London: Pushkin Press, 2011 [1942].

3 Conceptions of Complex Leisure

Conceptual Differences More than ever, social scientists have reason to question the assumption that work is the human activity of value and leisure is little more than a respite from work, a way to consume its fruits and prepare for more work. The nature of work is changing, and leisure is not well understood. There is much phenomenological uncertainty and no conceptual agreement associated with the adventures people choose for themselves. Several depictions exist. These share the conviction that individuals somehow shape their identity/create selves, and influence their social status by carving out opportunities outside work, but this is where the consensus ends. Thus, this chapter has two interrelated purposes. The idea is to investigate four different depictions of demanding leisure in some detail as well as the character of such activities. By scrutinizing related terms, we can hope to find out more about this type of leisure, and also assess if and in what way choice of scientific concept matters. The four concepts address a type of leisure in which one must ‘work’, all are relatively recent and based on empirical studies. Each is presented to the public with a distinct term, serious leisure, specialized play, ­edgework, © The Author(s) 2019 L. Kjølsrød, Leisure as Source of Knowledge, Social Resilience and Public Commitment, Leisure Studies in a Global Era, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46287-9_3

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and consumption within a fantasy enclave.1 These depictions are similar to the extent that participants: (1) make an effort to fill their freedom with systematic experiences that are ends-in-themselves; (2) are willing to invest considerable emotional and intellectual engagement as well as assets; (3) make sure that their livelihood does not depend on income from the activity; and finally (4) are well aware that particular skills and knowledge are necessary to reach a degree of accomplishment. If we follow Huizinga’s definition in Chap. 1, it is reasonable to call this type of leisure play. The different author(s) have followed similar heuristic strategies. By lumping together activities that are normally considered different, even vastly different, each has delimited a novel category of investigation and thereby tried to make an emerging and quite enigmatic phenomenon available for sociological description and analysis. Thus, their ultimate goals seem to overlap; and this is to explore aspects of modernity by finding out what energetic men and women do when they are actually free to decide for themselves what to do, and to some extent how and why they do it. Any conceptual representation allows certain interpretations of social phenomena and blocks others, and there are also  marked differences between these approaches. Authors are not neutral; in innumerable ways they seek to persuade readers, implicitly or explicitly, that their direction of research and thoughts are sound, says Sutton-Smith (2001 [1997], p. 8). This persuasiveness is what he calls rhetoric, and rhetoric implies ideological attribution: It is doubtful that any play is (culturally) unspoken for. Only animal play untresspassed by language could possibly exist without ideological framing. But […] this trespass can have either a heavy or a light influence on play itself. (Sutton-Smith 2001 [1997], p. 105)

Thus, when analyzing similarities and differences between the four conceptualizations, we shall have to be attentive not only to structure and content but also to ideology. We may assume that each approach somehow  The reader might expect me to juxtapose the concept/category specialized play with the other three but will understand the order shortly. It has to do with certain similarities between serious leisure and specialized play. 1

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reflects how the respective author(s) wants complex leisure to be placed within the broader context of a value system.

The Four Categories Drawing on his extensive empirical research, Robert A. Stebbins (1982, 1992, 1997) defines serious leisure as the systematic pursuit of an amateur, hobbyist, or volunteer activity participants find so substantial that they launch themselves on a career centered on expressing its special skills, knowledge, and experience. The term itself, as well as the areas included in the definition, suggests a vast category, containing almost everything that is not a casual or laidback endeavor. Stebbins (1997, p. 119) lists six distinctive traits or qualities of serious leisure: (1) the occasional need to persevere; (2) the development of the activity as in a career; (3) the requirement of effort based on specially acquired knowledge, training, or skill, and at times on all three; (4) the provision of durable rewards, including feelings of accomplishment, enhancement of self-image, a sense of belonging, and social interaction; (5) from the above follows strong identification with the activity; and, finally, (6) a unique ethos tends to develop among the like-minded, anchored in the special social world that emerges when enthusiasts in a particular field pursue common interests over a long time, sometimes across decades. Similar qualities are also reflected in specialized play (Kjølsrød 2003, 2009, 2013). This category is smaller, though still large and heterogeneous, because certain characteristics of the activities’ internal structures are included in the definition, as already discussed in Chaps. 1 and 2. Climbing, base jumping, graffiti painting, collecting, backpacking, and numerous other endeavors are seen as variations of the distinct social form Simmel (1971 [1911]) calls adventure. An adventure requires both knowledgeable undertakings and self-abandonment to chance; it is a socially organized activity, which allows elements from normal life to be abstracted and dealt with from a distance. The notion of specialized play attaches particular significance to the way participants ‘cut out’ and ‘transfer’ mental content from their normal life into their leisure, which will be more concretely laid out in Chaps. 4 and 5.

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Edgework is as much in the pit of the stomach as in the head, according to Stephen Lyng (1990, 2005). He wants the term to capture actions and sensations in relation to physical and other obvious risks, which are actively embraced by some actors, as opposed to the dangers imposed by the unanticipated consequences of social, technological, and environmental development. There is edgework not only within leisure but also in crime, business, science, and elsewhere. Although lovers of extreme sports and street criminals have little in common with patrons of the high arts and academic scholars, the fact that they all aim to take calculated risks indicates that the capacity for risk-taking is somehow an integral part of the very fabric of modern society, argues Lyng. Moreover, a commonality among diverse groups engaged in very different kinds of risk-­ taking ‘suggests psychic influences traceable to social and cultural forces deeply embedded in the modern way of life’ (2005, p. 4). In contemporary society, calculated risk-taking seems to be what the social institutions of work and leisure increasingly expect from people; edgework and center work begin to blur into each other. People can seek a risky experience of personal determination in their leisure, while they may employ the human capital created by this experience to navigate the challenges of risk society in their occupational life. In consumption theory, leisure activities are believed to be shaped by the same cultural and social processes that affect other types of consumption. Russel Belk and Janeen Arnold Costa (1998) analyze ‘buckskinning’ or ‘rendezvousing’ as a case of consumption within a fantasy enclave. Every summer men, women, and children meet for a relatively brief period in a specific geographic area to enact the living conditions, possessions, clothing, and character types of people who used to trap beavers and trade with fur in the Rocky Mountains of the American West between 1825 and 1840. Not unlike live role-players, these people create their own collective fantasy of a mythical past. They engage in trading and bartering of period-specific effects, embody images of the somewhat ‘uncivilized’ original hunters with a ‘devil-may-care attitude’, and stage ‘authentic’ enactments. Aspects of consumer society are present in their elaborate costumes, equipment, and trade. Consumption theory is more explicitly described in Belk’s earlier, historically oriented study of collecting where he analyzes collecting as ‘consumption writ large’. It is a perpetual pursuit

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of inessential luxury goods, and a continuing quest for self-completion in the marketplace. Moreover, it reveals a sustained faith that ‘happiness lies only an acquisition away’ (1995, p. I). As consumer society developed, a normative shift occurred: envy avoidance gave way to conspicuous display of possessions aimed at envy provocation. As already mentioned, all four categories fit our initial criteria (1) to (4), and any given activity may fit more than one category. Parachuting, for instance, a highly skilled, physically demanding activity with costly equipment, can easily fit all four. Whereas collecting can be classified as serious leisure, specialized play, or consumption, but it would appear odd to think of what collectors do as edgework, although there is as we have seen a distinct element of risk involved. A point about play, says Goffman (1986 [1974], p. 41), is that those involved have a clear appreciation that it is play that is going on. In these activities, a specific act or utterance may be ‘keyed’ or not, yet insiders are fully aware that what they are doing is not part of the normal rounds. Outsiders on the other hand may be less sure about the framing.

Analogies—More or Less Explicit Authors borrow and get ideas from elsewhere. According to Abbott (2004, p. 113), analogy is probably the most central search heuristic in the social sciences. Therefore, the next step in our investigation shall be to look for implicit analogies. Choice of analogy is likely to influence an author’s understanding of how the various elements of a subject matter are interlinked, what motivates actors, and what other generative processes are involved. Serious leisure borrows much from work.2 Like work, it is a substantial activity; nothing is laidback about it. Like work, it is systematically p ­ ursued, even to the point of developing lasting careers. Careers in leisure, as  The borrowing implied here is one of modeling. If there is a systematic empirical relationship between the two or not is a long-standing theme of study in sociology. Wilensky’s (1960) well-­ known hypothesis is that work attitudes and practices tend to ‘spill over’ or generalize into leisure and that an individual may ‘compensate’ for work practices in leisure. According to Haworth (1997), later research has not reached a consensus. 2

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in work, owe their existence to personal efforts based on specially acquired knowledge, training, and skills. Moreover, actors in both areas tend to identify strongly with what they do. This springs from their efforts as well as from the rewards they reap. The work-like character of serious leisure is emphasized by drawing attention to its civic potential, for example, to the undoubted accomplishments of a group of people who manage the laborand knowledge-intensive task of, say, restoring an historic house or ship. Implying that leisure ‘really’ is work is not far-fetched in such cases. Specialized play shares the work analogy and gives particular emphasis to specialization processes. Yet, this conception has an additional source of inspiration, art. The player acquires an ‘art’, or a ‘mediational tool’ in Wertsch’s sense (1998), in which elements from real life can be abstracted and dealt with in a different mode. Anyone who builds competence and is willing to read him- or herself into the medium can in due course develop images in play of whatever experiential, emotional, or political concern they have. A chosen activity—with objects, practices, modes of achievement, criteria of success, and more or less shared ways of thinking  among peers—provides materials for the imagination to work on. The codes tend to be uncomplicated and familiar within the larger cultural context: a graffiti painter’s ability to outsmart every guardian of the urban scene is manifestly anti-establishment, and a climber’s ascent up a tough northern wall is indisputably competent, brave and physically agile. Strong symbols help players and audiences alike in their understanding of what is mediated. Insiders can certainly sophisticate their communications and develop nuances that are lost on external audiences, which will be apparent in coming chapters. Whatever the actual context and social forces at work, negotiating the edge is believed to touch on and activate deep-seated layers of the personality. This type of risk-taking is associated with a constitution in the individual, an inborn tendency, enhanced by social and cultural forces embedded in modern ways of life. At the root of the conception, then, is a genetic model, a biological set of characteristics interacting with psychological and social feedbacks. Lyng (2005, p. 47) considers several possibilities when it comes to what such feedbacks or structural imperatives of contemporary society actually consist of. Exposing oneself to danger may be a somewhat anarchistic or playful escape from the Weberian

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rationality principle, an attempt risk-prone individuals make to re-­ enchant the world by shaking the bars of the iron cage of social regulation. Making an offer of oneself in an extreme situation may also be a more carefully designed Foucaudian project of self-creation, a deliberate attempt to transcend existing power-knowledge arrangements by means of a new corporeal ‘ethic of the self ’. In either case, the edge represents an alternative to what participants may feel is an over-determined social life. Originally, the idea of consumption within a fantasy enclave stems from studies of commercial enterprises, among them luxury hotels, and settings in Las Vegas and Disneyland. Fantasy invites feelings of pleasure, relaxation, and escape. Such scenes offer a richer quality of experience and stimulate consumer desires also by removing consumers from their normal lives and everyday principles of more constrained norms of spending. It makes little difference in this respect whether a shared mythology is a business product or a self-made construction among a group of enthusiasts. Belk and Costa (1998) describe how the ‘hunters’ change and improve their outfits and equipment from one season to the next; the researchers pay much attention to how these players trade and barter, and to the monetary cost of artifacts. The analysis leaves an ambivalent impression, as does Veblen’s (2001 [1899]) famous tale of ‘the leisure class’. The economist Veblen approached his material as if he was a visiting anthropologist puzzled by local customs (Wolfe 2001, p. xv). The acquisitiveness and garish extravagance of the early industrialists did not strike a chord of affinity in him, quite the contrary. Yet, he is aware that ‘wealth and power must be put in evidence, for esteem is awarded only on evidence’ (Veblen 2001 [1899], p. 29). Therefore, he interprets the new industrialists’ immense dwellings and plethora of costly belongings not as mere self-indulgence but as deliberate demonstrations of accomplishment, distinctive of an early stage of capitalism and a class that had recently emerged from ‘the commonplace body of the population’. Likewise, in the eyes of the researchers, the esoteric, consumer oriented, and not altogether ‘authentic’ conduct within the re-enacted community of hunters coexist with an admirable collective mythmaking. Despite marked similarities in the type of leisure under consideration, each author relies on a separate analogy. Why? One reason is that their tasks are not identical, another reason is clearly rooted in marked

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ideological differences. Stebbins (1997, p.  126) is explicit about his aspiration to ‘dignify’ the entire field of leisure studies: ‘For the millions of people in this world who do not pursue serious leisure, its existence can stand as evidence that leisure can be more than pure hedonism.’ By contrast, Belk (1995, p. 3) sees conspicuous consumption patterns as a sad inevitability. They arise when certain values emerge from the confrontation of available consumer goods with the social construction of acceptable and desirable ways of living. People’s minds and ultimately most aspects of their lives are tragically influenced by this inevitable social development.

Form—More or Less Defined That complex leisure takes place in a bounded space, secluded from the normal rounds of life, is a common and non-trivial point of departure for our authors. The boundary and ‘the rules of the game’ serve to interrupt and ward off normal expectations. Other than that, each conception has its own idea of form. Form, as we know, has a bearing on the actors’ motivation, experience, and expression; it affects the simpler ‘kicks’ as well as the richer emotional, cognitive, and social processes that operate in relation to any social situation (cf. Goffman 1967; Collins 2004). There are no assumptions in the category of serious leisure about commonalities in the internal structure of the relevant activities. As mentioned, the category is indeed large; it includes involvement in any amateur group, hobbyist activity, and voluntary work. Stebbins (1992, 1997) illustrates how amateur groups involved with classical music, theater, archeology, baseball, astronomy, and stand-up comedy are linked in a variety of ways with professional counterparts, most often through a shared audience. He divides hobbyists into five sub-categories: (1) collectors, (2) makers and tinkerers, (3) participants in non-competitive and rule-based pursuits, (4) players of sports and games, and (5) enthusiasts in one of the liberal arts such as fishing, birdwatching, or barbershop singing. Volunteers develop careers in helping action, which are not directly motivated by material gain. These actors have one foot outside play when they cooperate with professionals. Thus, the immense

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heterogeneity in the serious leisure category is hardly compatible with any idea about certain unifying elements of form. Specialized players on the other hand pursue game-like activities with a specific internal form, which is elaborated in Chap. 2. An enthusiastic collector of books entering a ‘hunt’ for a specific title and edition will perceive this to be an ‘action’ in Goffman’s (1967) sense, that is, an act of taking chances and grasping opportunities, undertaken outside the normal rounds, and possessing a consummately end-in-itself character. However, this hunt is not a singular event but part of a larger enterprise with numerous related incidents. It is the structure of this enterprise, which creates a dynamic activity that can hold the player in its ‘spell’. Thus, form is intimately related to motivation. A defined line of specialization with its long series of virtual spaces orders what has already happened and calls for new action; past and future efforts gain direction and meaning by constructing such lines. There is in the life of a collector a dialectical tension between the poles of disorder and order, says the book collector Walter Benjamin, talking about what is not yet placed in its proper series: I am unpacking my library. Yes, I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order. […] I am not exaggerating when I say that to a true collector the acquisition of an old book is its rebirth. This is the childlike element which in a collector mingles with the element of old age. […] To renew the old world—that is the collector’s deepest desire when he is driven to acquire new things, and that is why a collector of older books is closer to the wellsprings of collecting than the acquirer of luxury editions. (Benjamin 1988 [1955], pp. 59, 61)

As the spaces are gradually filled, the assembled artifacts and the enterprise as a whole changes character. This new system provides documentation, carries memories, and is the source of narratives. The character, materiality, difficulty, style, and status of the gaming attest to the person’s values, projects, capabilities, and social position. Edgework occurs as direct confrontations with consequential physical, economic, or social dangers. The internal form is more or less synonymous with what it takes to reach a peak experience. According to Ferrell (2005, p.  78), the term itself can be grasped as ‘a conceptual commemoration

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of those moments when it is possible to find existential definition right at the end of chaos’. Those who are attracted become ‘junkies for the seductive, intoxicating tension between artistry and abandon, for the dialectic of chaos and control; for that “strange music” that plays when you stretch your luck, but stretch it just right’ (ibid., p. 78). When base jumpers hit the air, they are not seeking death but feel all the more alive by sensing its jaws. The feeling that all their senses are working makes them want to live so that they can do it again. Consumption within a framework of fantasy enhances escape and seduction. Recreational consumption based on a script, story, or motif draws as firm a  boundary towards everyday life as play does, evoking extraordinary activities and attitudes, and creating a more total climate of escape, pleasure, and relaxation: ‘Very little is needed to trigger off this type of fantasy, and once the images get going, they can be of a totally absorbing kind’ (Belk and Costa 1998, pp. 92–93). According to Belk (1995), consumption in general characteristically generates mixed or rather sequential feelings of pleasure and discomfort. As experiences and objects seldom live up to the initial expectations, they offer only relatively short-lived moments of gratification and happiness. Thus, the enchantment of realizing a fantasized item of desire normally gives way to painful yearning at a later stage. Such restiveness, argues Belk, is precisely the faith of collectors who willfully throw themselves into ever-new quests for treasures. Independent of the consciousness and motives of those who play, the four conceptions all see men and women who invest a great deal of enthusiasm in impersonal situations governed by some kind of rules, who derive some kind of gratification, who communicate and promote sociability by relating to each other and practicalities on the ground, and who are perfecting and remaking the rules when necessary. In other words, those who are involved in complex leisure possess expressive means and are in position to act in correspondence with Sennett’s (1992 [1974], p. 111) insight that artifice is superior to reality when it comes to articulating emotion, because ‘without some work on the emotions to be conveyed, without the exercise of judgement or calculation in showing them, an expression cannot be performed more than once’. Like Sennett, these authors see people who are doing specific ‘work’ in a specific medium, but each perceives the characteristics of the medium and the seriousness

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of the ‘work’ participants do quite differently. We shall investigate these differences further, but let us first recapitulate what it takes to participate, and then look at rewards.

Training for Leisure The need to train for work is widely recognized and firmly institutionalized, less so with leisure. Our participants, however, take part in dynamic interactive systems with transactions, cooperation, and competition between well-informed peers and several other categories in their social playworlds. Successful involvement invites not only learning by doing but also extensive reading and qualified interaction with people and objects. After a phase of recruitment, recognition among peers is largely  based on merit. Lucky inheritors of a wonderful collection or advanced tourists who climb Mount Kilimanjaro or explore the polar ice on a packaged tour simply do not count as peers. Knowledge and accumulated skills are assets in moving a game as well as status elements in the pecking orders of the social worlds that exist around each activity. Self-actualization and competence become major outcomes of serious leisure, largely because committed participants can hardly avoid developing particular talents, skills, and knowledge in their fields of interest. According to Stebbins (1997, p. 118), the liberal arts hobbyists are enamored of the systematic acquisition of knowledge for its own sake, and this is typically accomplished by reading voraciously in one’s field of interest, be it in art, sport, cuisine, language, culture, history, science, philosophy, politics, or literature. New challenges and  ways of playing emerge as specialized players develop their abilities. When a Texas Hold’em poker player becomes more proficient and able to determine what kind of interaction is most appealing—on the Internet or live, tournaments or single tables—he or she can take further steps up the ladder to more demanding tables and higher stakes (Klethagen 2007). Learning, then, is not only of value in itself but enables the player to reach higher levels in the game, and presumably higher levels of mental functioning. A more knowledgeable participant is likely to become more deeply involved, at least up to a point.

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Edgework is almost unfeasible without superior physical and psychological mastery. A way to reach yet another level of excitement is to engage in ever more demanding approaches. An optimal balance between challenge and skills is well known to bring enjoyment, but seeking experiences on the edge implies pushing this balance, as when skydivers join hands to form momentary formations during free-fall and motorbikers do the same during high-speed back-road runs. Such exercises investigate the barest margins with hardly any room for mistakes. According to insider accounts, ‘the strange music’ starts when they do this just right, when they stretch their luck to the point where fear itself becomes intoxicating (Thompson 1967, p. 37).3 Also, consumers within lasting fantasy enclaves develop skills and knowledge. Enthusiasts use the winter to set up for the next rendezvous season by preparing clothing and other gears or by trading goods, and during the summer they may attend courses in order to learn more about brain-­ tanning, handling guns, making moccasins or powder horns, beading, quilting, and so on. A lot of learning is obviously involved, but Belk and Costa (1998, p. 219) interpret this basically as contributions to the fantasy frame: ‘By adopting a particular style of costume, hair, food, vernacular, and even gait, the participants construct a liminal time and place in which carnevalesque adult play and rites can freely take place’. The knowledge and skills participants develop are not accorded value as such, nor considered expansions of their capacities to accomplish things with their hands, minds, and bodies. The idea of consumption within a fantasy enclave differs from the other three conceptions in this respect. Depending on conceptualisation, the social sciences will see participants in play who are either on the road to socially valuable expertise or drawn into essentially self-illusory quests. In other words, depending on scientific approach, the same kind of leisure is understood as either ‘academies of autodidact learning’ or as ‘self-constructed realms of escape’. Vocabulary more than empirical evidence shapes the impression of what men and women are actually doing in their spare time.

 Clubs of base jumpers and hang-gliders usually make an effort to inform potential recruits about the dangers and offer necessary guidance to newcomers. 3

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Significant Efforts and Significant Rewards Hardly surprising, the authors tend to emphasize outputs that are hand-­ in-­glove with their basic analogy. The rewards from serious leisure include feelings of accomplishment, social interaction and fellowship, mastery and actual products such as paintings, scholarly papers, pieces of furniture, and so on. Enhanced self-esteem is also associated with favorable feedback from socially recognized preoccupations. Not to forget how ‘the unusual, memorable experiences found in an activity contribute to feelings of self-enrichment by endowing the person with moral, cultural or intellectual resources’ (Stebbins 1997, p. 123). There is certainly also a large measure of hedonistic gratification, referring to the pure enjoyment people experience from their pursuits. Strains may include considerable amounts of time spent, too much ‘work’, and emotional charges. Dislikes, disappointments, and tensions between people can be extremely poignant (ibid., p. 123). Anxiety can be linked to parts of the activity, such as auditions for amateur actors. Expected rewards may also fail to materialize. Moreover, committed amateurs in pursuit of leisure goals may find themselves in ambiguous and/or marginal social positions when they cooperate with professionals (ibid., p. 125). Again, much the same can be said for specialized play. An additional set of rewards and possible strains are linked to the explicit dialogical aspect of this conception. Those who go on can use their game to chronicle and augment values and/or to create some poetics for the benefit of audiences, as explored in Chap. 4. This is a type of literacy that may succeed or fail. Play and art are often thought of as autonomous social forms because institutional constraints and society’s power holders are at a d ­ istance, while participants are granted a license to depart from their normal selves. There are communicative possibilities as well as hazards in this. Players can occasionally be carried away, become obsessed, or so dedicated that ethical norms and usual responsibilities suffer. Activities and artifacts can also be morally offensive, or the game can simply reveal too much about the person. The illicit pleasures of graffiti painting, the sensual immediacy of a base jump, the fascination of financial gambling, or even the arousing challenges of rescue work, such risks are not always pursued as means to an

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end, rather as ends-in-themselves, associated with a certain type of adrenaline-­ induced ‘kick’. Phenomenological oriented studies depict those who venture close to the edge as attracted by embodied pleasures of such high intensity that they to some extent feel ‘addicted’. There can also be a feeling of implosion of time and space. In line with such observations, Lyng (2005, p. 5) argues that the main challenge for social science is not to explain why people would deliberately risk their lives without material reward. There is a simple answer to this question: they do it because the experience itself is intensely seductive, ‘because it is fun!’ What needs to be sociologically explained is rather why voluntary risk-­ taking has currently acquired such broad appeal in contrast to other epochs. This could well be a counter reaction to social conditions that somehow deaden or deform the human spirit. Alternatively, it could be an especially pure expression of the central institutional and cultural imperatives of an emerging social order, as edgework competencies are in increasing real-world demand. Imagination and fantasy appear to be keys to pleasure in modernity, and not only access to an ostentatious amount of things. New venues of consumer desire appear when commercial actors invite customers into arenas of pre-fabricated fantasy, or when people create their own fantastic settings, for example, by camping together each year in order to elaborate an historic myth, or when they establish a social world around any other popular activity. An intoxicating mixture of recurring needs and temptations, which eventually gives way to a moment of pleasure when the fantasized object is realized, is exactly what Bauman (2002, pp. 185–187) considers the distinctive mark of modern consumerism: in consumer society the ‘pleasure principle’ has been enlisted in the service of the ­‘reality principle’. The ‘reality principle’ used to be the limit set on the ‘pleasure principle’; the boundary pleasure-seekers could only cross at their own peril. However, the search for pleasure has become an instrument, the two enemies have cut a deal, according to Bauman, and the conflict between them is altered. Fluidity thus becomes solidity. Each conception depicts actors who organize and invest in demanding leisure and derive pleasure from their own efforts. Protected by the boundary of play, they are granted the space—the cultural license—they

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need for their adventures. Some are blatantly self-indulgent, others engage in altruistic projects; some are deliberately provocative, others stay below all radars; some seek social status and economic profit, others consider this irrelevant by-products. No one seeks this type of leisure in order to obtain mere ‘time-out’; the dedicated are usually willing to endure a great deal in the hope of obtaining whatever it is they are seeking. What, then, do our authors believe inspire or drive participants? The answer is not self-evident. One way to approach this question is to make the authors’ rhetorics more explicit.

Ideological Rhetorics Attempting to bring some coherence to the ambiguous field of play theory, Sutton-Smith (2001 [1997]) identifies what he considers seven underlying ideological rhetorics in conceptions of adult play. Deduced from cultural history, these elements distinguish and highlight persistent ideological components. Figure  3.1 decomposes the four conceptions accordingly. So far, our authors’ reliance on analogies has led us to see certain aspects of each conception; the figure supplements this by indicating specific constellations of neutral, strong, and very strong elements (the strongest are marked with boxes). The graphical picture enables us to capture consequential differences at a glance, although some elaboration is necessary.

Fig. 3.1  Underlying ideological rhetorics in the four conceptions

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Identity and Status/Power Identity elements are present in all of these conceptions and considered one of the more obvious reasons for participants’ long-term pursuits and strong attachments to what they do. Status seeking is also broadly recognized, but only the consumer framework considers status seeking a driver of individual efforts and relates this to strong and penetrating social forces. The evolving capitalist economy paves the way for insatiable consumption patterns without leading to personal fulfillment, as we already heard the argument goes. By consequence, there is an inevitable absence of genuine freedom, and the pleasures of learning and creativity in play are not emphasized. Ostentatious display of objects and/or achievements is a possibility within the other frameworks as well, although largely seen as a result of preferred and stimulated activity on the micro level. An inclination towards differences in tastes among social groups and classes, with preferences for certain activities, objects, and styles, is certainly recognized by all.

The Self That people somehow define who they are, not only through work but also through leisure, is a shared assumption. We have to look outside play theory to understand why these activities offer opportunities to mould credible lives in the eyes of selves and society. According to Taylor (1991, p. 74), there is in Western cultures a widely shared ideal of self-­ fulfillment, not in the sense of plain subjectivism but as a powerful ­incentive ‘to be true to oneself ’. This can be seen as an intrinsic part of our area, and a fairly new phenomenon in history. Seeking authenticity involves ideas of originality, and being original requires some kind of front against convention. This front can be cast in various shapes; it can be in terms of extraordinary accomplishment, or something simple may suffice, something that is unquestionably one’s own choice and contribution. Alternatively, it can come as a revolt. To challenge prevalent ethics of orderliness and safety by regularly jumping from fixed bases, sailing solo on the world’s oceans, performing acrobatics on a motorbike, going backpacking in unfamiliar parts of the world, or even engaging in birders’

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vocal activism may qualify. Thus, quests for authenticity may explain why the content of play is occasionally pitched against norms of morality, or more moderately, why expressive enterprises can develop in many directions, and at times quite independent of the person’s habitus.

Frivolity Social science has a long tradition of skepticism towards market-­ organized leisure. Films, shows, magazines, and various types of games were seen by the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory as mass entertainment, with the likely consequences of pacifying individuals, homogenizing culture, and destroying genuine art. It is in this vein that the consumer approach sees complex leisure as basically frivolous. The encampment of the modern ‘hunters’ is like an extended theatrical performance where participants fabricate props, explore identities, and impersonate characters as part of a shared heritage. Yet, whatever it takes, those who re-enact an historic past or build a collection of some magnitude are not recognized as creators or producers but believed to be under the unfortunate influence of consumer impulses. This duplicity remains even when aspects of creativity is recognized, such as mimicking reality and elaborating a world apart. ‘Each rhetoric involves an internal polarity between good play and bad play, and uses the term frivolous for whatever kind is chosen as bad play’, states Sutton-Smith (2001 [1997], p. 204). All four categories see players who buy equipment and relate to commercial suppliers in various ways, but there is a difference in principle in how the critical consumer category and the other conceptions understand this.

Risk-Taking In specialized play, something is at stake in every action, whereas edgework emphasizes risk-taking as such; it is what the activity is about, what creates arousal. The latter implies an indirect relationship between macro society and actors’ proneness to take consequential risk. Both are games

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of mixed skill and chance in the sense that successful outcomes reflect something in addition to trained control. We could say that the skill component is necessary to play, and more so when the stakes are objectively high. However, the chance component is highly valued and associated with enjoying the ‘gifts from the gods’. To dare, to take risks, to bear uncertainty, to endure tension—these are the essence of the play spirit. Tension adds to the importance of the game and, as it increases, enables the player to forget that he is only playing. (Huizinga 1955 [1938], p. 51)

In any game, excitement is related to the fact that something is at stake, if not more than one’s honor. Serious leisure and consumption theory do not see complex leisure as game-like and need not specify any such component.

The Imaginary Bounded space invites imagination and fantasy. Yet, of the four conceptions only specialized play draws an explicit parallel to art and accentuates the likely cognitive advantage of being in command of an additional and a different medium. Insights that are gained through this medium can be brought to bear on life: ‘What is first acted out as a kind of theatre, is later put into words as a kind of storying’ (Sutton-Smith 2001 [1997], p. 143). Persuasive metaphor belongs here, as does inversion, carnivalia, laughter, travesty, and parody. All are ways of grasping truths of life in play, like in theater, satire, and literature. Specialized play is explicit in postulating a relationship between life and leisure on the level of the actor; the idea is that men and women regularly address their real-life concerns in play.

Progress Notions of progress are strong in serious leisure and specialized play. By pointing to formation of social worlds, to individual learning and accumulation of knowledge, to production of humanitarian, cultural, and

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material assets, both categories entertain clear ideas about playgroups as part of civil society. The title of this book places specialized play as source not only of knowledge but also of social resilience and public commitment. By contrast to claims of withdrawal from the real world, play implies improvement of cognitive capacity and social agency. Empirically, ability to negotiate intimidations on individual and group levels can be seen in relation to these actors’ capacity to consolidate mental models and thereby strengthen their own information processing capability. Moreover, their involvement in the external world turns out to be quite striking, as illustrated by numerous examples in the coming chapters. Under certain conditions, normally low-key playgroups may even transform their activity to consequential political activism, as later chapters illustrate.

 oncluding Comments: Choice of Conception C Matters Each of the four conceptions approaches complex leisure from a micro perspective, and each claims to give an account of the phenomenon as it is. As ordering devices, analogies are not true or false but simply either useful or not. If we take into account that each conception throws light only on some aspects and leaves other aspects in the shadows, we should not be surprised if all are inadequate and none in itself sufficient to understand and explain these committed human beings ‘properly’. The four taken together may render a better description than any of the ‘purer’ representations. No conception is innocent. Nomen est numen—to name is to know— is a well-known saying and warning in philosophy of science. It seems reasonable to conclude that social science urgently needs to assess its vocabulary in order to understand how the modern predicament affects men and women in their freest moments. If we interpret the four concepts as empirical description of the world as it is, our discipline will be taking at least some terms far too literally and overlook ideological ‘trespasses’ that contribute to surprisingly different understandings of closely related, even overlapping, phenomena.

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Why do people enter and stay in these games? Only consumption theory presents a firm answer; the drives are mainly related to socially induced acquisitions and quests for social status. The other conceptions see actors at liberty to express themselves according to their own ideas. Modern motivational theory believes that most of the choices individuals make are related to how much of an unpleasant emotion they are willing to risk enduring in the hope of experiencing pleasant emotions (Ainslie 1992, p. 9). This may well be the case from day-to-day but coming chapters will demonstrate that players’ activities are also influenced by larger individual and collective concerns. Could it be that the notion of consumption, with all its connotations, has been granted too much space in social science, that it has become a ‘terministic screen’, blinding us to the actual character of the projects people choose for themselves? Has the persuasive lens of consumer society made social scientists less sensitive to modern citizens’ deeper concerns, and therefore misled us as to the character of the human condition in modernity? This author believes it has. The idea of consumerism fits hand-in-glove with other forceful ideas about modernity. One such idea is the alleged ascendancy of the narcissistic personality. Being successful in the outside world, the narcissistic personality is nevertheless assumed to suffer a degree of inner emptiness or anxiety that needs to be repaired with the help of ‘transitional’ objects or activities  but will shun consequential relationships and projects. Another rapidly spreading assumption is that people are fleeing from political engagement into secluded spheres of esoteric diversion (see comment to Critchley 2007 in Chap. 1). By adopting this cluster of ideas, social science risks portraying people as less active, inventive, and resourceful in their individual and collective lives than they actually are, though some will always desire a fully fledged escape into a world apart. My aim is to demonstrate that there are other interpretations with no less credibility.

References Abbott, A. Methods of Discovery: Heuristics for the Social Sciences. New York and London: W.W. Norton, 2004.

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Ainslie, G. Picoeconomics: The Strategic Interaction of Successive Motivational States within the Person. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Bauman, Z. Society Under Siege. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002. Belk, R. W. Collecting in a Consumer Society. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. Belk, R.  W., and J.  A. Costa. “The Mountain Man Myth: A Contemporary Consuming Fantasy.” The Journal of Consumer Research 25, no. 3 (1998): 218–240. Benjamin, W. Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books, 1988 [1955]. Collins, R. Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. Critchley, S. Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics and Resistance. London and New York: Verso, 2007. Ferrell, J. “The Only Possible Adventure: Edgework and Anarchy.” In Edgework, edited by S. Lyng, 75–88. New York and London: Routledge, 2005. Goffman, E. “Where the Action is.” In Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior, edited by E.  Goffman, 149–270. New  York: Pantheon Books, 1967. Goffman, E. Frame Analysis: An Essay in the Organization of Experience. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1986 [1974]. Haworth, J. T. Work, Leisure and Well-being. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. Huizinga, J. Homo Ludens. A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Boston: The Beacon Press, 1955 [1938]. Kjølsrød, L. “Adventure Revisited: On Structure and Metaphor in Specialized Play.” Sociology 37, no. 3 (2003): 459–476. Kjølsrød, L. “How Innocent is Our Scientific Vocabulary? Rethinking Recent Sociological Conceptualizations of Complex Leisure.” Sociology 43, no. 2 (2009): 371–387. Kjølsrød, L. “Mediated Activism: Contingent Democracy in Leisure Worlds.” Sociology 47, no. 6 (2013): 1207–1223. Klethagen, P. Kunsten å være heldig. En sosiologisk studie av aktive nettpokeramatører (The Art of Being Lucky: A Sociological Study of Active Pokerplayers on the Net). Master’s Thesis, Institutt for sosiologi og samfunnsgeografi, University of Oslo, 2007. Lyng, S. “Edgework: A Social Psychological Analysis of Voluntary Risk Taking.” American Journal of Sociology 95, no. 4 (1990): 851–886.

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Lyng, S. “Introduction.” In Edgework, edited by S. Lyng, 3–16. New York and London: Routledge, 2005. Sennett, R. The Fall of Public Man. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1974. Simmel, G. “The Adventurer.” Translated by David Kettler. In George Simmel, On Individuality and Social Forms, edited by Donald Levine, 187–198. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971 [1911]. Stebbins, R. A. “Serious Leisure: A Conceptual Statement.” Pacific Sociological Review 25, no. 2 (1982): 251–272. Stebbins, R.  A. Amateurs, Professionals and Serious Leisure. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992. Stebbins, R.  A. “Serious Leisure and Well-being.” In Work, Leisure and Well-­ being, edited by J. T. Haworth. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. Sutton-Smith, B. The Ambiguity of Play. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001 [1997]. Taylor, C. The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. Thompson, H. S. Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga. New York: Ballantine, 1967. Veblen, T. The Theory of the Leisure Class. New York: The Modern Library, 2001 [1899]. Wertsch, J. V. Mind as Action. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Wilensky, H. L. “Work, Careers and Social Integration.” International Science Journal 12, no. 4 (1960): 32–56. Wolfe, A. “Introduction.” In The Theory of the Leisure Class, edited by T. Veblen, xi–xvi. New York: The Modern Library, 2001.

4 Collectivity, Poetics, and Agency

Negotiating Adversity Life can be thorny; people experience social upheaval, natural disaster, discrimination, grave losses, attacks on dignity and reputation, severe disappointments, shame, and a host of other challenges rooted in the way nature and society works and develops, and in the way their personal life histories evolve. From a societal point of view, sustaining citizens’ well-­ being entails both political, legal, and practical issues. Social reforms are launched, economic means are redistributed, welfare institutions are set up to assist individuals and groups to cope, and civil society organizations and networks get involved. Furthermore, freedom to defend one’s inherent dignity, honor, and reputation is laid down as a basic element in international treaties, notably in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, citizens’ well-being hinges not only on the existence of good institutional frameworks; what individuals and groups can do for themselves is of the essence. The term social resilience speaks to the question of how people manage disruption. Adger defined resilience as ‘the ability of groups or communities to cope with external stresses and disturbances as a result of social, political and environmental change’ (2000, p. 347). Since then a large © The Author(s) 2019 L. Kjølsrød, Leisure as Source of Knowledge, Social Resilience and Public Commitment, Leisure Studies in a Global Era, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46287-9_4

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literature has emerged on how local communities and exposed groups deal with and adjust to stressors of various kinds. Stressors can be continuous and slowly increasing or have rapid onsets; they can originate externally or stem from internal dynamics (Lorentz 2010). Social scientists (Hall and Lamont 2013, Lamont, Welburn and Fleming 2013) are now calling for a broad examination of the ways social and cultural repertoires can be applied to cope with shocks, discrimination, and other sufferings. Being skeptical to the dominating research emphasis on the importance of psychological traits, they activate Swidler’s (1986, 2003) notion of ‘cultural tools’, and want the term social resilience to highlight ‘the capacity of groups of people bound together in an organization, class, racial group, community, or nation to sustain and advance their well-­ being in the face of challenges to it’ (Hall and Lamont 2013, p. 2). The constitution of a self is, as we know, an ongoing task with the self as both subject and object (Mead 1934). The advantage of a long-lasting and evolving game is that it provides materiality, sites, and situations where such constituting can take place over time and in response to events. New occurrences can be explicitly reacted to, silently absorbed, or simply disregarded. The stabilizing processes we shall catch a glimpse of in this chapter show how individuals can adopt or adapt collective ways of thinking, or create their own personal poetics, and thereby help themselves to negotiate adversity. My contention is that specialized players can do better than most in such stabilizing processes due to certain characteristics of their games. First, voluntary, lasting, and demanding as these activities often are, they tend to be central to the individual’s concept of self. Centrality implies that feelings of identification with objects and practices are typically not much affected by temporal and contextual factors. Thus, this type of material lends itself to the shaping of stable and focal imagery. Second, games offer surprisingly effective ways of making complex and difficult issues lucid and understandable. I am talking about the concrete imagery we shall see players carve out of their games. In the course of their involvement, they characteristically conduct cross-domain mapping and ascribe real-world meaning to objects and actions in play. The metaphors they construct can be seen as temporarily sealed reflections, rather like cognitive models. The imagery contains a response to what the person experiences as a disturbing challenge, and is conceived for the benefit

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of audiences, including the self. A metaphor/cognitive model that evokes culturally familiar and convincing connotations may actually sway real audiences. When players find themselves in asymmetrical relationships to someone stronger, persuasive imagery can sometimes be enough to enhance the power of the weaker party. Third, around each activity there is one or more social worlds of peers with reasonably common practices and procedures, cherished myths, stories and heroes, rules, ethics, and ideologies of variable strength and endurance. Such elements add up to flexible frames of reference, which move and develop in the course of numerous on-line and off-line encounters, transactions, and interactions with few spatial boundaries. Thus, a common, dynamic, and changing space emerges between the relatively like-minded. As already mentioned in the introductory chapter, this late modern arrangement seems to function rather like the ancient polis of the Greek city-state. The polis, properly speaking, is not the city-state in its physical location; it is the organization of the people as it arises out of acting and speaking together, and its true space lies between people living together for this purpose, no matter where they happen to be. (Arendt 1958, p. 198)

In our digital age, this space has few boundaries. It is open and easy to reach for all no matter where they happen to be, constituted by and consisting of in principle free and equal individuals who negotiate their ‘unique distinctness’ and express who they are vis-à-vis each other. Moreover, affordable travel facilitates face-to-face contact during events and festivities. Thus, individual players have easy access to each other, to relevant information, and to a repertoire of pre-fabricated perspectives. They may find responses to personal or group stressors by ‘downloading’ collectively produced and more widely shared models.

Carving Images of Potential Selves Out of Play It can be argued that people do as best they can when challenged: ‘Seeking control is not some option of choice, it comes out of the way identities get triggered and keep rolling along as process’ (White 2008, p. 9). In

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Chap. 2, we met a woman who was proud to be someone who could ‘make something out of nothing’. Looking back on her own ability to transform unassuming objects into admirable interior displays, she took this competence as the main explanation of how she had actually managed to find a new footing after divorce. The examples in this section are closely related but not identical. They are chosen to illustrate how the cross-mapping individuals conduct between play and life inform themselves and others about how they want to be read.

Example I: ‘Backpacker bravery as pledge’ When asked by the anthropologist what drives him, this not so young backpacker has a clear and emotionally charged answer: I am gone now. That’s it. My mother has thoughts of me, my father does, my ex-wife does, and my son does. Everybody does. And I get to control my presence with them…. It’s all about control. It’s control. Human life is a desire for control. So, people are a tyranny on you…. And you get off the plane in Bangkok. Nobody has anything in their minds about you. You can be somebody new, you can be different. And you can change, and then, when you get back, you find that you have changed, and they’ll see that you’ve changed. (American male backpacker, age 36, quoted from Elsrud 2004, p. 100)

Embarking on the journey was not only an escape from the burdens of family expectations, nor was the basic idea to learn about unfamiliar parts of the world. The primary desire was to be granted a second chance in life, to be able to show parents, teachers, and others what he was really worth: ‘And you can change, and then, when you get back, you find that you have changed, and they’ll see that you’ve changed’. The value of ­displaying courage and endurance under taxing conditions is a favorite theme among backpackers, so much so that some refrain from taking malaria pills and other standard precautions against diseases in unfamiliar, impoverished, and rough countries. Others relate to risk on a more emblematic level. According to Elsrud (2004), youths who share a version of Western values see their adventures in faraway countries as future

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investment. Because ability to demonstrate grace under pressure resonates with central elements in Western cultures, it becomes a certificate of general capability. Thus, display of bravery in faraway places is synonymous with making a pledge to succeed in adult life. Among backpackers, experiences on the road are treated as self-­reflexive and self-creative projects.1 Demonstration of competence under harsh conditions is a favorite plot in travel magazines, and the belief that events can be strong enough to change a person is shared by many. The American had been traveling for months when he was interviewed; he had absorbed his playworld’s credo and allowed himself to be reasonably confident that he would in fact be changed. Hence, the pledge was ‘for real’. What players carve out can be seen as metaphors in Nietzsche’s sense, that is, as concrete representations giving conceptual shape to some subject matter. The locus of their metaphors is not in language but in what the players themselves and their significant others can accept as a satisfactory image.2 People do not just play with metaphor, contends the young Nietzsche (Kofman 1993 [1972]), their play is of a formidable seriousness, as it is for our actors. Although the locus is elsewhere, the various metaphors players create become incorporated into spoken language. Thereby, the imagery becomes narrative in structure, and their audiences’ ways of reading such statements are also narrative in form.

 xample II: ‘Long-distance sailing as quest for a more E genuine life’ During more than seven years of long-distance and mostly solo sailing, the journalist Ragnar Kvam was often asked if it was not boring out there. Family, friends, and colleagues were used to seeing him as a busy journalist in the everyday clamor of a major newspaper. His answer was that he  Elsrud (2004, pp. 94–95) notes that backpacker efforts can also be seen as a reaction against a society in which young people struggle with feelings of not being seen and responded to in relation to who they are but mainly according to what they do and how they do it. From this perspective, leaving what is considered the safe and ordinary life of the Joneses is a large step towards becoming someone instead of just anyone. 2  By contrast to the influential linguistic understanding Lakoff (1980, 1987) conveys.  1

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never wanted time to pass; on the contrary, what he wanted was to stop time, and the only place where he could manage to do so was at sea. There, and nowhere else, was he able to live, not in the past, nor in the future, but in the present: When you enter a boat, you substitute a life of many choices with one of few. You abandon a society where you depend on others for most things and become a nomad instead, constantly sailing and fully responsible for your own destiny. (Kvam 2001, p. 131, author’s translation)

Why go away for years on end, take on the prospects of discouraging loneliness, serious sleep deprivation, dangerous weather, and accidents that are more likely to happen than not? Judging from the outspoken autobiography of another long-distance sailor, Kvam is not the only one who takes guidance from the practical activities at sea and decodes his years of absence from normal society as an expression of some deep-seated desire for a less fragmented and more profound existence: I would sit in the dark and ask myself what I thought I was doing. Could I turn myself into a sailor? What did I want to do with my boat? But I knew, I knew. If I sailed far enough, if I didn’t crash my boat against some rocks, I would put my anchor out in some foreign land. I would climb a hill and meet a goatherd. We would sit under a tree, drink wine and eat goat cheese. He wouldn’t have heard about Chernobyl or disposable diapers, and I wouldn’t tell him. He would tell me his story and I would tell mine. He would look at the hills, the sky. And I would walk down the hill with the fine touch of a natural person, someone who belongs to the earth, to the sea, someone beyond the reach of the evening news. (Lutus 2005, p. 7)

To navigate the seas for years requires tremendous skills, determination, and courage. All the same, long-distance sailing is not always admired. Solo-sailors in particular have good reasons to ask themselves what they are actually doing. From a touchstone point of view, such adventures are taken on by extremists who exploit their freedoms in not very responsible ways, as they regularly cause worry, and sometimes set off rescue operations. Push or pull or something else, we do not know what is

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behind their quests for vast oceanic exposures, and perhaps the sailors do not always know themselves. Whatever the driving forces are, reference to prototypes of simplicity bestows some understanding and even honor on their projects. Self-reference as ‘an independent nomad, fully responsible for one’s own destiny’ or ‘a natural person who belongs to the earth and the sea’ points to a discursive universe about simpler lives and global sustainability. A loosely coupled metaphor—one that equals solo sailing with quests for the genuine—may suffice to ward off more unsettling images. To be someone who responds to current environmental and social challenges is not an unattractive concept of self. Versions of this construction seem to circulate as a ready-made solution among long-­term sailors who read each other’s books and meet in harbor bars. Departing from an understanding of inherent human vulnerability, the notion of social resilience has been split into three straightforward dimensions: coping, the ability to live with and overcome adversity; adapting, the capacity to learn from experience and adjust to coming challenges; and transforming, the competence to craft arrangements that foster welfare and robustness in the face of future trials, anticipated or not (Keck and Sakdapolrak 2013, p. 5). The type of metaphors, the poetics, our players create affects their concepts of self in a positive way, and could strengthen their real-world agency in respect to all three dimensions.

Example III: ‘Paintings as children’ At age 66, and still riven by the sorrow of not becoming parents, joking remarks about certain similarities between dedicated collectors’ relationship to their acquired artworks and committed parents’ relationship to their children were not entirely without a bite: We don’t have children my wife and I, so the paintings have in a way become our children! It’s kind of intriguing, the money we… well, when we talk about buying or not buying, say at an auction, we sort of find out that ‘if we had kids, they would cost a lot more’ [laughs]. (From interview with art collector in 1986)

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Narratives cannot be expected to remain stable across situations, and even less so across someone’s life cycle. Yet, the vehicle this art collector found in his cross-domain mapping between life and play remained stable for decades, although at age 82, when we met again, the metaphor had changed cognitive and emotional content. The dominant sentiment by then was gratitude for having had the privilege of sharing life with something precious that would last and be important to other human beings and to society: We have shared our days with the paintings; they have brought joy to our lives, like children do. I have never bought paintings for profit, and hardly ever put one up for sale. If it’s business, then it’s nothing! Look at that [points to a nearby portrait]; I’ve seen my grandmother sit like that, and the daylight falling in… Also, it means a lot to us that the paintings will last and can be of importance to others. (From interview with the same art collector in 2012)

To draw a parallel between art and children seems almost obvious, yet, there are probably contextual reasons why the couple held on to this vehicle for so long. Buying costly paintings and enjoying the company of colorful artists from the capital was dangerously out of line in their rural community. As a prominent local entrepreneur and politician, much could be lost by offending dominant local norms of equality and moderate lifestyles.3 Parenthood on the other hand is close to all hearts. The child metaphor directs attention to a familiar and respected aspect of normality, and diverts attention from economic and status aspects of art and art collecting. In a late stage of life, the child metaphor served a third purpose by resonating with the couple’s desire to contribute to their local community. Children as well as art can easily, and in this context, very plausibly be seen as gifts to society. The point is not if our players’  metaphors are true or false, nor if  a particular construction reflects how someone actually understands the world. The point is what it tells about the actor’s perception of a credible scenario. In this case, constraints of buying art existed for some years in the shape of repressive popular opinion. The child metaphor helped the  The existence of a repressive set of equality norms within small-scale Nordic communities was called ‘Janteloven’ by the novelist Aksel Sandemose in 1933 and is later referred to in international sociology as ‘conspicuous modesty’ (Daloz 2006). 3

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couple move around this hindrance and counteract feelings of not quite belonging in their own community. The image they developed—the child metaphor—was constitutive in the sense that it informed themselves about how their behaviors must be for audiences to read them in a certain, desired way. To enter a game, then, does not only comprise artifacts, practices, aesthetics, and ethics but also to apply one’s freedom to elaborate a guiding imagery, a narrative, a legend, while being fully aware that social reality is what it is out there, not entirely unlike what protagonists develop in psychodrama enactments. Personal and collective imaginaries are important even when they are not true in any literal sense because they can influence emotions and behaviors, and thereby support transitions to a more desirable future (cf. Presser 2009; Sandberg 2010).

What Metaphors Can Do It is widely believed that being freed of the self is what makes play and art liberating (cf. Gadamer 1982 [1960]; Sennett 1974). However, our three examples show how actors come to experience the seriousness of playing in the light of some destabilizing element in life. Applying their imagination in a sphere apart is clearly not ‘just fantasy’, and the metaphors that emerge are not ‘just interesting images’, rather imprints of their concerns in life, made concrete, accessible, and informative through play. Travel experiences are generally associated with personal growth. Even if this association is particularly strong among backpackers, its widespread acceptance renders legitimacy inside the group and vis-à-vis others. Leaving a regular job for the benefit of long-term sailing is a drastic project, clearly on the margins of normal responsibility. But quests for the genuine balances this by inducing respect, considering current knowledge about severe burdens on our planet. Conceiving of art as children eases unwelcome consequence of biological destiny and makes it logical to remain in and contribute to the ancestral community. These constructions are responses to something; they are ways specific persons address actual contingencies in their real lives. Credible metaphors work on two levels (Katz 1989, p.  488). First, through the specific comparison between the vehicle and that which it

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denotes: A pledge implies long-term dedication and some idea of goal-­ directed progress. A quest for the genuine signifies the fervent will to simplify for vital purposes, say, by going back to less personal comfort. Children are necessary for any community to go on. Second, and equally important, metaphors convey messages through the more general cultural scripts and connotations these vehicles activate. Pledges and children release connotations of deep-seated commitments and shared destinies. A more genuine life evokes visions of experimentation and alternative ways of experiencing, organizing, and evaluating, all for the benefit of some common good. An essential feature of human institutions is that there are huge amounts of externalizations and ‘outside the head’ elaborations in them (Zucker 1983). The social worlds of players are no exceptions; pre-­ fabricated conceptions abound. The examples in this chapter illustrate that individual players can choose to tap directly into a collective elaboration that exist among peers, make an adaptation of a shared imaginary, or create more personal poetics. They do not have to build from scratch but can adjust what they find for their own purposes. In this way, there is a bridge between the intersubjective and the subjective, between the collective and the individual. Even though meaning grows from within and pain is personal, being guided by a larger community and drawing support from it has its advantages in terms of conviction and ‘punch’, as the case of the backpacker shows. Actual codes and models acquire specific meaning only with reference to specific situations and cultures, much like codes in indigenous art (Gell 1998). The poetics of these actors could not work equally well everywhere or at all times. When counting their victories and failures as well as when carving out imagery, players are anchored in what they actually do on the ground. We have seen how stabilizing processes are intimately linked to concrete practices in the games, be it traveling to faraway places, navigating the oceans, or collecting artworks made by a circle of national artists. ‘What is present in the most immediate layers of actual experience is the “actions” of the objective dimension, its claims on us, its affordances, whether we are talking about a song we sing, the contact with the divine in praying or about emerging conceptual structures’, states Schiermer (2016, p. 1). The kind of gaming experiences this book

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addresses offer practicalities, aesthetics, inherent logics, quality of performance, and legends,  which is projected by the player, but which simultaneously inform this person about who he or she is.

A Note on Agency The three exemplary cases above contain persuasive imagery, loaded with easily recognizable and emotionally smooth content. In the wider environments of modern Western societies, making a pledge, seeking the unspoiled or genuine, and caring for children need no further explanation or justification. Each vehicle is richly endowed with positive value and evokes notions of socially desirable output of an altruistic nature. Audiences probably have a hard time turning their backs on such cultural icons.4 In systems theory, superior capacity for processing information is considered the crucial element behind increasing power asymmetry between interacting agents with competing agendas: ‘If a model-strong actor and a model-weak actor are coupled in open information exchange, the former may be expected to gradually increase his control of the other actor’ (Bråten 1973, p.  98). Bråten considers different ways in which the weaker can challenge the stronger, for example, (1) by making another kind of competence relevant to the solution, (2) by changing the boundary of the discursive universe, (3) by introducing an alternative source of ­information. Our cases fit well. The backpacker, sailors, and art collector are all confronted with powerful forces; their audiences are strong with hegemonic ideas about adequate ways of life. The backpacker wants to earn respect at home, not in customary ways by proving himself competent in the educational system or in a job but by demonstrating courage and ability in exotic situations; the sailors extend their concerns  from the personal to dysfunctional aspects of modernity; the art lover activates future necessities, not present status or economy. Each departs from convention in one of the three ways Bråten outlines, and the connotation their alternative imagery evokes is not hard for audiences to understand,  absorb, and 4  An icon is a sign of something to the extent that it is like that something; a symbol on the other hand is arbitrarily associated with what it denotes and established by mere convention (Peirce 1955).

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accept. The poetics our actors create rely on awareness and insight in specific cultural and symbolic systems. Without such competence, they would not be able to benefit from a repertoire of cross-references that might actually improve their real-world influence.5

Social Resilience Through Narration Accounting for a life ‘is always a cognitive achievement rather than a through-the-clear-crystal-bowl recital of something univocally given’, claims Bruner (2004, p.  699). The forms of thought that go into the molding of a biography are not merely logical or inductive arguments, nor naïve realism, but stories. The making of a biography implies weaving together two kinds of landscapes. There is a landscape of action where events evolve, and there is a landscape of consciousness; an inner world of the person involved in the action. Traveling in exotic countries for a year or two, battling the forces of nature for much longer than that, and relating to art and having unorthodox artists as friends supplies buckets of non-trivial material for storytelling. While still on the road, backpackers characteristically prepare stories  to tell later, some even have their own future children in mind, according to Elsrud (2004). Sailors, mountain climbers, cave explorers, and many others write books and publish tales of their adventures. ‘Stories happen to those who know how to tell them’, claims Bruner (2004, p.  691).6 Being in possession of much ‘raw materials’, players are well equipped to shape artistic narration about who they are. How an individual weaves together the landscape of action with the landscape of consciousness is likely to change over the years, as our art collector illustrates. Culturally shaped cognitive patterns and social processes structure perceptions, organize memory, construct purposes, and guide the telling of stories, though there are also many individual components. Unusual episodes,  In social science and philosophy, play and art have traditionally been paired, although not without some unease about their possible conflation: ‘There is really not much relevance to the continued identification of play and art as a way of explaining play’, reasons Sutton-Smith (2001 [1997], p. 135) in support of Gardner (1982) who sees play as mastery of anxiety, self, and the world but art in terms of mastery of symbolic systems. This distinction does not seem to hold. 6  Bruner borrows the phrase from the American-British novelist Henry James. 5

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exciting experiences, and fascinating encounters matter. Even if specific memories can slip from the mind in due course, they might still make a difference in the long run by inspiring earlier and consequential accounts that enter social processes and leave traces. In the end, it seems that we essentially become the autobiographical narratives by which we ‘tell’ our lives, (Bruner 2004, pp. 692–694). We shall return to this in Chap. 6.

Concluding Comments The only moment in which human beings are less than a bundle of identities is in sleep, and each morning’s awakenings puts together an I that was deconstructed within the social and physical protections around sleep, observed Aubert and White (1959) long ago. Identities spring from efforts of control in turbulent contexts, and such control is about the constant struggles to find a footing among other identities. In White’s understanding half a century later, perceived normality is a mere gloss on everyday realities: ‘At all scales, normality, and happenstance are opposite sides of the same coin of social action. Sociology has to account for chaos and normality together’ (2008, p.  1). This is precisely what I have attempted to do in this chapter. Specialized play, like art, is about advanced perception, cognition, inventive imagery, storytelling, and quests for richer identities, all of which contribute to participants’ capacity to brace themselves against chaos, and strengthen their potential agency. Human beings have a natural capacity for resilience, and players have an additional advantage, I will argue. We have every reason to recall Winnicott’s (1971 [1951]) theoretical work and clinical experiences, which concludes that all creative activity—including making art, enjoying humor, irony and meaningful conversation, participating in hobbies—are relevant sources of authentic selfhood because such activity makes people feel real, spontaneous, alive, and keenly interested in what they do. Today, active leisure is statistically associated with well-being.7  Satisfaction with life seems to increase with its length, controlled for household income and age (Eriksson et al. 2007). But more important than length is how time is spent; diverse and active recreation is related to higher quality of life, according to a meta-analysis (Kuykendall et al. 2015), whereas passive varieties of leisure seem to imply greater risk of death among the elderly, even when 7

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The theoretical frameworks of Freud and Piaget have gravely constricted the social sciences’ understanding of the human imagination, and made us perceive play as a rather ‘autistic’ mode of thought, often guided by drives to mend frustrated desires, claims Harris (2000, p. 188). It is time to let such interpretations go. Harris’ own and other scientists’ experiments indicate that involvement in imagined settings does not weaken actors’ cognitive capacities and grasp of reality, rather human beings apply their mental faculties in the same manner in fictional space as in reality, and extract answers accordingly. Involvement in fictional space may even encourage analytical approaches, as we saw in Chap. 1. The reader will have noticed that this author is attentive to the profoundly altered understanding.8 There are no longer any well-founded reasons to describe play as mere  ability to ‘hallucinate ego mastery’ (cf. Erikson 1956), that is, as acts of seeking pleasure through one’s own not necessarily very adequate perceptions. By analyzing the metaphors players carve out as acts of addressing complex real-world relationships with significant others, they appear well in line with Harris’ findings. Most of what is essential to human life can be acted out in the space between the limitless inner world of the mind and the outer world of norms, according to Winnicott. He sees playing as no less than a basic form of living, a universal that supports growth and therefore health, a privileged experience in a demarcated space-time continuum that leads into group relationships and facilitates reflection and communication. The poetics our players create in this ‘transitional space’ do not appear to be part of any deliberate strategy, more like emotionally and cognitively anchored reactions/reflections that simply emerge through the guidance participants take from their conditions in life and play. They can achieve much, as we have seen, just by making use of their normal skills and heuristics in their particular game, and by relating to the collectivity that exists among peers. the health status at the start of the observation period is taken into account (Agahi and Parker 2008). 8  By looking carefully not at the bones of our early ancestors but at the material record of human civilization—with diversification and stylization of tools, bodily ornaments, cave paintings, and burial practices—a thought-provoking picture emerges, according to Harris (2000, p. ix). Arrival of such achievements seems to coincide with developmental shifts. Even today, cognitive rewards may have an impact on a much larger scale than the micro level.

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Simmel (1971 [1911], p. 192) reminds us that an adventure is a particular social form, which allows people to synthesize what life is about, that it stands outside the proper meaning and steady course of existence, to which it is still tied by a fate and a secret symbolism. We have seen in this chapter how players actually synthesize their real-life concerns in play, and how their metaphorical constructions can in fact support them across difficult territories in life. Thus, it seems that modern men and women make more sophisticated use of such expressive forms than social science tends to recognize.

References Adger, W. N. “Social and Ecological Resilience: Are They Related?” Progress in Human Geography 24, no. 3 (2000): 347–364. Agahi, N., and M. G. Parker. “Leisure Activities and Mortality: Does Gender Matter?” Journal of Aging and Health 20, no. 7 (2008): 855–871. Arendt, H. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. Aubert, W., and H. White. “Sleep: A Sociological Interpretation.” Acta Sociologica 4, no. 1 (1959): 46–54. Bråten, S. “Model Monopoly and Communication: Systems Theoretical Notes on Democratization.” Acta Sociologica 16, no. 2 (1973): 98–107. Bruner, J. “Life as a Narrative.” Social Research 71, no. 3 (2004): 670–691. Daloz, J.-P. “Political Elites and Conspicuous Modesty: Norway, Sweden, Finland in Comparative Perspective.” In Comparative Studies of Social and Political Elites, edited by F. Engelstad and T. Gulbrandsen. Comparative Social Research 23 (2006): 171–210. Elsrud, T. Taking Time and Making Journeys: Narratives on Self and the Other among Backpackers. Lund: Lund Dissertations in Sociology, 2004. Erikson, E. “The Problem of Ego Identity.” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 4, no. 1 (1956): 56–121. Eriksson, L., J. Rice, and R. E. Goodin. “Temporal Aspects of Life Satisfaction.” Social Indicators Research 80, no. 3 (2007): 511–533. Gadamer, H. G. Truth and Method. New York: Crossroad, 1982 [1960]. Gardner, H. Art, Mind and Brain. New York: Basic Books, 1982. Gell, A. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

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Hall, P., and M. Lamont. “Introduction.” In Social Resilience in the Neoliberal Era, edited by P.  Hall and M.  Lamont, 1–31. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Harris, P.  L. The Work of the Imagination. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2000. Katz, A. N. “On Choosing the Vehicles of Metaphors: Referential Concreteness, Semantic Distances, and Individual Differences.” Journal of Memory and Language 28, no. 4 (1989): 486–499. Keck, M., and P. Sakdapolrak. “What is Social Resilience? Lessons Learned and Ways Forward.” Erkunde 67, no. 1 (2013): 5–19. Kofman, S. Nietzsche and Metaphor. Translated by Duncan Large. London: The Athlone Press, 1993 [1972]. Kuykendall, L., L. Tay, and V. Ng. “Leisure Engagement and Subjective Well-­ being: A Meta-analysis.” Psychological Bulletin (2015). https://doi. org/10.1037/a0038508. Kvam, R. I hodet på en seiler (In the Head of a Sailor). Oslo: Gyldendal, 2001. Lakoff, G. “The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor.” In Metaphor and Thought, edited by G.  Lakoff and M.  Johnson, Metaphors We Live By. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1980. Lakoff, G. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987. Lamont, M., J. S. Welburn, and C. M. Fleming. “Responses to Discrimination and Social Resilience Under Neoliberalism: The United States Compared.” In Social Resilience in the Neoliberal Era, edited by P. A. Hall and M. Lamont, 129–157. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Lorentz, D. “The Diversity of Resilience: Contributions from a Social Science Perspective.” Natural Hazards (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11069-010-9654-y. Lutus, P. Confessions of a Long-Distance Sailor. An Account of an Around-the-­ World Solo Sail in a 31-foot Boat, 1988–1991, 2005. http://arachnoid.com/ lutusp/sailbook.html. Mead, G.  H. Mind, Self, and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934. Peirce, C.  S. “Logic as Semiotic: The Theory of Signs.” In The Philosophy of Peirce: Selected Writings, edited by J. Buchler, 98–119. London: Kegan Paul, 1955. Presser, L. “The Narratives of Offenders.” Theoretical Criminology 13, no. 2 (2009): 177–200.

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Sandberg, S. “What can ‘Lies’ Tell Us about Life? Notes towards a Framework of Narrative Criminology.” Journal of Criminal Justice Education 21, no. 4 (2010): 447–465. Sandemose, A. En flyktning krysser sitt spor (A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks). Oslo: Aschehoug & Co, 1933. Schiermer, B. Project Description: Creative Action in Different Cultural Settings. Submitted to Department of Sociology and Human Geography, The University of Oslo, 2016. Sennett, R. The Fall of Public Man. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1974. Simmel, G. “The Adventurer.” Translated by David Kettler. In George Simmel, On Individuality and Social Forms, edited by Donald Levine, 187–198. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971 [1911]. Sutton-Smith, B. The Ambiguity of Play. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001 [1997]. Swidler, A. “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies.” American Sociological Review 51, no. 2 (1986): 273–286. Swidler, A. Talk of Love: How Culture Matters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. White, H. C. Identity & Control: How Social Formations Emerge. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008. Winnicott, D. “Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena.” In Collected Papers, 229–242. New York: Basic Books, 1971 [1951]. Zucker, L.  G. “Organizations as Institutions.” Research in the Sociology of Organizations 2, no. 1 (1983): 1–47.

5 Contingent Activism, Mediated Through Play

Leisure Implies Much More than Diversion The eminent historian Johan Huizinga (1955 [1938], p.  173) did not find it difficult to conclude that ‘a certain play-factor was extremely active all through the cultural process’; in fact, it produced many of the fundamental forms of social life. Ritual grew up in sacred play, poetry was born in and nourished by play, music and dancing were pure play, philosophy found expressions in words and forms derived from religious contests, and the conventions of war, politics, and good living reflected play patterns. Thus, civilization, in its earliest phases, ‘does not come from play like a babe detaching itself from the womb: it arises in and as play, and never leaves it’. He was less certain about later phases and wondered what play might add in more developed and complex periods. So far, the social sciences have been ambiguous about players’ societal contributions, about the character of their external involvements. Do we, as Bauman (2003) suggests, see the lonely denizens of our time using their wits, skills, and dedication to reach loosely for each other, forming ties that will be undone as soon as circumstances change, obtaining gratifications, and contributing to interests that amount to little more than their © The Author(s) 2019 L. Kjølsrød, Leisure as Source of Knowledge, Social Resilience and Public Commitment, Leisure Studies in a Global Era, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46287-9_5

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own consumer concerns? Alternatively, do we, as Fine and Harrington (2004) suggest, see the micro foundations of a thriving public sphere in which dedicated members of small groups, more than formal and institutional associations, provide cause, context, and consequence of contemporary civic engagement? My contention is closer to the latter.1 Players’ pursuits are relevant to democracy as already argued in previous chapters, and this chapter moves closer to their political participation. We shall see how public commitments arise in and as play. In other words, a certain play-factor is still active in cultural and political processes. Extreme social inequality in the inter-war period combined with reduced working hours, made ‘spare time’ strategically important, and unions responded by politicizing leisure (Hodne 1994). By organizing philatelist clubs; initiating reading circles, film clubs, theater groups, choirs, and orchestras; building vacation homes; and arranging sports, they hoped to recruit followers  by educating people  and raising consciousness and also improve social conditions or at least keep people out of trouble. Ironically, their method came to undermine their intentions, claims Hodne. Overall, the young did not want political refills but came to dance or pursue other desirable diversions. Historically, then, the labor movement used to organize leisure for anyone to enter. The query in this chapter turns the arrow in the opposite direction by asking what players contribute to the political system. Today, an existing body of high-quality ethnography depicts players who are acting on the public stage but rarely theorize what they do there as manifestations of political will beyond the actors’ mere self-interests. Although there are exceptions. When a group of Cornwall surfers fought discharge of raw sewage on their local beach, and in due course summoned several other watersport communities to join in an organized effort against water pollution more widely, Wheaton (2007, p. 279) identified this as part of a broader wave of new social movements emerging in Britain in the 1990s. From confronting the privatized water companies and lobbying the British and EU governing bodies, this particular effort transformed itself into a long-standing environmental pressure group, highly skilled in packaging compelling images on the web ­(www.sas.org.  Yet, differ in ways I shall elaborate later on.

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uk). When the leading character of the  black metal band Gorgoroth declared his homosexuality in lyrics and on the Internet, Spracklen (2010, p. 97) interpreted this as communicative action in Habermas’ sense. He described a deliberate move in favor of social change, enacted by a musician with the self-assurance and confidence of status to make a powerful public statement not merely about his own sexual orientation but about permissible masculinity on the black metal scene and possibly beyond. The concept Street Art, with reference to famous socio-political murals and celebrated pop art, has made graffiti painting not only legitimate but culturally prestigious (Waslawek 2011). What creators of ‘pieces’, ‘burners’, and ‘tags’ do is no longer plain urban contamination. Criminologists who are critical to severe punishment of graffiti painters (cf. Høigård 2002) are no longer the only academics who pay attention to how seriously involved painters spend endless hours practicing the aesthetics and meanings of their communications in public. Politics is not what play is essentially about, so why be concerned? Even without consciously weighing costs and benefits, people can be expected to confirm and safeguard their central sources of identity, meaning, and well-being. Individual actors usually prefer to do so in the company of others, especially if models are available in the form of repertoires and claims embedded in the history of a specific group (McAdam et al. 1996). Like other citizens, players tend to remain entrenched in their social structure, and their collective perceptions are likely to reflect aspects of class affiliation, gender, life cycle, specific historical events, or other constitutive social categories. Their shared imaginaries may at the same time address aspects of life and society totally unrelated to social structure, such as ideologies that travel across social and geographical boundaries. The elaborations playgroups generate have largely  been understood as quite amenable ‘mimeses of the interactional life of human agents who live in organized societies, as instrumentations with which agents seek to engage the other cognitively and emotionally’ (Perinbanayagam 2006, p. 25). Yet, pronounced and externally directed activism sometimes erupts among them, as evident from Wheaton (2007) and Spracklen (2010), and from case illustrations in this book. Players’ activism is contingent, and we shall look for affordances within the games as well as in specific events.

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 bstract Principles Enable the Most A Unrestricted Communication Why would players find calls for political action at all appealing, considering their own deep-seated feelings for subtle experiences and select artifacts and achievements? How can subjective emotionality and cognitive concerns coexist with an other-directed collective modus? Influence is not what these actors normally seek; do they have their own ways of framing, ‘packaging’, and still sharing political content? Once again, there are some clues to be found in Simmel’s work. Much of Simmel’s current attraction lies in his ability to shed light on the emergence and workings of modernity. Almost without any reference to historical dates and occurrences, he developed a perspective on the structural characteristics of modernity and the effects on individuals and their social relationships. What he saw was basically a society founded on money (Simmel 1983; Gerhards 1986). The power of money rests in the fact that the communications they mediate lead to abstraction from personal and situational evaluations. Emotions and money, contends Gerhards (1986, p. 916), are different phenomenological approaches to that which is of value, different modes of constructing reality. Emotions, on the one hand, are expressions of subjective states, they are tied to real objects, and intentionally directed towards these objects in ‘a total and undifferentiated’ manner. Intellect and money, on the other hand, are less reliant on the specific objects they are directed at, less dependent of the subject using them, and at the same time less affected by any spatial constraints. Thus, the existence of an abstract principle serves to replace immediacy and experience. By granting objectification, equalization, and quantification, money transforms subjective judgments and sentiments into a common denominator. The consequence is that particularity diminishes and distance increases between actors and between actors and objects, which enables the most unrestricted form of communication. Play, as depicted in this book, is associated with subjectivity and micro situations, but agency in the wider social environment clearly hinges on collectively anchored principles and communications on meso and macro levels. The case illustrations below demonstrates how each playgroup

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actually curbs subjectivity and emotion by developing abstract principles—in the shape of unifying practical logics—that can be easily communicated across spatial and social distances.

Taking on a Political Agenda Players who initially located each other for common interests in practical, cooperative, and gratifying endeavors may in the course of their involvement find themselves targeting an aspect of society, adapting a specific position in relation to it, and articulating a distinct goal bearing on their own and someone else’s interests. While still attentive to in-group issues and perceptions, they develop more or less clear intentions of advancing the social status quo, negotiating change, or engaging in processes of resistance and occasionally in explicit clashes. Sometimes, they work in consensus with external actors/authorities, and sometimes in opposition. The following examples indicate that not only do contextual events have strong bearings upon the commitments they select but also the character of their particular game.

Example I: Big Wall Climbing When climber Paul Pritchard and his friends in the mid-1980s first developed their skills, in Lancashire, United Kingdom, they were unemployed and surviving on welfare. Food was scarce, as was equipment, and their only chance to climb, travel, and find a place to sleep was to be social, share what they had, and favor simplicity in the extreme. In his autobiography, Pritchard (1997) tells the story of how an arcane attitude emerged among them, growing into a style of pushing limits with straightforward gear. Some fame descended on this working-class group as they developed innovative and demanding routes and succeeded with a series of hard and often cold climbs of fierce technical difficulty. Eventually, modest equipment and sparse protection became more of an ideology than an economic necessity. As it happened, the emergence of a conservationist ethos resonated with their frugal style, and little by little, they were drawn

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into a wider political-philosophical movement. According to Pritchard, they began to see themselves as affiliated with an international segment among climbers who shared little in terms of social background but had a pronounced, value-based purpose in pursuing bold, non-invasive, and nature-friendly methods. His autobiography has a distinct conservationist voice; it contains numerous hints at the destructive influences of consumption- and gear-driven approaches to the big walls and many allusions to the merits of simplicity, competence, humor, and friendship: Weathering one forty-hour tempest in our constricted nylon tomb (hanging on the mountain wall) was to prove a particularly good insight into human relations when confronted by fear and poor personal hygiene. Through the maelstrom Noel shouted quotes from his books of quantum physics while I made long cigarettes from its pages. As we pondered Schrödinger’s cat, the ledge began to fly like a kite and the seams of the tent began to split. Cooking in there was a dangerous procedure and used up valuable oxygen. Condensation poured down the walls and created a kind of soup under our sleeping mats. It was infinitely preferable to be the cook than the one who went outside to collect the snow. Noel passed two pots of snow in and perched on the end of the ledge desperately trying to relieve his inertia-induced constipation. I shouted to him to hurry as the spindrift was blowing in, and in his haste he fell off into the whiteout, stopped only after two meters by his slack tether. “Lord, I am not cut out to be a big wall climber,” he grumbled, and I giggled and shook my head as he hauled himself back into the ledge. (Pritchard 1997, p. 81)

In this case, the framing of an environmental agenda evolved as a practical approach among a close-knit group of climbing friends. The adaptation took place in a continuing interplay between individual traits and intentions and social relations within a changing economic and ideological context. When Pritchard, after serious injury, began to write about their experiences and values, stories from these early years became part of a larger conversation about challenges, methods, and ethics in climbing that helped to characterize a reasonably shared set of environmental concerns among a segment of peers. Stories do, as we know, perform essential work in social life: by helping people to make sense of what is going on, by cementing commitments to common projects, and by channeling

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judgments, decisions, and actions some would otherwise be reluctant to pursue (Tilly 2002, p. 27). The autobiography worked as a decisive statement in public, addressed to both climbing and non-climbing readers. Their political agenda was not only mediated through the social form but also contingent, that is, dependent on specific events and/or the fulfillment of certain conditions. Something happened that kept the by-­ then experienced and well-known climbers from thinking that the future must necessarily be an extension of what they could observe around them, with mountaineers coming in with airplanes, causing erosion, and so on (cf. Strong’s definition of contingency 2003, pp.  186, 192). In response, they communicated a general and nature-friendly principle for practical action on the ground. To understand transitions into activism, then, we need to account not only for small group interactions but also for contextual changes and communicative patterns.

Example II: The Classic Motorboat Society The 160 or so core members of The Classic Motorboat Society all own wooden vessels from 14 ft. to 90 ft. in length, designed between 1930 and 1950 by a dozen well-known Nordic builders. The club was established in 1992 with the dual purposes of promoting sociability and preserving a range of by-then rapidly decaying historic boats. The club’s website reflects the ambition of saving this part of cultural history by providing a supply of necessary expertise and remedies, and by creating attractive events (http://www.cmbweb.no). The site contains a photographic library of each member’s vessel, including drawings, technical documentation, and a record of what is known about past and present ownership. It provides a marketplace for more or less original machinery, woodwork, fittings, and other items for qualified restoration and maintenance; there is a place for questions and answers where enthusiasts can help each other to get it right; and there are links to related national and international associations for the preservation of classical sail- or motorboats. After countless hours of work, at times tricky and tedious, authentic boats re-emerge. Like numerous other groups that give life to cultural heritage—be it a brand of car (such as Bel Air Chevrolets from the 1950s

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and 1960s), an historic building, an aircraft, or a special train—the boat enthusiasts combine an element of public service with personal and family sociability. The club’s website also contains an updated calendar of talks, parties, boat festivals, and tours to interesting places. Hedonistic versus altruistic orientation, instrumental value versus value in itself, individual versus collective, private versus public, what is often conflicting takes on the combined quality of civic-minded enjoyment. As the number of restored vessels rose, the members had reason to congratulate themselves. Without the self-organized infrastructure, owners could not have observed state-of-the-art restoration of this valued part of Nordic yachting history, and no public authority or private business could have saved it from destruction. At best, a few specimens would have survived in maritime museums. On behalf of themselves and society, these citizens managed to manifest and substantiate their combined private/public commitments through actions in play.

Example III: Live Action Role-Playing (LARP) In 2008, a group of Nordic live action role-players met and discussed the meanings of fantasy with visiting peers from Belarus. For the first group, fantasy creatures in role-play frequently represented alternative movements—ecologists, hippies, and the like. The guests had a different frame of reference. They saw fantasy, especially medieval fantasy, as a metaphoric expression of various liberating forces. Brenne (2008) relates this difference in connotation to a difference in context. President Lukashenko had opted for Putin’s Russia, and a sharp and dangerous division had opened up between pro-Russian communists and liberal nationalists with a European orientation. Because there had not been any period of national freedom for centuries, in the Belarus players’ minds not since the Middle Ages, medieval creatures had become associated with forces that would ultimately free the country. In other words, these actors had allowed real-­ world dangers to enter their game. They had mobilized and reworked their plots and metaphors for the purpose of dissent; they had taken on a political robe to be worn in silence or openly flaunted, according to circumstances.

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In an authoritarian regime, citizens might have less to fear by covering their actions. The first step in understanding the rare moments of breakthrough of the dominated, according to Scott (1990, pp. 202–203), is to place the tone and mood of those who are speaking defiantly for the first time near the center of analysis. Insofar as their excitements and energies are part of what impel events, they are as much a part of the situation as are structural variables. They are, he adds, a force that resource-­ mobilization theories of social movements, let alone public choice theory, cannot hope to capture. Seemingly, innocent enjoyment may contain the most groundbreaking forces. Clearly, this type of politicized performance in play has its historical periods, long or short as they may turn out to be.

Repertoires, Symbols, and Principles in Action The actors in the three examples accommodate their repertoires and engage in politics alongside what they normally do. Rather than joining a social movement, the climbers reframe their already nature-friendly methods as environmentalism. The boat society can save endangered heritage as a relatively straightforward extension of the members’ pleasures in sea life and boat ownership. The Belarus role-players are able to join a major national battle by subtle means. These examples are not unique. There are numerous organizations of bird watchers with radical ecologist aims, associations of BASE jumpers who oppose the safety-­ oriented lifestyle of Western modernity, and collectors of, say, ancient manuscripts or industrial brands who distinguish what they do as identity work on a societal level. As already mentioned, museums have throughout the centuries profited greatly from collectors’ efforts (see, for instance, Blom 2003). At some point, each group ends up tying historically contingent allegiances to democratic forces. How are they able to do this? The three examples above give some indications. First, the chosen commitment is not patently obvious but still has a close resonance with the group’s core activity; thus, the actors are already primed through emotional and intellectual affinity to the actual concerns. Second, their political ‘voices’ are not rhetorical for the most part but embedded in their practical approaches

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on the ground. Third, the participants use what they have and save costs when it comes to framing an issue, learning about it, and putting symbols into political action. Fourth, anyone who participates in a leisure community is already involved in a moral order with an expressive dimension and socialized into modes of cooperation. The answer, then, springs, at least partly, from the fact that not much is built from scratch. It is easier to accommodate than to reorganize; simple parsimony gives advantage to known configurations. Thus, leisure groups are in a sense pre-mobilized. We have seen how they can commit themselves without large expenses, and they can rest their case at a later stage without much notice. Under what conditions are playgroups likely to become political actors? Despite the not very exhaustive examples, it is possible to make a few observations. At an early and formative stage of their careers, the climbers had an opportunity to interpret their methods and values in the richer context of an esteemed social movement. The boat project is plainly hand-in-glove with the enthusiasts’ socio-economic interests and personal preferences. The role-players find themselves with an interesting tool at one of history’s crossroads. What is latent can obviously become manifest under variable conditions—provided individual players do not have to sacrifice their gratifications. Clearly, these actors have trained themselves in a game they can bring to political life if called upon. Their normal capabilities, symbolic competence, and gaming structures double as political assets. Specialized knowledge in a certain area, established procedures, communicable principles, storytelling, and cross-boundary networks become instruments in the deliberation and framing of externally relevant values and ideas. Initially, the water sporters we met in the beginning of this chapter claimed to be ‘a-political’: ‘We are the politics of our campaign—we are the politics of clean seas. […] it is very strongly political but we are not politically aligned with anyone’. Wheaton (2007, p. 289) interprets this declaration as a manner of dissociation from ‘traditional’ forms and understandings of politics. An interpretation that resonates with my contention that players’ political commitments are not primarily rhetorical and power oriented but exist rather as practical involvements and persuation on the ground.

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 ompatibility Between Short-Term Rewards C and Long-Term Goals Whereas fun in games relies on fairly quick gratifications, political battles are usually long term. There is a recognized conflict between rapid satisfactions and future goals; quests for close-in fulfillments are generally thought of as unfavorable to long-term accomplishments. How do our players resolve this conflict? Paradoxically, the answer can be found in the strong current incentives that exist in this type of activity. According to modern motivational science, even when an actor’s goals are long term, rewards must be supplied in intrapsychic, relatively short-term processes: ‘All plans, however great and extensive, have to pass through the narrow neck of present willingness’ (Ainslie 2006, p.  12). This, according to Ainslie, is because we humans have not lost our animal orientation towards maintaining present mood; we forage for rewards in our immediate environments. Thus, a strong current incentive can overpower the sum of all future goals, as in the Biblical case of Esau, who became so hungry that he sold his birthright for a bowl of ‘red pottage’. To reach a future goal, says Ainslie, our cognitive faculties have to function like the director of a play who has to create an overall design that will justify an evening at the theater but also deconstruct and translate this design into an adequate string of emotionally involving moments by producing enough on-going byplay. Similarly, a person may design a day or a lifetime to fit certain ideals or theories, but must make sure that there will be enough stimuli from moment to moment to keep the plan from derailing. Higher cognitive processes can only ‘predict and manipulate more short-sighted ones, broker them, but are ultimately at their mercy if foresight errs’ (pp. 15–16). The important insight from this bottom-up motivational model is that it takes frequent stimuli on the individual level for people to remain in the process of striving for a long-term goal, be it in play or politics. A string of involving moments is precisely what our play form provides. Chapter 2 describes in detail how specialized play includes certain structural elements: chance in opportunity, flair in ability, and seriality in the ordering of outcomes, which create strong incentives to go on. Every

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space in the defined series of tasks represents a challenge, and there are potential rewards associated with every action the player engages in to fill an empty space or improve what is already there. In addition to securing valued objects or achievements, whenever an action succeeds it confirms socially appreciated capabilities and brings emotional satisfactions, even outright adrenaline kicks. As it proceeds, the overall project fosters ambition, gives stepwise fulfillment, and provides intrinsic pleasures. This is indeed a package consisting of frequent, short-term gratifications within a larger self-chosen and meaningful framework. Participants define actions and test them for rewardingness as they proceed, and the passionate can even imagine scenarios and imitate the emotions they occasion. The dynamic character of the game minimizes pitfalls of habituation and diminishing returns. Correspondingly, politics amount to a steady and stepwise hammering of wedges into hard wood. Cumulative efforts, be it in play or politics, benefit from compatibility between structural elements and what it takes to uphold motivation. The play form we are looking at in this book offers precisely that: a string of structurally anchored stimulants that helps to carry individual commitments across stretches of time. Consequently, efforts for the common good stand a fair chance of being pursued for quite some time when they are incorporated into someone’s game.

 esource Mobilization and Small Group R Dynamics: Necessary But Not Sufficient With an eye to vibrant local interaction between the relatively like-­ minded, Fine and Harrington (2004) want to initiate renewed understanding and  debate on the polity of civil society. By emphasizing the social psychology of small group dynamics, their idea is to show how social processes involving trust, norms, and networks can improve society by supplying group perspectives and facilitating coordinated action. They pursue an idea of associationalism by highlighting the unique strength of face-to-face dynamics fortified by access to interactional assets. Inspired by resource-mobilization approaches to social movements, they want to move the locus of leisure group analysis ‘from idiosyncratic individual choice to opportunity structures and constraints created by group settings’

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(ibid., p. 343). There is good sense in this although my line of reasoning differs on two consequential accounts: First, resource-mobilization theories applied to leisure groups, or to social movements for that matter, tend to ignore the basic call by individual participants for constantly renewed gratification. Small group interaction can certainly help to define the terms of external engagement by supplying trust and identity formation, and by providing coalitions as well as links to larger political and cultural themes. Yet, commitments may falter if not fed by personal gratification. This is where our actors have a motivational advantage because their gratifications are, as we have seen, anchored in structure. Their investments, political and otherwise, stand a better chance to survive ‘the narrow neck of present willingness’ because of the integrated string of emotionally exciting actions. Second, the abundant Internet-based contacts and relationships in this area make a substantial difference. Generating political activism is considered a complex matter, consisting of sequences of interacting elements: ‘starting from the environmental ones that have been broadly labeled “social change processes,” passing through cognitive and relational mechanisms such as attribution of opportunity and threat, social appropriation, framing of the dispute and arraying of innovative forms of collective action’ (Tarrow and Tilly 2009, p. 12). When the climbers in our first example initially took on concerns for the natural environment, they relied on faceto-face interactions, as did other groups. However, a varied circle of peers in several countries gradually coalesced into a segment of nature-friendly climbers with a relatively specific and shared counter frame and lines of demarcation towards more consumer-oriented peers. Those who identified authored new narratives as they planned, carried out, and later told about their expeditions. Pre Internet such sharing would largely depend on personal encounters or on books and articles in journals and popular magazines. Currently, the channels of communication are more rapid and just as easily accessible to a segment within play as to a professional segment. With the net, collective identities as well as unifying practical logics are more easily communicated and embedded. Giving analytical emphasis to small group dynamics may easily isolate the group from contextual influences and from its relationship to antagonists, allies, and the broader cultural agents that constrain or animate players’ thinking and agency.

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 ontentious Politics, Infra-politics, C and Micro-Politics The voices coming from leisure worlds may not be very different from those coming from social movements. Even if players’ public ambitions may be less grandiose than the explicit political goals of social movements, both dispatch values, information, knowledge, and loyalties across territorial borders. Practical activity and ideology amplify each other in both, although activity tend to come first when people play. Moreover, the goals can be closely related. When trying to explain the plethora of activism that has sprung forth in Western societies since the mid-1960s, strains of social movement theory have looked beyond classical quests for political change and economic redistribution (Inglehart 1990; Buechler 1999; Tilly 2004; Wheaton 2007). Definitions have also been broadened: a social movement can be sen as a series of contentious performances, displays, and campaigns by which ordinary people make collective claims against competing societal interests or the state (Tilly 2004). What players do when politically engaged may correspond to this conception. Contentious politics denote the disruptive methods actors apply to make a political point, be it by means of demonstration, strike, riot, civil disobedience, and even revolt. Social movements often engage in contentious politics, which typically arise from initially non-violent political disputes (Tarrow and Tilly 2009). Occasionally, even players engage in such action, in alliance with other citizens, or in alliance with professionals. A wellknown instance of the former dates back to the summer of 1970 when the construction of a hydroelectric power plant in Western Norway involved the transfer of enormous quantities of water and regulation of a treasured waterfall, Mardalsfossen, one of the world’s tallest (Gleditsch et al. 1971). For the first time, civil protesters applied a Gandhi-inspired strategy of passive resistance in a battle over natural assets. The notable climber and philosopher Arne Næss and others camped on the construction site until the police carried them off in front of an international TV audience. The Mardøla protest failed, the construction proceeded according to plan and the plant opened in 1975, but it left behind civil disobedience as an embedded method in environmental movements. This type of strategy

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promises most when robust  democratic institutions, political competition, and parliamentary politics already exist (McAdam et  al. 1996, p. 22).2 Contention may be of little consequence unless powerful addressees are in place. Players organizations sometimes emerge as effective entrepreneurs in institutional contexts. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, for instance, has developed into the largest conservation infrastructure in Europe, with 200 nature reserves, 1300 employees, and 18,000 volunteers, mainly birdwatchers, per 2017 (see Chap.7). Not all activism entails contention; the concept draws a line towards the more silent and low-profiled forms of resistance Scott (1990) explores and calls infra-politics. For various reasons, individuals and groups may have good reasons for not wanting to speak loudly or in their own name. According to Scott, the safest and most public variety of political discourse is that which takes the flattering self-image of elites as its basis; the rhetorical concessions of this self-image offer a surprisingly spacious room for conflict. A profoundly contrasting situation is when subordinates, in the relative safety of their own quarters, engage in dissonant transcriptions. A third variety, which ‘lies between the two’, is when communication takes place in public but is designed to have a double meaning or to shield the identity of the actor. Rumor, gossip, folktales, songs, rituals, jokes, satire, irony, parody—and we may add the use of metaphors and plots in play—can provide effective camouflage within a politics of disguise and anonymity. Well-reasoned calls for better protection of, say, nature or culture can normally be safely voiced within modern democracies. Yet, even in such societies, there are modes of non-­ cooperation in many areas that can benefit from ambiguity and/or other efforts of camouflage and protection. Bayard de Volo (2003) describes how casino waitresses’ joint ‘work’ on their own version of their job situation aids their sense of dignity and lays the groundwork for sporadic efforts to curb unwelcome control of appearance and behavior in a heavily sexualized environment. Sheltered production of accounts, amount According to McAdam et al. (1996), cumulative non-violent action can make a difference only to the extent that it (a) forges alliances of conscience or interest with existing members of the polity, (b) offers a credible threat of disrupting routine political processes, (c) poses another credible threat of direct influence in the electoral arena, and/or (d) elicits pressure on authorities from external power holders. 2

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ing to restrained, low-profiled resistance—like the role-players exhibited—is how Scott believes most struggles between dominated and dominators transpire. A pre-history of such interactions can make charismatic acts of open social protest possible and help to explain why eruptions can escalate with surprising speed. Although infra-politics is a concept originally intended for the analysis of subordinate groups’ responses to situations within fairly oppressive contexts, insights into such micro modes of defiance, their disguises, developments, relationships, and possibly breakthroughs are not hard to translate to other actors and contexts. A notion exists that modern men and women are growing progressively freer from structural constraints (Kotler 2016). Patterns of political participation give evidence of high and possibly increasing levels of activism outside established channels (Norris 2003). Analysts ask if we ‘are entering a movement society, one in which the classical social movement repertoire has become more or less omnipresent’, blurring and even dissolving the distinction between forms of activism and institutional politics (Tarrow and Tilly 2009, p. 17). An implication is that power holders are well advised to emphasize inclusion and recognition at several levels; communities of lay actors cannot be conceptualized as docile or not entirely relevant bodies upon which elites can place their imprints (Bang 2003, 2004; Bevir 2003). Thus, analysts challenge proceduralist views of political life; it can no longer be conceived of as formal representation on the one hand and either passivity or overt activism on the other. Bang and Dyrberg (2003, pp. 223–227) are among those who argue in favor of a two-way definition of political autonomy and coupling as relating to both experts/elites and ordinary individuals. To address present-day society adequately, power holders must acknowledge that responsible and capable citizens supply politics with something other than elites can. By extension, the day-to-day lives and communities of citizens emerge as crucial sites of micro-politics. Consequently, political territory is not a set of specific institutions but a dimension of what is going on within any domain where people practice their freedoms. Our nature-friendly climbers and boat enthusiasts are characteristic in this respect; their public commitment is one of dialogue, reciprocity, and cooperation within the wider society.

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Democracies are complex and changing systems, and models of governance are currently sliding towards the more decentralized. A multitude of processes supplement institutionalized politics, not least contributions from micro-processes of interaction. Players have a more varied and adaptable repertoire in this than what is usually recognized. They can use their freedoms to connect to ‘small’ or ‘big’ political agendas. Their transcripts may be concerned with widely appreciated cultural, social, or environmental issues, or be the groundwork for highly controversial positions and struggles. In either case, a type of political agency emerges by virtue of actors being enmeshed in an activity outside the political sphere.

Concluding Comments Political agency has not been a central theme in leisure studies.3 Yet, we know that players stretch their engagements beyond mere dreams and escape; part of their basic repertoire is to expose ‘the injustices, inefficiencies, and immoralities of the mainstream economic and political structures and organizations’ (Turner 1982, pp.  54–55). Irony, satire, and parody can be highly effective. We also know that their engagements are often long lasting, and that they operate in ways that invite affiliation with representatives from the outside world (see, e.g. Finnegan 2007 [1989]; Fine 2003 [1998]). Such aspects indicate external involvement, but we need better empirical and theoretical  assessments of what they actually do. However, just by extrapolating from the examples in this chapter, it seems safe to conclude that their political projects are not negligible, and their powers can be substantial in some areas, as illustrated by the birdwatchers and their organizations in Chap. 7. A widely held conviction in the social sciences highlights the importance of civic engagement and civil society organizations as an arena that inspires members’ understanding of society, and improves citizens’ general information and desire to vote, and, as an important by-product,  Stebbins’ (1982, 1992, 1997) large and impressive oeuvre, with reference to amateurs, hobbyists, and volunteers, is carefully attuned to the social value of ‘serious leisure’, though to my knowledge he has not found a political dimension worth emphasizing. 3

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contributes to public accountability. Civic associations—also those that are not explicitly political—are vital for democracy, Putnam (1993, 2000) argues. They build social capital and enhance trust, and when such qualities strengthen the political system, they help to underpin integrative social diversity. The approach in this chapter is different; I emphasize players’ public commitment as a valuable political contribution in itself. An apparently innocuous social form—evolved and adapted for enjoyment and expressivity—can double as a medium for regular political input as well as overt activism, as I first suggested elsewhere (Kjølsrød 2013). Players are in a surprisingly favorable position to translate identities, values, and political will into agency because they are already in possession of knowledge and effective symbols, their communities are ideologically inclined, and they have formal and informal organizations and networks in place. Whereas social movements must invest great efforts attempting to fashion frames and shape collective identities around them, battle for control of inexperienced bodies, suppress rival agendas, and attempt to engineer expressions of unified support to certain programs and strategies (McAdam et al. 1996), playgroups can, with a modicum of reframing, mobilize and support political maneuvers on the ground and sometimes in institutional contexts. The type of games this book examines offers a political potential that seems to fit modern citizens’ ways of life by making it possible to synthesize identity politics, protection of self-interests, and a degree of dedication to some greater common good. Players’ public commitments are low key but can still be effective. If efforts fail or energies ebb out, they can reconsider without much notice or loss of prestige; after all, engrossment in a world apart remains the essence of their gaming. Could it be that a significant number of modern citizens prefer to narrow and target their public involvements because they like to be regarded as competent and credible not only in work and in leisure (Rojek 2010, p. 4) but also in politics? The possibility underscores the need for social science to pay attention to what goes on in apparently esoteric quarters. The power and influence of social movements’ was once not so obvious but is long since recognized as very real. Could the same happen to playgroups? There are reasons to question the archetypical division between the two.

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Small-scale social life regularly intersects with large-scale democratic processes, argues Tilly (1996). Having learned from the long history of social movements, he advocates serious investigation of that which, perhaps surprisingly, intervene in the routine formation of political interests and agendas, with special attention to changing public identities. Conceptions of such identities should not be simplistic, he warns, rather relational, cultural, historical, and contingent. Relational, because the formation of collective commitments springs from connections among individuals and groups rather than from the minds of specific persons or whole populations. Cultural, because ideologies rest on shared understandings and representations. Historical, because there is usually a path-­ dependent accretion of memories, understandings, and means of action within particular identities. Finally, contingent, because any public project is vulnerable in the sense that it is not assured of success but liable to fail or misfire. The social sciences have good reasons to be sensitive to unexpected modes of political participation, also from players.

References Ainslie, G. “Motivation Must Be Momentary.” In Understanding Choice, Explaining Behaviour, edited by J.  Elster, O.  Gjelsvik, A.  Hylland and K. Moene, 9–24. Oslo: Unipub forlag, 2006. Bang, H. P. “Governance as Political Communication.” In Governance as Social and Political Communication, edited by H. P. Bang, 7–23. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2003. Bang, H. “Culture Governance: Governing Self-Reflexive Modernity.” Public Administration 82, no. 1 (2004): 157–190. Bang, H. P., and T. B. Dyrberg. “Governing at Close Range: Demo-Elites and Lay People.” In Governance as Social and Political Communication, edited by H.  P. Bang, 222–240. Manchester and New  York: Manchester University Press, 2003. Bauman, Z. Liquid Love. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003. Bayard de Volo, L. “Service and Surveillance: Infrapolitics at Work among Casino Cocktail Waitresses.” Social Politics 10, no. 3 (2003): 346–376. Bevir, M. “A Decentered Theory of Governance.” In Governance as Social and Political Communication, edited by H.  P. Bang, 200–221. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2003.

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Blom, P. To Have and to Hold: An Intimate History of Collectors and Collecting. London: Penguin, 2003. Brenne, G. T. Fieldnotes for Doctoral Thesis, 2008. Buechler, S. M. Social Movements in Advanced Capitalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Classiske Motorbåter, CMB. http://www.cmbweb.no. Retrieved 25 August 2010. Fine, G.  A. Morel Tales: The Culture of Mushrooming. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003 [1998]. Fine, G. A., and B. Harrington. “Tiny Publics: Small Groups and Civil Society.” Sociological Theory 22, no. 3 (2004): 341–356. Finnegan, R. The Hidden Musicians: Music-Making in an English Town. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2007 [1989]. Gerhards, J. “Georg Simmel’s Contribution to a Theory of Emotions.” Translated by John Taylor, Social Science Information 25, no. 4 (1986): 901–925. Gleditsch, N.  P., Å. Hartman, and J.  Naustdalslid. Mardøla-aksjonen (The Mardøla Action). Oslo: Institutt for fredsforskning, 1971. Hodne, Ø. Folk og fritid: En mellomkrigsstudie i norsk arbeiderbevegelse (People and Leisure: An Inter-war Study in Norwegian Labor Movement). Oslo: Novus Forlag, 1994. Høigård, C. Gategallerier (Street Galleries). Oslo: Pax forlag A/S, 2002. Huizinga, J. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Boston: The Beacon Press, 1955 [1938]. Inglehart, R. “The Silent Revolution in Europe: Intergenerational Change in Post-industrial Societies.” American Political Science Review 65, no. 3 (1990): 991–1017. Kjølsrød, L. “Mediated Activism: Contingent Democracy in Leisure Worlds.” Sociology 47, no. 6 (2013): 1207–1223. Kotler, P. Democracy in Decline: Rebuilding its Future. Los Angeles; London; New Delhi; Singapore; Washington, DC; Melbourne: Sage, 2016. McAdam, D., S.  Tarrow, and C.  Tilly. “To Map Contentious Politics.” Mobilization: An International Quarterly 1, no. 1 (1996): 17–34. Norris, P. Democratic Phoenix: Reinventing Political Activism. New  York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Perinbanayagam, R. Games and Sport in Everyday Life: Dialogues and Narratives of the Self. Boulder, CO and London: Paradigm Publishers, 2006.

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Pritchard, P. Deep Play: A Climber’s Odyssey from Llanberis to the Big Walls. London: Bâton Wicks, 1997. Putnam, R. D. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. Putnam, R. D., R. Leonardi, and R. Y. Nanetti. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993. Rojek, C. The Labour of Leisure. Los Angeles; London; New Delhi; Singapore; Washington, DC: Sage, 2010. Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. 2017. www.rspb.org.uk. Retrieved 19 April 2017. Scott, J.  C. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1990. Simmel, G. “Soziologie des Raumes.” In Schriften zur Soziologie: eine Auswahl. edited by H. J. Dahme and O. Rammstedt. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1983. Spracklen, K. “Gorgoroth’s Gaahl’s Gay! Power, Gender and the Communicative Discourse of the Black Metal Scene.” In Heavy Fundamentalisms: Music, Metal and Politics, edited by R.  Hill and K.  Spracklen, 89–101. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2010. Stebbins, R. A. “Serious Leisure: A Conceptual Statement.” Pacific Sociological Review 25, no. 2 (1982): 251–272. Stebbins, R.  A. Amateurs, Professionals and Serious Leisure. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992. Stebbins, R.  A. “Serious Leisure and Well-being.” In Work, Leisure and Well-­ Being, edited by J. T. Haworth. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. Strong, T. B. “Contingency and the Limits of Contract.” In Governance as Social and Political Communication, edited by H. P. Bang, 180–199. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003. Tarrow, S., and C.  Tilly. Contentious Politics and Social Movements. Oxford Handbooks Online, 2009. http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com. Tilly, C. “Citizenship, Identity and Social History.” In Citizenship, Identity and Social History, edited by C. Tilly. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Tilly, C. Stories, Identities, and Political Change, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002. Tilly, C. Social Movements, 1768–2004. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2004.

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Turner, V. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: PAJ Publications, 1982. Waslawek, A. Graffiti and Street Art. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2011. Wheaton, B. “Identity, Politics, and the Beach: Environmental Activism in Surfers against Sewage.” Leisure Studies 26, no. 3 (2007): 279–302.

6 ‘Well, I become very fond of these works and have to touch, stroke and feel—sculptures and everything’

Striving for Richer Identities Not only artists themselves bring about artworks, as we know (Becker 1974). Several other categories are involved: museums,  galleries, curators, critics, crafts people, the public at large, and collectors—lay and professional—clearly belong to this set. Artists pay attention to their collectors; they constitute a particularly interesting segment not only as source of livelihood but as contributors to processes that ascribe value to artworks. Unbound by institutional apprehension, lay collectors can be highly agile and innovative. Free to define their own projects, their acquisitions stand a fair chance of escaping the various dilemmas between the broadly conceived ‘autonomy of art’ on the one hand and ‘market induced fads’ and ‘choice-framing cultural policies’ on the other (cf. Thaler and Sunstein 2003).1 Occasionally, an art collector’s efforts may form the  There are certainly different opinions about the appropriate role of art institutions. According to Levitt (2015), some professionals in the field strongly believe such institutions are about ‘creating citizens’, about crafting identities, values, competencies, and projects among people who are part of nations, regions, cities, or local communities. Others think institutions should abide by the essential enlightenment principles, that is, preservation of high-quality items, presented in view of the period’s artistic, cultural, or political allegiances, and arrange displays for the benefit of present and future generations. 1

© The Author(s) 2019 L. Kjølsrød, Leisure as Source of Knowledge, Social Resilience and Public Commitment, Leisure Studies in a Global Era, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46287-9_6

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bases of a novel art institution, but more characteristically enthusiasts supply ­existing museums and galleries with works—through donation, long-term deposits, and short-term loans. Striving for richer identities is the social source of all art, claims White 1993. ‘Artworks, along with arts themselves with their styles and genres, can be seen as narratives available for use by identities and in constructing other identities’ (p. 187). In complex societies with complex belongings, the field seems more open than ever before: ‘Others besides artists can enter the identity sweepstakes of art worlds in new ways as artists’ preeminence becomes established. A prototype in our time and place is the collector’ (p.  195). Clearly, artists and collectors alike emphasize their freedoms and uniqueness by entering art worlds, but as social scientists, we need to understand the specifics: Why do individuals embark on the demanding and riskprone  activity of collecting such objects in the first place? How do lines of specialization come into being? Are there characteristic methods of learning how to appreciate art? Do lay collectors build statements into their activity? Which are their main drives in the shorter and longer run? These questions point to the larger and more general topic of how micro processes of learning and motivation evolve among players. Actors participate in play with different slices of the self, as mentioned earlier. The two mature males we shall meet in this chapter are both deeply involved, and have long since taken the qualitative leap that brings someone from just knowing ‘textbook rules and logics’ to acquiring a fluid awareness of tacit skills and qualities.2 There are other noticeable similarities between them. Each has a rural background, and began to collect art ­relatively early in life, and more or less from scratch, financially and otherwise. Their efforts gained full momentum in conjunction with growing income. Neither has benefited from professional support, nor had the advantage of ‘very big money’. Decades of zeal, competence building, and a variable flow of capital have gone into their games. Another commonality is enjoyment of the company of active artists. Quality of art is an elusive phenomenon, but attention from respected artists as well as prestigious dealers and museums indicates favorable evaluations. When it comes to choice  Only some reach this level of expertise. However, it is not fun to participate without intimate knowledge of the field, so those who stay in the game for a long time, tend to stretch their efforts. 2

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of works, there is a striking difference between the two. One concentrates mainly on figurative paintings by a circle of acclaimed Norwegian artists from the inter-war period.3 The other is attracted to concrete and geometrical art with a high-end international appeal, paintings as well as sculptures.4 From the present vantage point of successful accomplishments in business and leisure, each has many thoughts on why, somewhat surprisingly, life evolved as it did. With an interval of 17 years, I spent the better part of two days with the collector of inter-war paintings, aged 66 in our initial encounter and 83  in the follow-up, when his wife was also present. I was graciously guided through two of three different locations with works on display. I shared another long and pleasant summer evening with the collector of concrete art, aged 63 at the time. A number of large pictures, tapestries, and sculptures were present in the family home where we talked. In addition, I benefited from a comprehensive overview of his collection in text and photo, a carefully edited book compiled for a special exhibition (published by Skira 2011). The materials from these conversations, seven and four hours on tape, was transcribed in full. Thus, the chapter relies on dialogue and observation, with accounts along the lines of life histories, covering selected memories and reflections on family of origin, youth, marriage, work, travels, networks,  The inter-war compilation is primarily concentrated on a representative sample of paintings, prints, and drawings by the Norwegian artist Reidar Aulie (1904–1977), but also on works by Aulie’s teacher and friend Henrik Sørensen (1882–1962) and his peers Bjarne Naess (1902–1927) and Søren Steen-Johnsen (1903–1979). Other contemporaries are represented, such as Erling Enger (1899–1990); Alexander Schulz (1901–1981); Kai Fjell (1907–1989); Arne Durban (1912–1993); and especially Erik Harry Johannessen (1902–1980). For personal reasons some older artists are included, August Eiebakke (1867–1938) and Nikolay Astrup (1880–1928), and some younger, for instance, Per Ung (1933–2013). 4  The concrete and geometrical collection contains works by a large number of artists from several countries and continents, among them Josef Albers (1888–1976), Olle Bærtling (1911–1981), Paul Brand (1941–), Eduardo Chillida (1924–2002), Carlos Cruz-Diez (1923–), Jean Dewasne (1921–1999), Burgoyne Diller (1906–1965), Emile Gilioli (1911–1977), Jan Groth (1946–2014), Gunnar S. Gundersen (1921–1983), Alberto Guzman (1927–), Terry Haass (1923–2006), Arne Malmedal (1937–), Lars Nordström (1937–2014), Takashi Naraha (1930–), Paul Osipow (1939–), Victor Pasmore (1908–1998), Aase Texmon Rygh (1925–), Ludwig Sander (1906–1975), Jesus Rafael Soto (1923–2005), Kumi Sugai (1919–1996), Victor Vasarely (1906–1997), and Tone Vigeland (1938–). When the prestigious Henie Onstad art gallery filled its rooms with these works, its director chose to do so because it offered a ‘unique’ presentation of ‘key pieces from the movement’ (Hellandsjø 2011, p. 7). 3

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and stories about art and artists. The methodology belongs in the interactional interpretive tradition (Järvinen 2005).

Sensitizing Processes Increasingly, scholars refuse to let enjoyment of art be reduced to a game of social prestige: ‘The question of cultural inequalities and uneven access to the works has hidden the very production of the works as an accessible repertoire’, argues Hennion (2010, p. 26). Passion for art is in his conception something that emerges from compound, practical, real-world attachments, involving a rich and highly varied constellation of mediators. In music, this implies relations to instruments, note-sheets, performers, scenes, media, stories, and more. In visual arts, the parallel would be relations to styles, techniques, colors, materials, artists, curators, galleries, peers, stories, and more. Thus, a specific artist’s or art collector’s evolving tastes, capacities, and repertoire can be analyzed as a reflexive yet collectively derived activity: framed, corporeal, interactive, and depending on places, moments, and devices. Understood in this way, the shaping of someone’s passion for art is not mere individual preference or socially groomed choice—not something that emerges from the person’s social background—but a type of unrehearsed effort, made in alignment with this person’s multiple attachments. The key to an enthusiast’s tastes and enjoyment seems to lie in how this person is exposed to and becomes sensitized by certain artifacts, materials, colors, people and situations, while deciding for him- or herself if and how these feelings and impressions might be shared and discussed with others. Thus, tastes for or the effects of artwork is neither an exogenous phenomenon nor an attribute of the objects themselves, but the results of many and different actions performed by the ‘taster’. These actions are accomplished over time, and simultaneously based on technique, bodily entertainment, and repeated sampling. Hennion’s model seems to fit our two informants rather well. After having sensitized themselves over the years, surprising and wonderful moments emerge. The collector of concrete art ponders along similar lines; allow me to recall an earlier quote, now with an extension: I cannot explain why a picture is bad, but I can see it, it kind of falls apart, slides into a mere sophisticated design. And I don’t know why something is good;

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I don’t have a proper answer. What shall I say? Well, I enjoy things my own way. Åhhh, when those wooden boxes arrive in the end… I have to be alone. I can spend a full night finding some old catalogues and looking in a few books, ‘isn’t this really related to that’, and so on,.… with something in my glass. And when it hangs there! My god, this yellow (points to the closest picture). It has such temperature! And often, when I come down the stairs, I see how it changes throughout the day. I sometimes ask myself if it extracts energy or gives energy? The shapes are somehow balanced. If you look at the walls in this house, there are plenty of wholes because I move works around to see things. Q: When you talk, it sounds a bit like eroticism. Is that an aspect? Good question! Well, I become very fond of these works and have to touch, stroke and feel, sculptures and everything. I sit and wonder why it is done like it is. No, I would not say it is erotic. Q: Sensual perhaps? Maybe, but it sounds a bit scary. Anyway, these works are all distant from ideas and distant from the beautiful natural world. Some of the artists spent half their lifetime figuring out techniques of applying paint that could remove all human traces. (C)5

Copper and color reflect the shifting lights, and the observer’s emotions are—if not erotic or sensual, then certainly sensitized. Nuanced perceptions of light, color and technique, bodily and ritual practices, and varied repetitions during years of involvement—all leave traces in the mind. These actions are unplanned, yet they constitute a synthesizing activity and represent an integral part of becoming and remaining dedicated. Such experiences amount to a somewhat elusive yet essential element in the learning that takes place as the involvement progresses and matures and play becomes deeper. In the following, we shall try to catch a glimpse of this and other aspects of the processes the two enthusiasts have gone through.

Perspectives on the Initial Priming Choice of collectible is hardly random, but the actual link between the person and the artifacts is not necessarily obvious, not even to the actors themselves. Looking back, both outline a theory of how irregular experi For the reader’s quick identification of who is talking, I have marked the quotes (C) for the collector of concrete and geometrical art, and (I) for the collector of inter-war art. 5

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ences in youth came to influence later ambitions and tastes in work and leisure. They share a notion that chance was favorably on their side. Each highlights a formative, although totally unforeseen, path of cosmopolitan stimuli with fortunate incidents and encounters. Born into the rural elite, although not in position to inherit the family farm, our inter-war collector received a tempting invitation from an unmarried uncle in America. The rural youth left his homeland with the prospect of inheriting a ranch in the Mid-West. Life on the ranch proved disappointing, and chance brought employment in the decorating department of Lord and Taylor’s on 5th Avenue, New York. The atmosphere in this department offered impulses vastly different from anything he had experienced before: We were 34 decorators from several countries: 31 homosexuals and this was completely open. Three of us called ourselves normal. Christmas parties and that kind of thing went on forever; with Japanese lanterns and blankets we sat on the floor, ate, and stuff. My boss, he was an artist, took to me. Married to the granddaughter of a former president, they had inherited a hunting lodge north of New York, and I was so lucky to be invited on weekends. What phenomenal learning all this brought me! (I)

Instead of emigrating, he returned with what amounted to a two-year comprehensive course in esthetics and retail, and a new appetite for adventure. Soon, he opened a business in the ancestral community. A close, personal relationship between an established artist and an emerging collector is no rarity in art history. The contact between the aging Edvard Munch and the young Rolf Stenersen is famous. Not only was Stenersen the cornerstone of Munch’s economy from 1920 to 1936, he also made himself useful in various practical ways (Hougen 1974). In return came access to paintings and  valuable advice. Stenersen (1946, p. 109) was told that only artists who are trying to break new ground are worth considering. Moreover, it is necessary to focus, that is, to decide on a line of art, preferably one of contemporary, unconventional, and controversial items. Whether the painter Reidar Aulie deliberately followed Munch’s example shall be left unsaid, but he did relate to our man in a comparable way. They met for the first time when the prospective

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collector was a mere boy of 10, and the relationship picked up upon his return from the United States. Geographic proximity contributed to this. The artist had ties to the local community through his wife, and stayed there frequently. At that time, Aulie’s oeuvre, organizational activities, and public role spoke loudly of his radical political conviction. The paintings were for the most part scenes from cities, railways, industrialization, and demonstrations, that is, depictions of the destiny of the masses. As many intellectuals, he was seriously distressed by the Spanish civil war and addressed violence and humanitarian issues. Although his work eventually became more expressionistic and slightly naïve, and he concentrated more on the poetic, sad, and humorous aspects of everyday life, it seems reasonable to ask why a young entrepreneur with conservative inclinations would ‘fall for’ a strongly articulated socialist artist? Ideological allegiance not their point of convergence. This was not discouraging, the artist’s local ties and use of bold and contrasting colors sufficed. Color the youth had learned to appreciate in New York. Likewise, our collector of concrete art traces his later fascinations back to youthful experiences. He asks himself how the untrained gaze of a youngster from a remote forest village in the outskirts of Europe could catch something in Vasarely’s strange and unfamiliar expressions, an artist he had never even heard of. Completely at random, I came to stop by Gallerie Denise René in Paris, and I saw these Vasarely... ‘God damn it, what’s this?’ It was weird because it was something so completely strange. I hadn’t seen anything like it, not even remotely, not in any book or magazine. Well, I hadn’t seen much of anything anyway, I was basically nothing, and I had nothing. I bought some prints, and was totally taken. After a few years, when I had earned some money, I began to buy some original works. (C)

Emotional reactions come from somewhere; what had primed him for this? He had already begun to think of himself as someone who cared about industrial design and aesthetics more widely, with a preference for the cool, unromantic nakedness of simple forms. A few years earlier, at

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16, he got himself a job at the pioneering Tandberg radio factory. After this experience of advanced technology wrapped in modern design, he observed and read and found it hard to understand why so many products were decorated with ‘unnecessary lights and buttons and stuff’. Things should be ‘clean, functional, and fine!’ Tandberg was sort of fantastic work! In the sixties, only to be allowed to come and sweep the floors there was…, yes, gosh. Then you had really come some way in this world! They made the best stuff; they did not start from the outside but from the inside. (C)

In retrospect, the job in this internationally leading company appears as the first step of demanding careers in work as well as leisure. As founder of a wholesale company trading in radios and related artifacts, the desire for things to be ‘clean, functional, and fine’ never left him.6 From the initial purchases at Gallerie Denise René in the early 1970s and through subsequent decades, his passion mainly comprised constructivist and geometric works, painting, prints, and sculpture.

Artists, Dealers, and Peers as ‘Mentors’ The Parisian dealer had other works than Vasarely’s on her walls; she knew the field and she knew ‘everyone’, not only the artists but also the customers. This was not too difficult in the early 1970s, as very few concentrated on concrete art at that time: Denise René…. yeah, she was quite something! She died recently, you know. Was she 99 or 100? What a lady—so tall, so Jewish—she looks at you as if you had not seen her in ten years. Puhh, Norvége…! (C)

There was only one peer in the country, an elderly man with a long and solitary commitment to a type of art hardly anyone understood. Seeing  He has also assembled a large assortment of radios, loud speakers, etc. Being ‘the antiques of tomorrow’, a floor in his office building is dedicated to this ‘museum’. He used to collect chairs, but gave this up because ‘the fun was lost when it became fashionable’. 6

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things through his eyes and listening to his reminiscences gave clues to vision and emotion: To enter his amazing house, to be allowed to talk to this original, rarely sober old man who really had something… He had vision; yes, he could see pictures! He bought Vasarely and Soto and Cruz-Diez before anyone knew who they were, and Camargo. Sometime in the early 70s, he was ‘festspill’ exhibitor.7 Sadly, it was all lost. I bought something from his collection, but the whole thing was just ‘buzzed’ away. (C)

At a later and more mature stage another source of inspiration appeared. After having bought a picture by the internationally prominent Swedish artist Olle Bærtling from a gallery in Malmö, our collector phoned him and asked if it would be possible to visit. ‘Of course’, was the answer, ‘Norr Mälarstrand’. I have met many artists, Bærtling not least, my big hero! To meet him, that was.... He spoke like this... (mimics measured and ironic speech). He was so arrogant! Lisa, his wife was there and little else. White paper on the floors so as not to interfere with colors and stuff. After that, I went at least ten times. We had a ritual. First dinner, either at Gyldene Freden or Operakällaren, then to the Sheraton bar to buy Irish coffee and look at the whores, never buy. I am colorblind—everyone claims it is green over there, I see it as as yellow as it gets—so was he. He could say things like: ‘With this painting a new culture arrives!’ Actually, he was not very interested in other artists’ works, did not really want to talk about it. If I asked ‘what do you think about Vasarely, Bærtling?’ He could reply ‘bathroom wallpaper!’ That was it! I have taken good care of his letters; what he could say in three lines! (C)

This artist’s unsentimental, uncensored, original, and precise reflections on art and the world at large generated insights and remained with the collector as stimulating anecdotes. Again, an aging artist, about 70 on the first visit, and a young collector, not yet 30, developed a close relationship for mutual enrichment. The distance from Oslo to Stockholm is not great  ‘Festspill’ is a yearly festival of international acclaim in Bergen, Norway, mostly featuring classical music but also some theater and visual arts. 7

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geographically nor culturally, and they could share the subtle nuances of language, humor, and art. Over time, their splendid moments and more or less sober conversations served as an advanced course in artistic vision and sense of quality. By 2011, as many as 13 Bærtling works were included in his collection, and more came later on. Personal contact with artists was equally important to the inter-war collector. The European art market had been booming during the war years and a short period afterwards from lack of other investment opportunities, but this did not last (Høisæther 1998). Later on, the notion was that demand had to be cultivated. Some artists helped each other, while others remained in the cold for personal or artistic reasons. Henrik Sørensen, respected rector of the National Academy of Fine Arts, promoted Aulie and a few others. From the established artist’s point of view, a young entrepreneur from a sound background, willing to let his tastes be guided and groomed, must have been most welcome. Aulie promised that ‘there would be advantages’ if the efforts came to something. The explicit condition was that his works should remain a unit.8 In the early years, the two visited other artists; talked about the point of collecting, and discussed assessments of art: what is good and what is bad; what is of lasting value, and what is not. We went to these artist friends of his: Aleksander Schultz, Kai Fjell, Erling Enger, and I noticed they all had homes filled with art and antiques. Aulie had nice things himself. ‘Yes’, he said, ‘that is what you should do. First, there will be no tax on it. Second, you will grow with it. You should aim for the inter-war-artists; they are not so expensive.’ He inspired me to buy art. He called me when he thought he had a good picture, so I could only come up. Since I was introduced, I could go directly to his friends when I began to buy. I bought a lot. (I)

From a dealer’s point of view, providing inspiration, giving advice, and granting favors are part of building a long-term relationship with a future  Aulie sold well at the time, his mind was probably more on an object-based epistemology than on income. A selection of well-chosen samples would improve future documentation and interpretation of his production. Both kept their words. Long after the artist’s death in 1977, the couple made numerous efforts to trace and acquire works that had gone astray. 8

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customer. When entering the premises of the most exclusive art and antique suppliers in the capital, the unknowing youngster from the countryside was surprisingly well received and looked-after. My informant smiles and recalls how flattered he was: I stopped by Kaare Berntsen, I stopped by Blomqvist, and I stopped by Hammarlund. They were extremely nice to me! Arnstein Berntsen greeted me personally. He came with things, for instance this small, fine Henrik Sørensen image, and said: ‘Take it home, you can pay later.’ Scary, I was investing in my own store, so I was very careful but I did it sometimes. Bought a lot there, never paid all in cash but in installments. (I)

The budding collectors were both  receptive to art, decent people, and potentially good earners in their own businesses, facts certainly picked up by seasoned dealers and artists with trained eyes. The two took crucial steps on their own account but were at the same time encouraged by experienced ‘mentors’ with self-interests.

Gratifying Social Relationships Overall, it seems fair to state that the successes of both relied on a fair amount of relational competence, in line with the general account in Chap. 2. Contact with Aulie and his artist friends brought inspiration, ideas, competence, and often the advantages of first choice and not too expensive acquisitions. Friendships emerged from this. After a while, the young collector and his wife were included in birthdays and other private celebrations with plenty of wine and food. There were parties and journeys, mostly without any explicit talk about possible transactions. The couple thoroughly enjoyed this company, exotic and stimulating as it was. They were also happy to be useful. For instance, when ‘Vinmonopolet’, the state monopoly for distribution of wines and spirits, announced a nearly 40 percent price jump on the favored red wine, they organized a van to the closest city and bought 400 bottles for Aulie. As sensible and compassionate people, they became involved also in the more  trying aspects of artists’ lives, inside and outside Aulie’s nearest circle:

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Some artists can go two, three months or more and not work because the courage is gone, to put it that way. Erik Harry (Johannessen) was like that, it had something to do with nerves. When he painted, he gave away almost everything he earned and starved himself. He sent enormous sums to Sarons Dal (Philadelphia). This was his attitude, deeply religious. Afraid of people, afraid of the press, afraid of exhibitions, he was shy that way. He told me he had the feeling that everyone was against him. If Rolf Stenersen hadn’t bought the 52 paintings, he would have burnt them anyway. Such a fine man and such fine works! Because I was in Oslo nearly every week, I spent a lot of time with him. Once I asked if I could bring a camera and film him painting. ‘No, I don’t want that’, he said, ‘but you can come’. It took him two hours to complete a picture. Applied tubes directly onto the canvas, wanted the colors to be pure, played the Grieg A Minor Concerto loudly, and was completely soaked when he was finished. ‘There are three things that will last forever’, he said, ‘that’s the word, the tone, and the color!’ (I)

Artworks trickle from the lives and minds of personalities. Both collectors are attuned to and deeply appreciative of association with people they perceive as unusual and gifted, and they like to share anecdotes about them: Well, meeting Vasarely was fantastic! My god, I wish we could have talked! But I only knew seven words in French and he only three in English. Better with Bærtling. You know, he never compromised on anything. During the last four or five years of his life, he only worked with horizontal formats. ’When I am really world famous, and my pictures cost millions, I don’t want the rich idiots to have my pictures over their ugly sofas!’ He meant it, yes, no doubt, he meant it! He could be like that. A friend told me he had met Bærtling on a Stockholm street. ‘Today, I have made one million ­kroner’. ‘What happened, did you inherit?’ ‘No. I have not sold one of my pictures!’ (C)

Like other players, both have educated themselves by reading books and journals, by studying catalogues, going to exhibitions, and engaging in dialogues with dealers and peers. Yet, their deepest source of knowledge and emotional nuance appears to be their own direct contact with artists they admire. ‘The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from it being

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imbedded in the fabric of tradition. This tradition itself is thoroughly alive and extremely changeable’, according to Benjamin (1988 [1955], p. 223). Through their personal contacts with artists, both were able to receive authoritative interpretations from the core of the living tradition they related to and cared about. By paying attention to the artists’ statements, gestures, practices, use of materials, attitudes, ways of life, and philosophies more widely, they became aware of various intellectual and emotional aspects of their preferred art, which attests to Hennion’s (2010, p. 27) theses that enjoyment/taste emerges through interactions in ways that are not necessarily transparent. In some sense, our two enthusiasts have not only collected art but also shared moments with and anecdotes about artists. Assimilating what they have to convey is part of gaining deeper access to the field, and enjoying the stories is certainly a way of extracting more action.

Negotiating a Line of Specialization Aulie’s initial proposition implied an almost ready-made line of specialization for years to come. In addition to his own works, he suggested a selection of mid-century artists, not only because they were his friends but because their works were accessible and good value for money. Chapter 2 depicts a gradual defining and redefining of tasks into a series. In this case, there was an initial master plan, sufficiently delimited to lend firm direction, yet sufficiently open to be flexible and interesting. More than once, the collector and the artist discussed what belonged and what did not belong. The expanding non-figurative movement at the time entailed paradigmatic tensions and much uncertainty: You know, this was when the non-figurative began to dominate. Everywhere, there were just flat paintings. ‘One thing is certain’, Aulie said when I asked him, ‘you have to learn how to draw before you can paint!’ He had the feeling that perhaps those who practiced this new style knew something about colors but they didn’t quite know how to draw. We also talked about Jakob Weidemann. Aulie believed he had not painted like he did had he not lost sight on one eye; he couldn’t see depth and dimensions. (I)

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Understanding quality, future prospects, and prices are always difficult. Both have bought things they found good reasons to get rid of, sold things they have been sorry for, and not bought things they regretted later on. Every collector has more or less self-ironic grievances of treasures that unfortunately slipped. One of Edvard Munch’s Madonnas and a couple of Nikolai Astrup pictures escaped our inter-war collector due to what he in hindsight considers excessive risk avoidance on his own part. Restless passion was never his style (cf. Muensterberger 1994), nor collecting as a way of showing off (cf. Belk 1995). Low profile, careful consideration, and control are the attitudes he identifies with. In the beginning of a career, some trial and error is hard to avoid. During prime years, there is always the prospect of being ‘carried away’ by the empty spaces in an established series: Yes, what shall I say, I was never fully satisfied. If you take Bærtling, ok, I lacked the one from 75–76, and just had to have it, just had to! What do you call that? (C)

Players may live to regret tying themselves too tightly to a certain line of specialization. Both consider the freedom to deviate from the main line as a value in itself. With experience, they became more certain about their theme, and at the same time more relaxed about extras. The inter-war collector deviated with a number of August Eiebakke paintings, simply because this artist once portrayed his grandparents and because the couple enjoyed the works. Likewise, the collector of concrete art granted himself costly asides that introduced a personal element in his project: Look at this blue… and the grey… (points to an immense Jan Groth textile with a characteristic line, well-placed in his home). I was probably the first private buyer to get one, believe I had to portion the cost and pay in installments over seven years. It is something about seeing the quality in things. Perhaps it’s his courage that fascinates me. Painting a line you can adjust a hundred times is one thing but weaving one for four months is something else! This really is art, so right, so confident! And the texture, it has to do with the material. People ask ‘why don’t you have this or that?’ What can I say, there are 80,000 things I don’t have. But I am a bit soft, I

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enjoy things that don’t really fit.9 I love Jan Groth; we’ve had an unspeakably good relationship! He has been world champion in letting me know if he found something out there he thought would interest me. I have hardly sent a postcard in my life, but he always bothered to buy one and put stamps on it. If anyone remembers your birthday, it’s him! (C)

The Issue of Money Being professionally involved in business, we could expect they would use their valuable contacts and knowledge to buy and sell for profit. Not so. Neither thinks of himself as an investor. Both have sold whole segments in order to facilitate new action, but fully incorporated pieces have tended to remain. Moreover, they are not in the habit of negotiating an artist’s asking price, although heavy burdens can be split in smaller portions, as the quote above shows. Overall, both have protected their enjoyment by feelings of loyalty towards the works, and by not thinking of profit: The strange thing is that the experience of these pictures never ends, they are not ‘consumed’. Every time I sit down and look, I find something new. That is why it was never an option to buy in order to sell. (I)

There are obvious financial risks in art collecting, and at some level, anyone involved will be concerned with costs and the possibility of substantial losses. To concentrate on concrete art with mostly large canvasses, select sculptures, and an international audience, is economically demanding under any circumstances. When business income is unreliable, an option is to find pleasure in less costly lithography. When income is surging, a hotly desired object may still be considered ‘outside a realistic price range’. Control, however, can be difficult: It has been dark here, it has, but that is more than 20 years ago now. And the telephone has been closed down. I am afraid this had not happened without a collector in the house. It’s not all right, not at all, I have to admit that. It didn’t come to a divorce though, actually quite amazing. Not sure  By 2011, 6 textiles were included, in addition to 11 crayons and 2 bronzes from Groth’s hands.

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how I would have taken it. Well, yeah, I have been quite an ego for 50 years of my life, so, I should repay something…. (C)

By downplaying the monetary issue, the two may be acting in line with a generational pattern. Judging from an assessment of affluent Americans, a surprisingly large segment is attracted to art. Those born before 1946 name aesthetic values and enjoyment as their top reasons for being interested. Younger generations tend to see this activity as a potential earning strategy and a relatively safe haven in a financially volatile period, while they also like to think of themselves as ‘being part of an artistic community’ (U.S. Trust 2017, p. 17).10

The Wish to Give Something Back There are various ways of giving something back to society. One way is to provide museums and galleries with relatively frequent long- or short-­ term loans. Paperwork, time, and even direct costs can be substantial. Yet, the practice is at the same time a welcome compliment and confirmation of a collector’s tastes and ability, and promotes the works as such and thereby their monetary value: Like now, when I had some pictures in Germany. They hung an extra week. Somehow, the exhibition created quite a buzz, and that is always nice. Or when the Diller was in the Whitney Museum in New York. To see it hanging there on a sea of ​​a wall, really a super-space! It was so important for me to get that picture, and then there is someone who.... Wow, it’s an ego-trip! (C)

Occasionally, a museum may ask a collector to host a special group of visitors who would like to see what hangs on otherwise inaccessible private walls:  U.S. Trust is the private wealth management arm of the Bank of America, which sponsors exhibitions, lends money to collectors against their art assets, and handles the finances of various American museums. 808 ‘high-net-worth’ and ‘ultra-high-net-worth’ Americans answered a questionnaire, 60 percent males and 40 percent females, and some were contacted for qualitative interviews. As many as 20 percent looked upon themselves as art collectors, and another 16 percent were interested in starting a collection. 10

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A couple of weeks ago, 60 of the biggest contributors to the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco came here: well-groomed Americans 75–80 plus minus. Snøhetta is drawing their new wing, you know, so they arrange a tour here. I have done something like this before but never with that many. Nice weather, lucky for us! Museums probably want such people to meet someone outside the normal beat. I love it, really. Well, most of these people are mainly vain but a few are truly wonderful. Great to meet someone that old who see and express things. They get going and feel at home! (C)

Transferring art to posterity is not always easy.11 Buying Skrivergaarden, a spacious historic house from 1898, embodied visions of making Aulie’s works a focal part of the local community and at the same time creating an embracing venue for official events and private celebrations, filled with art and antiques. After 18 months of state-of-the-art refurbishment of house and garden, a stately manor in the style of the period emerged. Surprisingly few made use of the offer. Why did people turn their backs on this opportunity? Not because of inadequate attractiveness and/or excessive pricing, as far as I could judge. Was ‘Janteloven’ at work once again, that is, the repressive equality norms I introduced in Chap. 4? Well aware of how easily provoked local people could be by high-status art, the couple had kept their acquisitions in inconspicuous places and hardly talked about their art locally. ‘This came almost by itself ’, they told me, because ‘we knew the conditions’. When Skrivergaarden was about to open, they talked and the local press talked. Whatever the reasons, the house never came to be the living gallery they had wanted. Eventually, they took the blow and sold the house. It was something to swallow, just that stuff. It could have been so nice for everyone here! Aulie deserved it, and I felt I owed it to him. (I)

 Limitations in gallery and storage space and the added demands that every object places on budget and staff are considerations that speak against acceptance. A study of attempted donations and sales to Norwegian museums between 1770 and 1970 shows  considerable difficulties (Stenseth 2005).

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In the end, the couple let the local bank take care of the Aulie collection, with strings attached, and at a professionally set price.12

Incremental, Sustained Learning Playing well takes knowledge, skills, and sensitivity. Becoming competent involves representation and utilization of several types of sources, and a combination of several ways of reasoning. The actual mixture of methods obviously varies according to type of interest within a particular activity. Navigating a high-end international, art market renders other challenges and experiences than a national market. Having a passion for art produced by young talents gives a chance to befriend the artists, whereas those endeared by old masters must find other ways of sensitizing themselves. More so, the composition of methods vary according to type of game. Physically demanding edgework evidently calls for other approaches than indoor endeavors. Ability to traverse steep mountain walls as fast as possible, in winter and without other aids than ice axe and crampons, is an extreme case in point. This is an obvious impossibility without long-term preparation of mind and body; trained sensitivity and intuitive reactions to a multitude of dangers; ability to block out distracting thoughts and being at ease with the unsentimental comprehension that the first error may well be the last.13 Despite infinite substantial differences, I shall argue that building competence in all kinds of specialized play entails a sequence of case-­ based reasoning and learning. This follows from the model presented in Chap. 2. Each action equals a separate, problem-oriented case. I use the word problem in a wide sense, as any task the player must solve in the ongoing action. A consecutive string of actions simply generates stepwise learning. Whenever a case is resolved, new experiences can be put in the ‘bank’ and become available for future problem solving. Over time, the  A few years later, the couple transferred their gift to the local community in the shape of an equally generous monetary donation for other purposes. 13  From interview with Dani Arnold, a Swiss who became famous after having ascended the 1800 meters of the northern wall of Mount Eiger in two and a half hours, a wall that had previously claimed more than 60 much better secured lives (Mangelrød 2017). 12

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series of actions amount to an updated ‘account’ of experiences from which the person can draw at liberty. Case-based learning favors learning from experience, since it is usually easier to learn by retaining a concrete problem solving experience than to generalize from it. Reasoning by reusing past cases is a powerful and frequently applied way to accumulate knowledge and solve problems (Aamodt and Plaza 1994). What our players ‘learn by doing’ is usually retained in memory, rarely in any formal archive, although there are exceptions. However, an assembly of striking objects, a record of noted achievements, not to speak of a published book (such as the mentioned Skira publication), or lists of for instance bird sightings are effective reminders, and are de facto memory systems. Thus, sustained learning in specialized play occurs through an incremental updating of an individual case base. This, however, is by no means the only source of enrichment. Much is guided by one’s own, more general domain of knowledge, by acquired sensitivity, by learning from others, and by taking collective approaches in a world of peers into account. Our art collectors have not followed any auction house recommendation, nor received any commercial guiding on how to become a successful collector, nor have they been agonizing over intricate expositions of art history. They have read books, journals, handbooks, and catalogues, particularly during early decades, and visited exhibitions, traveled, talked to and been with artists, other collectors, and museum professionals, and reflected carefully on what to acquire or not. They have basically learnt from their own case-based experiences, combined with their own ability to sensitize themselves by absorbing what their artist friends and contacts have said and done, and by touching, stroking, and becoming fond of objects, materials, styles, techniques, and colors. Artworks are experienced by both as something larger than their own lifestyle and social status, and they want to contribute accordingly, one by lending to galleries in several countries, the other by framing an overarching project for the benefit of his local community. Cosmopolitan or local in orientation, each project implies a strong public commitment. Could this be rooted in some deep-seated, personal drive? By coincidence, both grew up with a close and loving tie to an exceptional grandfather, an admired ancestor of political will and aesthetic tastes. One, a combined

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farmer and entrepreneur, won battles over the allocation of water, railway, and electricity; was involved in establishing the local bank, museum, and sanatorium; and served as major. At the age of only 41, he donated a church, a state denominational alternative to the old Methodist Church. The other was a flamboyant communist in a geographic area of many others, but with a Mercedes car, tailored suits, and silk underwear.14 He entertained distinct ideas about what young people needed to know about the world and sent his grandson off to learn. In other words, both grew up in an atmosphere of social engagement, some tension, and considerable style, and with more or less explicit expectations to become someone, not just anyone. Enterprising and energetic as both turned out to be in work and leisure, they may have internalized an implicit moral code for men (cf. Erikson 1994 [1959], p. 27).15

Concluding Comments Artworks are complex phenomena in themselves, and social differences in ‘consumption’ easily overshadow other aspects. As a prime investment object with a function in ostentatious displays, the arts are subject to considerable commercial interest. In a world of increasing inequality, the popularity of art collecting is currently surging, particularly among the affluent young who hope to combine a richer identity with a way of protecting and unlocking capital. We may note that there is some potential of public interest in this, as surveys among the well-to-do reveal that a  A not entirely unprecedented combination, though the communist Icelandic Nobel laureate Halldor Laxness preferred a white Jaguar. 15  Both passed through years of serious illness in pre-school childhood. Is an inner core of pain a common impetus for the two we have met in this chapter? Alternatively, can feelings of gratitude for having survived in good health have had its effect? Answering such questions is way beyond any sociological inquiry. Based on patient material, psychiatrists have sometimes interpreted the ‘unruly passions’ of collectors as repercussion of difficult experiences in early life, such as feelings of being marginal or having experienced shock (McDougall 1986 [1982]; Muensterberger 1994). Briefly, the involvement, intensity, and refuge an adult can find in a separate world of objects can be seen as analogous to the comfort, support, and protection a child can find in beloved toys: ‘[…] it is not enough to escape to this world only once, or even from time to time. Since it represents an experience of triumph in defense against anxiety and the fear of loss, the return must be effected over and over again’ (ibid., pp. 15–16). 14

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wish to give something back to society is not exceptional among them (U.S. Trust 2017). Thus, the two art collectors we have met in this chapter are not necessarily ‘old school’. Regardless of popular trends, different social and psychological elements are involved in collecting. Moreover, the learning process can be captivating in itself and draw responsive individuals into the game, provided they are active. Hunting for treasures is merely one exciting part of the total experience. Encounters, reflections, and existential revelations in relation to what one does outside work may not be less rewarding. Hardly surprising, those who keep going for decades tend to become engrossed. Baudrillard has a point when he claims that collected objects form an abstract system, a private totality with reference to the person: ‘The image of the self is extended to the very limits of the collection. Here, indeed, lies the whole miracle of collecting, for it is invariably oneself that one collects’ (1994 [1968], p. 12). Identities and ties have always been celebrated and announced with the help of artworks, we have learned from White (1993). A more advanced and specialized economy brings new art forms and new actors, and a prototype in our time and place is the collector.

References Aamodt, A., and E.  Plaza. “Case-Based Reasoning: Foundational Issues, Methodological Variations, and System Approaches.” AI Communications 7, no. 1 (1994): 39–59. Baudrillard, J. “The System of Collecting.” Translated by R. Cardinal. In The Cultures of Collecting, edited by J.  Elsner and R.  Cardinal, 7–24. London: Reaktion Books, 1994 [1968]. Becker, H. “Art as Collective Action.” American Sociological Review 39, no. 6 (1974): 767–776. Belk, R. W. Collecting in a Consumer Society. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. Benjamin, W. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Illuminations, edited by W. Benjamin, 217–253. New York: Schocken Books, 1988 [1955].

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Erikson, E. Identity and the Life Cycle. New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1994 [1959]. Hellandsjø, K. “Preface.” In The Erling Neby Collection, edited by K. Hellandsjø. Milano: Skira, 2011. Hennion, A. “Loving Music: From a Sociology of Mediation to a Pragmatics of Taste.” Dossier (2010). https://doi.org/10.3916/C34-2010-02-02. Høisæther, O. R. Reidar Aulie: Kunst og Kamp (Reidar Aulie: Art and Struggle). Oslo: Norwegian Publishing ASA, 1998. Hougen, P. “Forord” (Preface). In Rolf E.  Stenersens Gave Til Oslo By— Akersamlingen, V–VII, 1974. Järvinen, M. “Interview in an Interactionist Conceptual Framework.” In Qualitative Methods in an Interactionist Perspective: Interview, Observation and Documents, edited by M.  Järvinen and N.  Mik-Meyer. København: Hans Reitzels Publishing, 2005. Levitt, P. Artifacts and Allegiances: How Museums Put the Nation and the World on Display. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015. Mangelrød, N.  C. “Sklir han, så dør han (If He Slides, He Dies).” Dagens Næringsliv, 9 November 2017. McDougall, J. Theatres of the Mind: Illusion and Truth on the Psychoanalytic Stage. London: Free Association Books, 1986 [1982]. Muensterberger, W. Collecting. An Unruly Passion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. Stenersen, R. Edvard Munch. Closeup of a Genius. Oslo: Gyldendal Norwegian Publishing, 1946. Stenseth, B. Wealth Commits. Norwegian Patrons and Art Collectors’ Donations from 1770 to 1970. Oslo: Unipub AS, 2005. Thaler, R. H., and C. R. Sunstein. “Libertarian Paternalism.” American Economic Review 175, no. 6, (May 2003): 175–179. U.S. Trust. Insights on Wealth and Worth. Annual Survey of High-net-worth and Ultra-high-net-worth Americans: The Generational Collide, 2017. http://www. ustrust.com/survey. Retrieved 24 July 2017. White, H. C. Careers and Creativity: Social Forces in the Arts. Boulder, CO; San Francisco; Oxford: Westview Press, 1993.

7 ‘You can really start birdwatching in your backyard, and from there the sky’s the limit’

Birds Are Good to Play With ‘From ancient times, inquiring minds have found birds attractive subjects for study. Beyond all other creatures on earth, birds capture the eye with bright colors, the ear with music, and the imagination with the power of flight’ (Mayfield 1979, p. 168). Birds do hold a positive presence in many individuals’ lives. My own childhood memories contain long summers with House Martins jetting back and forth from their clay nests under our roof, mercilessly driven by their ravenous hatchlings; reminiscence of how we nearly stumbled on Lapwing nests when running in the meadows, not to speak of the sensation of Barn Swallows’ song and flutter combined with the fragrance from newly harvested hay.1 Observing wild birds has been an attractive recreational interest for more than a century. Today, millions worldwide enjoy this activity. How did this happen? It happened, answers Bargheer, because birds are good to play with:  The title of this chapter quotes an interview with novelist Margaret Atwood, an avid amateur ornithologist from childhood years in the Canadian wilderness where her father was an entomologist (Sethi 2016). 1

© The Author(s) 2019 L. Kjølsrød, Leisure as Source of Knowledge, Social Resilience and Public Commitment, Leisure Studies in a Global Era, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46287-9_7

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The passion for birds among bird-watchers rests neither on a marveling at the diversity or abundance in nature, nor on astonishment by the sublimity of its more archaic or aesthetically pleasing forms. What makes birds so fascinating to bird-watchers is the fact that there are ‘not too few and not too many.’ […] Birds can potentially be observed everywhere, yet nowhere are they encountered with absolute certainty. Birds are the dice of nature that pound over the game-board of field and forest. In addition to diversity and distribution, weather adds a considerable amount of unpredictability. More than anything else, bird migration is a sheer inexhaustible source of fascination. Which species will be seen in what location at what point in time is open to endless variation. (Bargheer 2018, p. 31)

Watching birds is a game, it entails the attractive combination of skill and chance.  People  get involved for intrinsic pleasures, not for political or scientific reasons, nor in the hope of shaping the cultural understanding of a certain species or engaging in legal or other battles to protect a habitat. Yet, they might end up doing all of this, depending on circumstances. Could it be that birdwatchers’ activities  provide what Huizinga (1955 [1938], p.  173) hoped for, that civilizing elements  would continue to ‘arise in and as play’? This final chapter examines if an old, widespread, and currently expanding pursuit corresponds to the main thesis of the book; in what sense are birdwatchers committed beyond their personal fascinations? As academic discipline, ornithology is exceptional when it comes to recognizing the potential value of amateur involvements. Because bird populations are dispersed, on the move and changing, professionals depend on numerous skilled and motivated observers to monitor their objects geographically and over time. Birding organizations rarely were—and are not today—mere interest groups for those who enjoy this form of nature-based recreation. A few organizations emerged long ago as political pressure groups, but most originated as disciplinary associations with an awareness of the benefits of involving volunteers. This alliance between professionals and amateurs has contributed to a growth of strong organizations, and has in due course invited individual birders into a wider scientific and political engagement. The presentation in this chapter relies on published sources, including organizations’ self-presentation on the Internet. The main emphasis is on British, American, and Nordic materials.

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A Brief History of a Nature-Based Recreation The first recorded use of the term birdwatcher appears in 1901 as the title of a book, and the verb to bird emerges a few years later (Moss 2010 [2004]).2 In the old world as in the new, an early interest in observing, or more precisely in catching, birds for other reasons than food and feathers was associated with a growing engagement in natural history. As Europeans spread across the (American) continent, species new to Western science were being found and described. […] Once collected, these specimens allowed the classification and ordering of the grand group of organisms we think of as birds. Slowly these specimens in the order Aves were mapped out to family, genus and species, and an underlying understanding of birds’ relation to each other began to emerge. The notion of species, as a tool for classification, marks an order in abstraction of birds away from the individual. (Watson 2010, p. 99)

At the time, the best documentation of any natural item was its concrete manifestation. For birds, this meant real eggs and the physical body of the bird itself, usually the dead animal with its skin and feathers removed from the skeleton-muscular system, and then stuffed. Documentation was a prerequisite for new knowledge, and reflected favorably on the contributor in terms of social status. Trophy hunters made use of their contacts in the colonies to obtain interesting items. As the state-of-the-art method to catch any animal was by the use of firearm, the period is widely known as the era of shotgun ornithology (Weidensaul 2007, p. 107). As early as 1897, a guidebook with color photographs of stuffed birds sold more than 250,000 copies (Dudley et al. 2010). Towards the end of the nineteenth century, birds were gastronomical favorites, and their feathers were in the height of fashion in women’s wear, particularly in hats. Certain species faced the risk of mass slaughter. The American Ornithologists’ Union, founded in 1883, was aware of this.  Currently, some participants prefer birding to birdwatching and perceive this term to speak of more dedication and skill. At times, the phrases ‘committed birdwatching’ and ‘casual birdwatching’ are treated as synonyms for birding and birdwatching. For simplicity and variation, I use the terms interchangeably. 2

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Audubon Societies—rather more strongly opposed to plume hunting— emerged from 1895, first in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, and from 1905 as a national society. Eight years after the Audubon magazine ‘BirdLore’ had stopped in 1888, two female members of the Boston elite decided to discourage women from dressing in plumes and instead join a society for the protection of birds (Moss 2010 [2004],www.audubon. org). A British forerunner, The Plumage League founded in Manchester in 1889, merged with the Fur and Feather League and became the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in 1904 (Penna 1999, www.rspb.org. uk). The founders were all female. Thus, in both countries women campaigned and organized against the fashion of the time—clearly, more than a slight touch of contentious politics from members of the social elite. Conservation ideology combined with the novel optical device field glasses changed the object of interest  from concrete manifestations of birds’ bodies to sightings of birds in their natural habitats  (Bircham 2007). The professional queries also changed. Ornithologists began to ask questions about bird populations. While observing individuals was still relevant, from now on each bird became part of a very much larger, unseen, and relatively unknown picture of population dynamics (Luk 2000, p. 9). Comparing the historical trajectories of bird conservation in Britain and Germany, Bargheer (2018) identifies a difference in orientation at this point. Whereas birds in Britain became ‘collectors’ items’, for birders to fall in love with, birds in Germany ‘changed from units of consumption to units of production’, they became protected because they devoured insects harmful to agriculture and forestry. Networks of both professional and amateur ornithologists began to form under the British Trust for Ornithology, founded in 1932 (www. bto.org). The major organizations did not always pursue the same policy in this respect. Early on, the British Trust for Ornithology emphasized the potential to produce scientific results through networks of volunteers, unlike the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds who argued that ­‘scientification’ of a pastime was not desirable. This changed in 1936, when the latter got a new leader. During the subsequent decades related organizations emerged in most developed countries. The Swedish Ornithological Society, for instance, was established in 1945, and the Norwegian counterpart in 1953. In the United States, the Cornell Lab of

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Ornithology took off from 1954 with the donation/purchase of a 226-­ acre farmland, set aside as bird sanctuary. As private cars became more affordable, first in the United States, then in Western Europe, a multitude of geographical locations became accessible to the middle classes. From the 1980s, cheap air travel opened a growing repertoire of tours to bird-rich parts of the world. Transnational birding has in turn inspired an increasing number of bird organizations in developing countries (see The World Directory of Bird Organizations and related sites). Today, the Internet makes it easy for enthusiasts to find an organization, and many of these have their own bulletins and journals. Some organizations cater mainly to amateur birders, others draw together scientists working on taxonomic issues, and yet others concentrate on habitats. Major organizations are usually involved in all aspects—birding, scientific research, and protection of bird species. In more recent decades, their engagements encompass tasks beyond this. To illustrate, the Swedish Ornithological Society has 25 regional branches, and roughly 100 local clubs, per 2016. Its threefold purpose is to work for the protection of birds and their habitats, conduct studies, and promote engagement in birds and birding. In partnership with academic institutions, this organization contributes to a publicly financed Internetbased system of reporting and documentation. Members can choose from three regular publications: Vores Fågelvärden (Our Birdworld) primarily addressing experts, the more popular Fågelvännen (The Birdfriend), and the scientific Ornis Svecica. The organization’s main office is located on a farm in Öland, where it owns and runs a research station and a business enterprise comprising a bookstore, a restaurant, and a travel agency arranging 30–40 trips each year to bird-rich areas inside and outside the country. Some trips are for women only, an effort to encourage female birders ­(www.birdlife.org/europe-and-central-asia/partners/sweden). Like about 120 related associations, the Swedish Ornithological Society is a partner in BirdLife International, a consortium that prides itself as the very first global nature conservation alliance (www.birdlife. org). Its strategy is to save threatened species by identifying critical land areas, and to get people involved. Bilateral cooperation between partners in developed and developing countries is their main method. The Norwegian Ornithological Society was engaged in a three-year project

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with the Ethiopian Wildlife and Natural History Society from 1988 onwards, heavily supported by the official Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD). Subsequent partners were Zambia (2004–2013), Malawi (2012–2017), and Nepal (2013–2017). The idea is not merely to lobby and pay for land protection but to decrease pressure on natural resources in general by fostering income-generating activities for the local population. In addition to direct state support, birders contribute gifts, tax-deductible up to a point (http://birdlife.no). Old organizations in this field are characteristically renewing themselves. Through subscriptions, donations, and legacies, more than one million members were in 2016 funding the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. With its 200 nature reserves, 1300 employees, and 18,000 volunteers, it had grown into the largest wildlife conservation charity in Europe. (www.rspb.org.uk). The National Audubon Society, well known for its admired Christmas bird-counting tradition,3 has used its influence to back a wider range of environmental concerns. Its staff has been involved in developing environmental protection policies for the US Clean Air, Clean Water, Wild and Scenic Rivers, and Endangered Species Acts. From the 1970s, the engagements comprised global issues, for instance, by acting as NGO in the 37th annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission in 1985, arguing in favor of a moratorium on whaling. The Cornell Lab of ornithology is a separate unit within Cornell University, financed by roughly 100,000 supporters. The unit presents its mission as ‘interpreting and conserving the Earth’s biological diversity through research, education and citizen science ­ focused on birds’ (www.birds.cornell.edu). The hallmark of this lab is to collect amateur observations worldwide for scientific use, mainly in the eBird database. The lab has also developed a sound archive with recordings of birds, bats, whales, and so on, and developed applications that help to identify species.

 The Christmas Bird Count is a census of birds, originally proposed by the American Frank Chapman, founder of Bird-Lore/Audubon magazine. Since December 1900, counts have been held during a specified period every winter, with participation open to all. The results of over 100 years of counting are available on the net (http://Audubon.org/Christmas-bird-count-bibliography). National birding organizations in several countries encourage similar efforts. 3

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Supporting research and involving numerous birdwatchers are not enough to call public attention to issues of biodiversity and conservation. A so-called BioBlitz is a spectacular and media-friendly manifestation, an intense attempt to survey all living species within a designated area and period, say 24 hours, conducted by a group of scientists, naturalists, and volunteers. Urban parks or nature reserves near cities are perfect places as blitzes are potentially more valuable as public relation than biological surveys.4 Bargheer (2018) concludes his very thorough analyses of the long-term emergence and transformation of bird conservation in Britain and Germany by noting that efforts to protect wild birds, and more recently other species, emerge as a gradual re-interpretation and re-appropriation of already existing social forms. The very practices and institutions that once made for the destruction and decline of bird species changed content. Thus, novel conservation efforts became embedded in already institutionalized social forms.

Varieties of Individual Birding Practices The term birdwatching encompasses a broad range of non-consumptive practices, such as feeding and observing birds at home, photographing birds, ringing birds, traveling to see birds, creating lists of observed species, monitoring nests, protecting bird-friendly habitats, and saving birds (Cole and Scott 1999, Cooper and Smith 2010). Some kind of listing is often part of the game. The dedicated tend to keep several lists: by specified area, by trip, by year, by life.5 A life list is a personal register of all the species one has seen with details about each sighting, such as date and location, and maybe a picture. Someone who monitors nests, may list the total number of offspring fledged from these  The first BioBlitz was held in 1996 at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens, Washington, D.C. (https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioBlitz#cite). 5  The most hotly contested small list in the US is the lifetime tally for The North American Region, a clearly delimited geographical area (Koeppel 2006, p. 192). Similar official geographical delimitations exist for other regions, recognized through criteria published by the American Birding Association and affiliated organizations. 4

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nests. This serial ordering within a defined geographical area and/or period is likely to involve active searching for species not yet included, and a desire to compare lists with peers. However, of the many million backyard birders, quite a few do not engage in listing, nor do they go on fieldtrips. Birding is simply part of the fabric of daily life: Well; I watch birds and I feed birds but I don’t go out on hikes specifically, you know, on bird tours and that type of thing and studying birds that way. But I feed them and I like to watch them and they bring me enjoyment and hopefully I bring them enjoyment (Jessica, quoted from Watson 2010, p. 157) And I just think that I’m helping them in a way, because I feel that so much of their habitat has been destroyed and is being destroyed as we speak and they are having a harder and harder time finding food. (Jennifer, quoted from Watson 2010, p. 157)

Even hardcore listers care about what happens at home. Yard listing is intimate and patient and the list ages with the person, contemplates Koeppel, adding a new species can be exciting but is not an exotic experience: … as it was in Brazil’s Jaú National Park, where Dad and I became the fourth and fifth people on earth to see the newly described Yapacana Antbird. Rather, increasing your yard list is more like eating a slice of homemade apple pie. […] Some of these personal tallies are rudimentary, with just text and numbers, while others offer photos, life histories, and counts of individual species (some birders see a bird once and eliminate it from their visual targeting, others want to know exactly how many ­Red-­tailed hawks have flown over their yards during a lifetime). (Koeppel 2006, p. 187)

Field birding takes people to nearby as well as far-flung places. In spring and autumn when birds migrate, spectacular hotspots emerge around the world. All year, pleasant nature reserves, parks, shores, woods, and fields offer a combination of attractions. Even unpleasant spaces can be attractive to birders (Schaffner 2009, Watson 2010). Sewage lagoons, for example, are spaces others would be happy to avoid, but the presence of large ponds of water are magnets for all sorts of interesting birds:

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The Ridgetown lagoons have a viewing deck, so up we went and had a look. Lots of bird activity. Ducks, such as Northern Shoveler, Ruddy Duck, Bufflehead, Gadwall, Mallards & Scaup; dozens of Cliff and Tree Swallows were flying over the water eating insects; Canada Geese and shorebirds: Dunlin, Semipalmated Sandpiper and Yellowlegs. (Watson 2010, pp. 161–162)

Organized tours are widely sought, and birders’ associations, independent businesses, and even national authorities are aware of potential economic gain. In Colombia, the most bird-rich country in the world with its 1900 different species, authorities are beginning to think of ecological wealth as an important source of national income. Moreover, bird tourism offers a potential peace dividend after the FARC guerilla signed an agreement and handed over their weapons (Bello 2017). Opportunities abound, not least for the not so advanced birders: A 7-day birdwatching tour to Extremadura, Spain. Escape the worst of the British winter and join us for a wonderful week of birdwatching amid the rugged sierras and rolling steppe grasslands of Extremadura—the ‘wild heart of Spain’. The vulture-filled skies of Monfragüe National Park, flocks of Great and Little Bustards, Spanish Imperial Eagle and Iberian (Azure-­ winged) Magpie—plus thousands of wintering Cranes! Six nights at a charming Hotel Rural, set in delightful countryside near Trujillo and within easy drive of the best birding spots. (­www.limosaholidays.co.uk/ bird)

Twitching and chasing are terms denoting the pursuit of a suddenly located rare bird. In the age of cell phones and personal computers, a rare bird can draw an extreme crowd. Hoping to secure an unexpected sighting, people drop everything else and come at a moment’s notice. Approximately 2500 traveled to Kent, England, to view a golden-winged warbler, native to North America (Dunlap 2011, p. 47). Thus, a dilemma is potential stress on the bird as well as damage to the landscape. Serious listers with competitive inclinations spend huge amounts of time in the field. Despite mobility restrictions while stationed in an Afghan war zone, Peter Kaestner was alert and hoping an Afghan Snow Finch might get pushed down from the mountains. Effects of weather is

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part of what makes the game exciting, and can lead to a sudden influx of an unexpected flock, or the tailwinds of a hurricane could trap a rare individual. The Snow Finch did not appear, there was nothing to add to his already very long list, but this highly dedicated birdwatcher still found great enjoyment: It’s been really, really incredible. The fall migration was fantastic; a front came through and I went up to the highest point on the base. In the morning alone I collected 30 species. There were huge flocks of greater short-­ toed larks flying overhead. Another great experience for me was the nocturnal migration of seagulls, which is unheard of in Central Asia. […] I get up before sunrise to catch the owls calling and at night I leave the windows open to listen for birds. I can only leave the base on official business and bird watching does not qualify. But right here at my office, which is a 20 foot shipping container, I can step outside and see exquisite sights. Once I witnessed a lammergeyer, a spectacular bird that feeds only on bone marrow, being accosted by a peregrine falcon. What are the odds? Meanwhile everyone else just walked by. (From interview with Peter Kaestner, Saha 2014)

Extending a long list can be costly in terms of time and travel, and may cause strain on other commitments. The danger is that ‘at some point you become a lister as much as a birder’, laments the saddened son of another big lister (Koeppel 2006, p. 191). The top five listers in the world have each seen more than 9000 of the world’s about 10,500 recognized living bird species. They stand out among peers and stories circulate about them.6 Even if excessive appetites are relatively rare, the serial structure may easily push competitive individuals beyond their original intentions, as noted in earlier chapters. Another and much less costly type of competition is when individuals or teams struggle to identify the greatest number of avian species within a certain area and timeframe, say within a designated 24 hours. Those who otherwise go on laidback excursions might enjoy an occasional day of sociability, physical exertion, and  Twenty-four men and only two women have each seen 7000 or more species. According to Wikipedia’s list of big listers, 22.06.2017, Peter Kaestner is number 10 and Richard Koeppel (the author’s father) is number 26 in the world. 6

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excitement. Transitions from serious listing to sports-like tallying are supposed to be rare. Rescuing harmed birds is an altogether different interest. After accidental oil spills, volunteers take on the almost impossible task of cleaning the plume of sea birds. An example of a more continuous effort is the Canadian FLAP (The Fatal Light Awareness Program) whose members aid migrating birds that fly into downtown office buildings and become dazed or otherwise distressed and drop to the ground. The fatal light in the organization’s name refers to the lights left on in the buildings at night, representing a bewildering danger for birds (Watson 2010, p. 173). Another type of conservation is the organized effort to preserve habitats. What individual birdwatchers do, then, is not one thing. The activity is quite heterogeneous. Following Watson (2010), I have distinguished between five basic categories of enactments: backyard birding, field birding, competitive birding, bird rescuing, and bird conservation. Whereas the first steps in any of these activities are easy, the next steps involve elaborate practices with different trajectories. A crucial skill in all is learning to pay attention to detail: What you’re looking for is identifying marks—color, size—so the details are important because often something will look quite a lot like something else but there will be one distinguishing detail. [...] Sound is an important component because sometimes you can’t actually see the bird but you can hear it. [...] And you can do birding by ear. You can do it and be color blind; you are listening to the sounds and looking at the patterns. There are in fact some blind birdwatchers who do it entirely by sound. (From interview with Margaret Atwood, Sethi 2016, pp. 5, 7)

Another set of essential skills concerns technology. When Peter Kaestner travels to a new area, he is accompanied by a concise, electronically generated overview of birds he might see, all of which are coded by identifying symbols and converted  into a personal system consisting of: must-see birds, desirable birds, unlikely-but-possible birds, already-seen birds, new-to-the-country (but not to his life list) birds, and more (Koeppel 2006, p. 204). Ready-made software helps birders to generate personal mini-guides, to keep track of the various lists they are working on, and to

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tackle new splits between species coming from science. Devices shrink in both size and price, making them accessible to a greater portion of the birding community. Likewise, cameras with telephoto lenses are no longer for professionals only. Affordable digital cameras are effective in conjunction with spotting scopes or binoculars. Veterans and newcomers alike relate to more information than ever before. Accessible databases and software allows storage of personal observations and production of statistics and graphical displays of their own sightings over time. New technology is clearly a key to the growing interest in birding; the game itself becomes more fun, and easy communication improves the capacity of players and organizations to stay engaged and contribute to science and politics, as will soon become evident.

 hat Constitutes a Countable Sighting, W and Who Are the Birders Anyway? Many listings are unmoderated, that is, the recognition of a sighting is a matter of collective knowledge and trust among peers (Donelley 1994, Koeppel 2006). Fellow birders control each other informally, if they can. Although much remains self-disciplining, ornithological organizations try to uphold certain standards by communicating negotiated guidelines. The American Birding Association has  for instance issued ‘rules of the game’ since 1983, revised in 1992.7 Some organizations have ‘rarities committees’ to check, and accept or reject, reports of rare species. The rarer the bird, the more scrutiny. Organizers of competitions and monitoring for scientific purposes usually apply official checklists and control systems. The value of a sighting is not straight forward; time and place  The controversial 1992 revision allowed birds to be identified through auditory signals alone. Summed up after Koeppel (2006), the guidelines read as follows: (1) The bird must be within the prescribed area and time-period when encountered. (2) The taxonomic status of a bird as a full species follows the standard for the list on which the bird is to be counted. (Different lists use different standards for different areas.) A reintroduced bird is not countable until it has become an autonomous, successful breeding population. (3) The bird must be alive, wild, and unrestrained when encountered. (4) Diagnostic field marks, sufficient to identify the species, must be seen and/ or heard, and/or documented by the recorder at the time of the encounter. (5) Birders should obey the previous four regulations. 7

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make a difference, an unexpected sighting heightens the experience and may call for a different evaluation (Watson 2010, p. 142). By defining a birder as someone who ‘has driven at least a mile for the primary purpose of watching birds or someone who closely watches and tries to identify birds around the home’, the U.S.  Fish and Wildlife Service (2009) found that female birders outnumber male, 54 to 46 percent. An estimated one fifth of the North American population 16 years and older participates, average age is 50. It is primarily an activity of white people, and the participation increases with educational level. Comparing materials from the United Kingdom and United States, Cooper and Smith (2010) expected to find relatively fewer females in competitive birding and in positions of authority, and more in what they termed supportive and participatory positions.8 The samples were quite large for the latter categories, and smaller for the former. They found striking and similar gender differences in both countries, consistent with their hypothesis.9 In other words, the internal gender patterns among birders seem to correspond to those of the surrounding society.

The Cultural Coding of an Immigrant As already noted, volunteers have contributed to professional ornithology for more than a century. Their doings are not without cultural implication; an example is the interpretation of a new arrival in Europe shortly after World War II. The rapid spreading and settlement of the Collared Dove came as a surprise, completely counter to scientific expectations. Yet, amateur observations left no doubt: Claims about the spread and distribution of the Collared Dove throughout Europe were based on the fieldwork of countless local observers and the  The competitive category compiles events or organizations indicating listing. The authoritative category contains those who train others and/or organize information. The supportive category consists of members in bird conservation organizations, and the participatory category implies enrollment in schemes that involve submitting observations to databases for use by scientists. 9  According to Cooper and Smith, the varied gender patterns reported in a variety of other studies can be reconciled by looking at the amount of competitiveness in the type of activity each study has evaluated. 8

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practice of exchange, agglomeration, and analysis through which individual observations were transformed into representations of a large-scale process of ‘expansion’. Looking out for the new bird, reporting its arrival in new places, it’s first breeding trials, and later also the development and spatial distribution of local bird populations, became the nexus of a sustained collective observation campaign. (Lachmund 2015, p. 266)

The newcomer was not framed as a harmful invader. The skepticism invading species are normally met with in conservation ecology, often calling for some kind of problem solving, was largely absent.10 By contrast, a benevolent exoticism came to characterize the public fascination for ‘the new citizen’. Lachmund (2015) explains the favorable reception by referring to two factors: the bird’s high visibility and the timing of its arrival. The new bird settled next to human habitations in countries with a dense culture of birdwatching; it could not escape the attention of a branched out network of observers. Moreover, it spread on both sides of the fresh Cold War division of Europe, and in 1952 a German journalist wrote about Gefiederte Luftbrücken (feathered air bridges), creating associations to the allied air bridge during the Soviet blockade of West Berlin. This at the time highly significant metaphor probably played a role in the surprisingly benign coding (ibid., p. 273). Thus, involvement of birders as well as the public at large contributed to an image making that rendered the Collared Dove harmless, friendly, and local. The force of the amateur is evident in many ways. Mayfield (1991) outlines various distinct roles. Some are keepers of local records, that is, they chronicle local birdlife across decades, sometimes by combing different information archives, and are thereby providing historians, ecologists, and other experts with trend information that would otherwise be lost. Some times professionals in different fields, say, in the physical sciences or mathematics, apply their knowledge for the benefit of ornithology, for example, by addressing how atmospheric phenomena affect birds in  The association of new species with damage to agriculture, technical infrastructure, and the like often leads to their demonization as ‘vermin’ or ‘monsters’. Conversely, exotic species have occasionally been welcomed and supported; an example is the English sparrow in the late nineteenth-­ century North America which was seen as instrumental in combating pest, according to Lachmund (2015). 10

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long-­distance flights. Yet, most important are the legions of individuals who make large-scale cooperative projects possible. Investigations of bird populations, migration, and reproductive success could not take place without them. But the full ornithological and ecological value of their involvements, underlines Mayfield, is not obtainable without professional analysis, the conceptual framework of biology is necessary to interpret observations.

Citizen Science in Ornithology The Cornell Lab of Ornithology maintains eBird—a Web 2.0 application that collects more than one million bird observations each month from birdwatchers around the world (Bonney et al. 2009). eBird is not hypothesis driven, as contributors are active birders who generate their own content for sharing with select groups or the public at large via the Web. Although surveillance monitoring can be useful to generate hypotheses— to detect ‘unknown unknowns’—it allows only weak inference of trends and causal mechanisms, some argue. Others emphasize that it is possible to design monitoring projects in ways that facilitate randomization and replication of sampled material, and thus improve scientific reliability and statistical power. (The debate is of cource  much richer than I can report here; see Wiersma 2010 for an overview). Currently, a more ambitious conception of the term citizen science is emerging, with studies that incorporate explicit and tested protocols for data collection, staff to advice the process, and information control by professional biologists. An example is The House Finch (Carpodacus mexicanus) Disease Survey, which engages a few hundred participants in watching feeders for signs of avian conjunctivitis. Other efforts investigate how latitude makes a difference to seasonal clutch-size, and how acid rain combined with habitat fragmentation affects populations (Bonney et al. 2009, p. 981). Since motivation is essential, project designers try to create educational outcomes by providing sources for learning  and imposing demands on contributors. For instance, those who took part in the Birds in Forested Landscapes project were required to select survey sites, describe site habitats in detail, and use playbacks of recorded songs and calls to

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locate and map breeding birds. Supporting materials in such projects may include guides for identification, manuals, videos, podcasts, newsletters, online forums, and even certification arrangements. Contributors can also make use of various graphical tools to keep track of their own observations as well as the collective status. Bonney et al. note that citizen science data will often generate findings that need more in-­depth studies and other approaches as follow-up, for instance, captive experiments are required to understand exactly how eye disease spreads among finches. Increasing use of smartphones and personal computers enhance amateurs’ motivation and ability to supply research with quick data, at low cost, and in large quantities across an array of situations and locations, which is most interesting to science in general. There are indications that ornithology is approaching a shift in methodology before, say, medicine and social science, as the utility of surveillance data has been shown to approximate that of targeted data for several bird species (Munson et al. 2010).

Agency in Environmental Conflicts The ‘hero’ of the acclaimed novel Freedom by the Jonathan Franzen (2010) is a bird lover who wants to save the habitat of one rare species of warbler. To achieve this, he strikes an idealistic yet extremely destructive deal with an industrial actor and ends up sacrificing mountains and destroying rivers. As in fiction, birders wield power in real life. Calls to action on behalf of birds clearly incite people. When the New York Daily News printed a story about the killing of snowy owls in New York airports, with follow-up articles contrasting the policy of the New York airport authorities with the more humane and nature-friendly approach taken by the managers of Logan Airport in Boston, the news spread rapidly on Facebook. A fierce outrage ensued, followed by a phone campaign and petition, making the responsible authorities reconsider. A blogger summed it all up: ‘Beware the wrath of the birding legions’ (Life, Birds and Everything, posted December 10, 2013). Hurting birds inspire the use of voice. The public’s response to the snowy owl story is not an isolated incident, rather an emblematic illustration of how the destinies

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of birds have become compelling visual signs in political communication. An influential model exists from the not too distant past. Silent Spring was the title biologist Rachel Carson (1962) gave her account of the environmental hazards that would predictably follow widespread use of the pesticide DDT. The deliberately provocative title was intended to summon decision-makers to rapid action against potensially devastating consequences of long-term accumulation of this highly toxic substance in nature.11 Presently, the destiny of rare as well as more common bird populations have evolved into symbolically important information carriers about local and sometimes global environmental conditions. Disputes over natural resources may be highly complex with insufficient science, ambiguous legislation, and conflicts between several categories of stakeholders with incompatible values and interests, at least in the short run. As birdwatchers are resourceful, well-educated middle class people who belong to politically sophisticated special interest groups, they are prone to enter such disputes. A controversy over the Atlantic horseshoe crab (Limulus Polyphemus) is a case in point (Odell et  al. 2005).12 Millions of migrating shorebirds stop to feed on the enormous amounts of surplus eggs from horseshoe crabs that float to the surface of the waters in Delaware Bay during May and June. This food supply is critical; at least 11 different species regain as much as 40 percent of their body weight. Considered as one of the natural world’s greatest spectacles, the phenomenon attracts between 6,000 and 10,000 birders each year, in addition to eco-tourists and other interested observers. However, the ­sustainability of the arthropod is precarious because it is in the center of a web of interactions involving clam harvesters, several types of commercial  fisheries (of bait, whelk, and eel), and biomedical industries, in  addition  to environmental organizations, scientists, and resource managers. Each category with its own attitudes, and several with economic interests. In Delaware Bay, a battle was fought between birdwatchers’  The US National Audubon Society flags conservation broadly and commemorates the scientist by selecting outstanding women from any relevant field to receive its Rachel Carson Award. 12  Horseshoe crab is an arthropod, most closely related to the extinct trilobites. Closest living relatives are spiders and scorpions. This ‘living fossil’ exists primarily in the shallow coastal waters of the North Atlantic, less than 30 meters deep. The largest population occurs in Delaware Bay, although they are in other locations too, including Cape Cod Bay (Odell et al. 2005, p. 736). 11

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organizations and commercial fisheries. In Massachusetts, another area with valuable and vulnerable horseshoe crabs, lawsuits revolved around jurisdictions more widely. Although punctuated by fragile, short-term settlements, says Odell et al. (2005, p. 737), conflicts continue to erupt in both locations. Do birdwatchers really care about birds as birds and nature as nature? Bargheer (2011) believes they do not because categories such as birds and nature are mere abstractions. Abstract terms simply assimilate concrete objects under a heading; they do not create the deeper kind of insider meaning which refers to lived experience: For the outsider, the meaning travels from the abstract concept to the concrete object, while for the insider the process runs the other way around. Bird conservationists care about birds as much or as little as those of us who are not engaged in bird conservation. What they care about are the Rooks that picked at the cabbages planted in their garden last fall, or the Kingfisher they saw on June 17th, 1954, during a family vacation when they were kids. (Bargheer 2011, pp. 319–320)

A study of local environmental knowledge among active birdwatchers compared to other categories who practice outdoor recreation suggests that they are in the high-end of learning and that their gaming actually makes a difference to their ecological awareness (McDaniel and Alley 2005). Even if insiders generate meaning and learning from what is specific and experienced, their concerns seem to go beyond this. An experienced birder who never actually saw the spectacle of millions of migrating shorebirds in Delaware Bay can nevertheless imagine what it is like, and may even be able to make an educated guess about the consequences of the lost calories for the birds’ reproductive success. In other words, having trained and sensitized their cognitive and emotional capacities, birdwatchers can most likely extend what they know and feel from their own experiences to birds more widely. If this is correct, they are better primed to make environmental contributions than other citizens are. Certainly, what birdwatchers and other players find meaningful and engaging on the individual level will vary. However, a large number of

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differently inclined enthusiasts, all with some willingness to contribute financially and otherwise, may be enough to have political impact.

Concluding Comments Throughout human history, birds are ascribed social meaning. There are totem birds, heraldic birds, legendary birds, and birds that bring omen, to mention a few. In British medieval churches, bird and animal sculptures were carriers of moral messages: while the parson was there to instruct the congregation through the ears, the sculptures would instruct more effectively through the eyes.13 Moreover, from the beginning of historic time, interpreting birds’ behavior has been a way of making politically difficult decisions.14 In modernity, birds, or rather bird populations, are once again bearers of signs. Birds are for the most part easy to like and emotionally touching. As imagery, they are effective in political communication and mobilization. Today, their ecological destiny carries politically important messages about far more than the birds themselves. We have seen how the interactive possibilities of the Internet combined with the widespread use of small digital appliances, apps, and interactive databases augment individual birdwatchers’ engagement and create new scenarios for science. Only eBird, the Web application maintained by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, registered more than 84 million observations in 2016 alone (http://ebird.org/content/). With the help of amateur birders, professional ornithology documents shifting  Collins (1913, p. 33) connects the codes to the Bestiaries, the natural history books of the Middle Ages. The peacock cries out in fear when it awakes because it dreams that it has lost its beauty. Likewise, the Christian must fear to lose the good qualities with which God has endowed his soul. Thus, it teaches the congregation a lesson in humility. 14  Until 300 BC, only patricians in ancient Rome could become augurs. Plebeian assemblies on the other hand, had little influence as to whether a certain law, festival, election or war should occur (Guillaumont 1984). There were coexisting sign-systems. Ex caelo (from the sky) which involved observation of thunder and lightning, and ex avibus (from birds), involving two classes of birds. Oscines (ravens, crows, owls, and hens who gave favorable or unfavorable auspices via their singing), and alites (eagle, vulture, and others who gave auspices via their flight). The meaning of sounds and movements varied according to circumstances and time of year. Ex tripudiis (from the dance of birds feeding, often chicken) was mainly a military method of investigating if the gods approved of some planned action. 13

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population sizes over time and provides understanding of birds’ life cycles, their interrelationships with the wider environment, and much more. Today, major ornithological organizations have given themselves a broadened mandate, penetrated by political concerns for wildlife and biodiversity more widely, at times with a global reference. Some organizations have transformed themselves into international entrepreneurs, able to wield power as environmental NGOs. Overall, the case of birdwatchers substantiates this book’s claim that specialized players become politically committed citizens if called upon, and not plainly emerged in their own worlds. Their territory is increasingly politicized. Ecological and social forces create novel landscapes for their organizations, and public opinion plays along. The snowy owl story illustrates the potential for rapid action through the Internet. Behind much of this political and scientific mobilization is the combined contribution of volunteer work and financial support from individual birdwatchers. Conflicts over habitats and scarce natural resources as well as activism in conjunction with environmental policies are often funded by birdwatchers’ contributions.15 An apparently innocuous form of leisure can double as a medium for political engagement and activism, I argued in Chap. 5. Players who initially sought each other for practical and get-together reasons find themselves targeting an aspect of society, adapting a specific position in relation to it, and articulating a distinct goal bearing on some interest which is not their own in a narrow sense. It is not surprising that amateur ornithologists find themselves with significant participation on behalf of wider goals as they are knowledgeable and well organized, and thereby politically resourceful in a classical sense (cf. Rokkan 2009 [1966]). Modern citizens are clearly attracted to inventive endeavors outside the normal rounds. Rising levels of education, longevity, money to spend, elaborate markets, and expanding access to the Internet are all associated with increasing involvement in varieties of complex and creative leisure  Created in 1932, the Migratory Bird Conservation Commission and Conservation Fund started to sell federal duck stamps as a required license for hunting migratory waterfowl, a source of income, which has contributed to protection of large wetlands and habitat for the U.S. National Wildlife Refuge System (Rubio-Cisneros et al. 2014, p. 2). Birdwatchers on the other hand were asked to contribute voluntarily, which they continue to do in this and numerous other ways. 15

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and the corresponding growth in distinct  social worlds. Taylor (1989) describes the relationship between play and reality in Western societies as a profound opposition between disengaged instrumentalism and a Romantic or modernist protest against it: Emergence of an instrumentally oriented society—one in which a utilitarian value outlook is entrenched in the institutions of a commercial, capitalist, and bureaucratic mode of existence—has emptied life of its richness; there is no more room for virtue, heroism, or higher purposes in life; the world is transformed from being a locus of the ‘magic’ to simply being a neutral domain of potential means to ends; passion is lost, and artifacts and relationships no longer give any deep and strengthening sense of purpose. Against this stands a growing conception of the creative imagination. Commitments to art, aesthetics, experiences of nature, and many other varieties of adventure are perceived as more authentic and compatible with morality. Possibly. What in any case seems obvious is that if we are to understand contemporary society more fully, social science and philosophy have to provide better assessments of the complex and creative adventures people engage in outside work. I hope this book has managed to convince its readers that studying individual and societal implications of such involvements will be well worth the efforts. Surprising and democratically relevant assets emerge through play.

References American Ornithologists’ Union. http://www.americanornithology.org/content/aou-history. Retrieved 8 January 2018. Bargheer, S. Moral Entanglements: The Emergence and Transformation of Bird Conservation in Great Britain and Germany, 1790–2010. The University of Chicago: Dissertation submitted to The Faculty of the Division of The Social Sciences, 2011. Bargheer, S. Moral Entanglements: Conserving Birds in Great Britain and Germany. Chicago: The University of Chicago, 2018. Bello. “Bird-watching in FARCland.” The Economist, 8–14 July 2017. BioBlitz. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioBlitz#cite. Retrieved 10 July 2017. Bircham, P. A History of Ornithology. London: Collins, 2007.

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Bonney, R., C. B. Cooper, J. Dickinson, S. Kelling, T. Philips, K. V. Rosenberg, and J.  Shirk. “Citizen Science: A Developing Tool for Expanding Science Knowledge and Scientific Literacy.” BioScience 59, no. 11 (2009): 977–984. British Trust for Ornithology. https://www.bto.org/. Retrieved 19 April 2017. Carson, R. Silent Spring. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1962. Christmas Bird Count Bibliography. http://Audubon.org/Christmas-birdcount-bibliography. Retrieved 19 April 2017. Cole, J., and D.  Scott. “Segmenting Participation in Wildlife Watching: A Comparison of Casual Wildlife Watchers and Serious Birders.” Human Dimensions in Wildlife 4, no. 4 (1999): 44–61. Collins, M.  A. Symbolism of Animals and Birds Represented in English Church Architecture. New York: Mcbride, Nast & Company, 1913. Cooper, C. B., and J. A. Smith. Gender Patterns in Bird-related Recreation in the USA and UK. Ecology and Society 15, no. 4 (2010). http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol15/iss4/art4/. Cornell Lab of Ornithology. http://www.birds.cornell.edu/page.aspx?pid=2752. Annual Report and Financials 2016. Retrieved 19 April 2017. Donelley, P. “Take My Word for It: Trust in the Context of Birding and Mountaineering.” Qualitative Sociology 17, no. 3 (1994): 215–241. Dudley, S., T. Benton, P. Fraser, and J. Ryan. Rare Birds Day by Day. London: T & A. D. Poyser, 2010. Dunlap, T. R. In the Field, Among the Feathered: A History of Birders & Their Guides. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Franzen, J. Freedom. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010. Guillaumont, F. Philosophe et augure, recherches sur la théorie cicéronienne de la divination. Bruxelles: coll. Latomus, 1984. Huizinga, J. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Boston: The Beacon Press, 1955 [1938]. Koeppel, D. To See Every Bird on Earth: A Father, a Son, and a Lifelong Obsession. New York: A Plume Book, 2006. Lachmund, J. “Strange Birds: Ornithology and the Advent of the Collared Dove in Post-World War II Germany.” Science in Context 28, no. 2 (2015): 259–284. Life, Birds and Everything. Blogging about Wild Things that Make My Heart Sing. Blog posted 10 December 2013. https://fieldguidetohunmmingbirds. wordpress.com/category/activism. Retrieved 13 March 2017. Limosaholidays. http://www.limosaholidays.co.uk/bird. Retrieved 30 May 2017.

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List of Birdwatchers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listofbirdwatchers. Retrieved 22 June 2017. Luk, T.  W. “Beyond Birds: Biopower and Birdwatching in the World of Audubon.” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 11, no. 3 (2000): 7–39. Mayfield, H.  F. “Commentary. The Amateur in Ornithology.” The Auk 96 (1979): 168–171. Mayfield, H. F. “The Amateur: Finding a Niche in Ornithology.” Nebraska Bird Review 59, no. 2 (1991): 38–42. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/nebbirdrev/416. McDaniel, J., and K. D. Alley. “Connecting Local Environmental Knowledge and Land Use Practices: A Human Ecosystem Approach to Urbanization in West Georgia.” Urban Ecosystems 8 (2005): 23–38. Moss, S. A Bird in the Bush: A Social History of Birdwatching. London: Aurum Press, 2010 [2004]. Munson, M.  A. et  al. “A Method for Measuring the Relative Information Content of Data from Different Monitoring Protocols.” Methods in Ecology and Evolution 1, no. 3 (2010): 263–273. National Audubon Society. http://www.audubon.org. Retrieved 19 April 2017. Norsk ornitologisk forening (Norwegian Ornithological Society). http://birdlife.no/. Retrieved 7 February 2017. Odell, J., M.  E. Mather, and R.  Muth “A Biosocial Approach for Analyzing Environmental Conflicts: A case Study of Horseshoe Crab Allocation.” BioScience 55, no. 9 (2005): 735–748. Penna, A. N. Nature’s Bounty: Historical and Modern Environmental Perspectives. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1999. Rokkan, S. Citizens, Elections, Parties: Approaches to the Comparative Study of the Process of Development. Colchester: ECPR Press, 2009 [1966]. Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. www.rspb.org.uk. Retrieved 19 April 2017. Rubio-Cisneros, N. et al. “Transnational Ecosystem Services: The Potential of Habitat Conservation for Waterfowl Through Recreational Hunting Activities.” Human Dimensions of Wildlife 19, (2014): 1–16. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/10871209.2013.819536 Saha, P. “Diplomat by Day, Birding Fanatic Around the Clock. Peter Castner Takes Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count Tradition All the Way to Afghanistan.” 2014. http://www.audobon.org/news. Retrieved 7 February 2017. Schaffner, S. “Environmental Sporting: Birding at Superfund Sites, Landfills, and Sewage Ponds.” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 33, no. 20 (2009). http://jss.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/33/3/206.

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Sethi, A. “Birdwatching with Margaret Atwood—The Booker Prize-winning Author is a Lifelong Conservationist and Birder—No Wonder All Manner of Winged Creatures Flit through Her Works,” 2016. https://ft.com/ content/9e1e1506-9b04-11e6-b8c6-568a43813464. Swedish Ornithological Society. http://www.birdlife.org/europe-and-centralasia/partners/sweden-%E2%80%93-swedish-ornithological-society. Retrieved 21 June 2017. Taylor, C. Sources of the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. U.S. Environmental Directories, Inc. The World Directory of Bird Organizations and Related Sites. http://earthdirectory.net/birds. Retrieved 21 June 2017. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Birding in the United States: A Demographic and Economic Analysis. Addendum to the 2006 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation. Report 2006-4, 2009. Watson, G. P. L. Multiple Acts of Birding: the Education, Ethics and Ontology of Bird Watching in Ontario. Doctoral Dissertation, York University, Toronto, 2010. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10315/6363. Weidensaul, S. Of a Feather: A Brief History of Birding. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2007. Wiersma, Y. F. “Birding 2.0: Citizen Science and Effective Monitoring in the Web 2.0.” Avian Conservation and Ecology 5, no. 2 (2010): 13. http://www. ace-eco.org/vol5/iss2/art13/.

Index1

A

Aamodt, A., 141 Abbott, A., xi, 51, 65 Abildgaard, J. S., 7 Abstract principles as communicators across spatial and social distances, 104 Adger, W. N., 83 Adorno, T. W., 2n1 Adventurer, The, 5 Ainslie, G., 49, 54, 80, 111 American Birding Association, 151n5, 156 American Ornithologists’ Union, 147 Arendt, H., 13, 85 Art/play as narrative available for use by identities, 124

Atwood, M., 155 Aubert, V., xi, 95 Audubon societies, 148 Aulie, R., 129, 135 B

Balzac, H. de, 27 Bang, H. P., 25, 116 Bargheer, S., 47, 145, 146, 151, 162 Bateson, G., 50 Baudrillard, J., 7, 37, 143 Bauman, Z., 74, 101 Becker, H. S., 12, 45, 123 Belk, R. W., 7, 64, 67, 68, 70, 72, 136 Bell, D., 22 Benjamin, W., 39, 69, 135

Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1 

© The Author(s) 2019 L. Kjølsrød, Leisure as Source of Knowledge, Social Resilience and Public Commitment, Leisure Studies in a Global Era, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46287-9

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170  Index

BioBlitz, 151, 151n4 BirdLife International, 149 Blom, P., 14, 109 Boltanski, L., 23 Bonney, R., 159, 160 Bourdieu, P., 6, 15, 15n12 Bråten, S., 93 Braverman, H., 15n13 British Trust for Ornithology, the, 148 Bruner, J., 94–95 Buechler, S. M., 114 C

Canetti, E., 27, 55n11 Cardinal, R., 54 Carson, R., 161, 161n11 Cave, T., 53 Chiapello, E., 23 Christensen, I., 38n4 Cicero, 22, 22n15 Citizen science, 159–163 Civil society as concept, 24 serves democracy, ix, 3, 4, 23–25, 117–118 Classic Motorboat Society, 107 Cole, J., 151 Collared Dove, the, 157–159 Collins, M. A., 163n13 Collins, R., 24, 68 Complex leisure activities, common elements in four concepts of, 61–63 Concrete art, 125, 126 Conservation ideology and issues, 148, 151

Consumption within a fantasy enclave, 62, 64, 67, 70, 72, 74, 76, 78 Contentious politics, 114, 148 Cooper, C. B., 151, 157, 157n9 Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the, 148–150, 159, 163 Costa, J. A., 64, 67, 70, 72 Critchley, S., 1–2, 7, 80 Cross-domain mapping between play and reality, 19 bringing real world fragments into a game, 8 metaphor as cognitive model, 85 metaphorical constructions, 19, 84, 89–92 Csikszentmihalyi, M., 23, 49 D

Daloz, J.-P., 90n3 de Tocqueville, A., 3, 4, 23, 24 Development of leisure careers, 7 Donnelly, P., 47, 156 Duffy, T. M., 16n14 Dunlap, T. R., 153 Durkheim, É., 12 Dyrberg, T. B, 25 E

Eagleman, D., 41 Edgework, as concept, 61, 64, 65, 69, 72, 74, 77 case of climbing, 140 Eliot, G., 15n13 Elsrud, T., 51, 86, 94 Elster, J., 21

 Index    

Erikson, E., 3, 35, 96, 142 Explanations of leisure engrossments, 7

I

F

J

Ferrell, J., 69 Fey, F., 33 Field birding, 152, 155 Figurative art by a circle of Norwegian artists from the inter-war period, 125 Fine, G. A., 11, 13, 24, 46, 102, 112, 117 Finnegan, R., 11, 117 Formlessness, human need for, 40–42 Franzen, J., 160 G

Gadamer, H. G., 48, 91 Gerhards, J., 104 Giddens, A., 7 Goffman, E., viii, 5, 5n5, 7, 36, 37, 56, 65, 68, 69 H

Hall, P., 20, 84 Harrington, B., 24, 102, 112 Harris, P. L., 17, 18, 40, 96 Hennion, A., 45, 126, 135 Hodne, Ø., 102 Høigård, C., 103 Horseshoe crab dispute, 161 Huizinga, J., 2, 5, 9, 20, 36, 62, 78, 101, 146

171

Infra-politics, 115 Inglehart, R., 114

Järvinen, M., 126 K

Kaestner, P., 155 Katz, A. N., 91 Keck, M., 89 Kjølsrød, L., 4, 63, 118 Klethagen, P., 71 Knowledge ability to demonstrate competence/knowledge, 37, 44, 63, 150, 164 double as political asset, 110, 118 as outcome of play, 45, 71 as prerequisite for playing, 3, 5, 39, 42, 45, 63, 66, 71, 141 from sources, 45, 47, 134, 140, 150 as value in itself or not, 71, 72, 79 Koeppel, D., 26, 38, 151n5, 152, 154–156, 154n6, 156n7 Kofman, S., 87 Kumar, K., 23, 24 Kvam, R., 87–88 L

Lachmund, J., 158, 158n10 Lamont, M., 20, 84

172  Index

Learning case-based, experiential learning, 47, 141 theories about quality of autodidact learning, 16–17 Levitt, P., 14, 123n1 Liminality and tournament, 9 Loewenstein, G., 6, 38, 39 Lutus, P., 88 Lyng, S., 7, 64, 66, 74 M

MacAdam, D., 103, 115, 118 McDougall, J., 54, 54n10, 142n15 Mayfield, H. F., 145, 158, 159 Mead, G. H., viii, 17, 84 Micro-politics, 116 Models of governance, 117 Moss, S., 147, 148 Muensterberger, W., 7, 27n17, 136, 142n15 N

National Audubon Society, the, 12, 150, 161n11 Nielsen, K., 7 Nietzsche, F., 87 Norris, P., 24, 116 Norwegian Ornithological Society, 149 O

Odell, J., 161, 161n12, 162 Orford, J., 7, 26 Ornithology as discipline, 147

P

Pellis, S., 26 Pellis, V., 26 Penna, A. N., 148 Perinbanayagam, R., 17, 103 Play from a biological point of view, 26, 40–41 definition of, 5 as ideological rhetorics, 62, 75–76 is losing ground in modern society, 2 as multi-purpose medium, 22, 110, 118 as type of art, viii, 8, 95 Players’ activism, cases of, 102–103, 108–109, 114, 164–165 Players’ contribution to society cognitive benefits, 18, 96 in general, 27, 164 social/political engagement, 20, 104–109 in terms of ability to negotiate distress/coherence, 17–20, 51–55, 85–91 in terms of knowledge, 14–17, 21, 44, 45, 79, 141, 164 wishing to give something back to society, 138, 143 Players politics framing political involvement, 106, 109, 110 through practical activity on the ground, 107, 110 taking on a political agenda, 105 tying contingent allegiances to democratic forces, 109 Players’ social worlds, 10–14

 Index    

agency, 104, 113, 117–118, 160 collective imaginaries/perceptions, 12, 64, 68, 91, 103, 104, 113 consequences of new technology, 112, 113 polis, 13, 83, 85 Plaza, E., 141 Political agency is diversified over time, 24, 102, 118 Priming experiences, 128 Pritchard, P., 45, 105–107 Problem solving in fiction, 17 Putnam, R., 24, 27, 118 R

Reading oneself into a game, 42 Rojek, C., 118 Rokkan, S., 164 Rorty, R., 10n9 Royal Society for Protection of Birds, the, 148, 150 Russell, B., 14 S

Sakdapolrak, P., 89 Sandberg, S., 91 Sandemose, A., 90n3 Savery, J. R., 16n14 Schiermer, B., xi, 19, 92 Schøyen, M., 46–47 Schwitters, K., 54 Scott, D., 151 Scott, J. C., 21, 109, 115 Self-actualization in leisure as expressive quests in instru­ mental societies, 26, 71, 165 as withdrawal from society, 1–4, 71

173

Sennett, R., 3, 8, 27, 48, 70, 91 Sensitizing processes in art, 45, 126–127, 140 Serious leisure, as concept, 61, 62n1, 63, 65, 68, 73, 76, 78 case of collecting, 33–35 Simmel, G., viii, xii, 5, 40, 50–51, 63, 97, 104 Small-scale social life intersects with large-scale democratic processes, 119 Smith, J. A., 151, 157, 157n9 Snyder, T., 2 Social movements, playworlds compared to, 20, 102, 114, 116, 118 Social resilience, as term, 83 Sontag, S., 27, 55n11 Specialized play action, 36–37 adaptation of the form, 42–45 flair, 38–40 series, 37–38 as social form with interacting elements, 6, 35 structure supports motivation/a string of involving moments, 48–50, 111, 112 Specialized play, as concept, 61, 62n1, 63, 66, 69, 71, 73, 76–79 Spencer, H., 5n4 Spracklen, K., xi, 102–103 Stebbins, R. A., 63, 68, 71, 73, 117n3 Sutton-Smith, B., 5n4, 62, 75, 78 Swedish Ornithological Society, the, 148, 149 Swidler, A., 50, 84

174  Index T

W

Tarrow, S., 103, 113–116, 118 Taylor, C., 25, 26, 76 ten Have, P. T., 46 Thompson, H. S., 72 Tilly, C., 24, 103, 107, 113–116, 118 Turner, V., 9, 117

Urry, J., 10 U.S. Trust, 138, 138n10, 143

Waslawek, A., 103 Watson, G. P. L., 147, 151–155, 157 Weidensaul, S., 147 Wertsch, J. V., 3, 66 Wheaton, B., 102, 103, 110, 114 White, H. C., 9, 56, 85, 95, 124 Wiersma, Y. F., 159 Williams, B., 52 Winnicott, D., 41, 41n5, 95–97 Wolfe, A., 67 Work, demands for dedication and authenticity in, 23

V

Z

Veblen, T., 67

Zucker, L. G., 92 Zweig, S., 43, 49

U