Children and adults spend a great deal of time in activities we think of as “play,” including games, sports, and hobbies. Without thinking about it very deeply, almost everyone would agree that such activities are fun, relaxing, and entertaining. However, as anthropologists, philosophers, psychologists, and other social thinkers have studied the role and function of play in different societies, and among different age groups, they have developed a wide range of theoretical explanations for why human beings and many animals engage in playful activities. The theoretic questions they raise suggest that simply to regard play as fun and entertainment misses the central role that play has in our lives. For a subject that we mostly consider a lighthearted one, the topic of play as a research topic has generated an extensive and sophisticated literature, exploring a range of penetrating questions.

Play has many functions that run much deeper than simply “entertainment.” For children and many young animals, such as kittens and bear cubs, play clearly is part of the preparation for adult roles, including the manipulation of nature, hunting for food, peaceful interaction with others of the same species, or combat with those who are hostile. In humans, childhood play has many other functions as well. Among those are aspects of human interaction such as competition, following rules, accepting defeat, choosing leaders, exercising leadership, practicing adult roles, taking risks in order to reap rewards, and many others. Clearly, many childhood games and toys also assist in the learning of intellectual skills such as reading, arithmetic, and even gaining knowledge of such subjects as physics, geography, and history.

Adults engage in play and games for many other reasons besides learning. Many games and sports serve as harmless releases of feelings of aggression, competition, and intergroup hostility. Many team sports and board games such as chess, as well as many contemporary computer games, have a basis in warfare. Other games represent forms of harmlessly experiencing risk-taking, while still others, such as gambling at Poker or Blackjack and active sports such as skiing and parachuting, can involve actual risks to fortune, life, or limb. Many games and toys represent forms of mastery over nature itself, and their ancient origins suggest ties to religion or to cycles of nature, such as planting and harvesting. The keeping of pets and playing with them can be seen as aspects of mastering nature.

When such aspects of why we play are considered, the topic takes on a new light, going to questions about the [Page xi]very nature of the human condition. Do we play in order to avoid danger, or to experience it? Do we play as an escape from work, or do we work to engage in another form of play? Some people seem to be employed only in order to earn enough money to be able to enjoy their play activities, such as surfing, skiing, bowling, skydiving, or mountain climbing. Others indulge in a few sports and games only as a momentary escape from their workaday lives. Still others derive most or all of their income from an activity that for others would seem a form of play, such as artists, musicians, and athletes.

Looked at as something common to the whole of humankind, play takes still greater significance. Every culture, it seems, has some unique forms of play, and most cultures seem to share some fundamental types of games and play. Such children's games as Leapfrog, and Rock Paper Scissors (or “Rochambeau”) are found all over the world. Are such worldwide forms of play a reflection of the spread of cultural artifacts from one society to another, or are the similarities in games, sports, and toys the result of varied reflections of the same underlying human nature expressed in similar ways in diverse cultures? Perhaps such common games represent both dispersion of culture and the underlying structure of human nature. What are the precise reasons why some games, toys, and sports have flourished and survived, while others appear to have died away with the passage of time?

Some games, such as Chess and Backgammon, appear so perfectly conceived and developed that they have been played for centuries, while others, such as the gambling game of Faro, have had much shorter lives and have been largely supplanted by others. The historic origin of many games is known, while others remain shrouded in mystery. For example, we know that playing cards appeared rather suddenly in Europe around 1380 ce., but whether the idea of cards had been introduced from Asia, or whether they grew from fortune-telling decks, or whether fortune-telling tarot decks were a later development, is the subject of historical inquiry.

One of the earliest theoretical treatments of play is that of the Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga (1872–1945), in his 1938 work Homo Ludens. In that study, Huizinga suggested that play as a form of contest involves both cooperation (in agreeing to rules) and competition (in leading to winners and losers). Play becomes a surrogate or harmless expression of the exercise of power. Another early writer who thought deeply about play was the Russian Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934). Among his contributions was his view that play represented ways of internalizing and understanding the world, and as such, play was an essential element in learning. Vygotsky's work underwent a revival in the West, with translations published in the 1960s and 1970s. Many modern educational psychologists have expanded on, or criticized, some of the perceptions and concepts brought up by Vygotsky. Jean Piaget's (1896–1980) monumental work, Play, Dreams, and Imitation provided structural criteria for evaluating play's development and the useful idea that play often consolidates new learning, even though play is not the domain where children actually learn.

Using a different lens, Vygotsky gave to play a more important role, namely, the role of leading edge of development because play helps young children go beyond thinking solely in terms of what they can perceive directly in front of them and to think in terms of what they can imagine.

The New Zealand-born educational theorist Brian Sutton-Smith (b. 1924) has studied play, using many ideas and concepts derived from the study of rhetoric. During an extensive academic career at Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania, he produced numerous works on the subject of play, including The Ambiguity of Play (1997). Sutton-Smith sees seven different kinds of rhetoric at work in the “discourse” of play. Some rhetorics hold that play is a kind of adaptation, teaching skills or easing the passage or induction into different communities.

Another view of play is that it is an expression of power, pursued in contests of prowess. Still another view holds that play is an expression of the working of fate or “Lady Luck,” as expressed in games of chance like Bingo, Poker, and Blackjack. Under another rhetoric, play is an extension of daydreaming, enacted in art. For some, play is just frivolity. In our modern society, adults tend to define play as a rhetoric of progress toward adulthood, whereas children have an entirely different rhetoric of play as a highly prized frivolous activity.

Those ambivalent aspects of play often come into conflict in our times, but they need not. Sutton-Smith, now retired, has served as a consultant to television [Page xii]shows such as Captain Kangaroo and Nickelodeon, as well as to the Philadelphia “Please Touch” Museum.

Educators have struggled with these underlying issues of the function of play as they attempt to capture the magic of play and harness it effectively in learning situations. Sometimes those efforts succeed, but the fact that children seek out and play games that are not always approved by adults, such as “playing doctor,” or engaging in dangerous activities such as climbing trees or clandestine swimming parties outside of adult supervision, suggests the underlying truth of Sutton-Smith's view of the ambiguities of play. Clearly, playing with an educational puzzle and roughhousing on the playground represent two entirely different “rhetorics” of play.

In this encyclopedia, we have gathered together an international group of scholars and writers to provide access to the fascinating literature that has explored such questions of psychology, learning theory, game theory, and history in depth. In addition, we have provided entries that describe both adult and childhood play and games in dozens of cultures around the world and throughout history. Through articles about cultures as diverse as the ancient Middle East and modern Russia and China, and in nations as far-flung as India, Argentina, and France, the reader will find a guide to the common childhood and adult games and toys.

As one might expect, many countries and cultures have adopted similar games. In many countries, for example, one can find variations on the famous American game Monopoly, with street names from diverse cities substituting for the familiar street names of Atlantic City, such as Boardwalk and Park Place. Games such as soccer have spread almost all over the world, while others, such as American baseball, have penetrated only a few societies.

With its diversity of approximately 450 entries, this unique encyclopedia provides access not only to the sophisticated analyses of social thinkers like Huizinga, Vygotsky, and Sutton-Smith but to the wide variety of games, toys, sports, and entertainments found around the world.

We have not attempted to include coverage of “professional” sports and sport teams but, instead, have included the hundreds of games played not to earn a living but to exercise all the aspects of play as an informal activity—from learning, through competition, mastery of nature, socialization, and cooperation. And simply enough, this encyclopedia explores play played for the fun of it.

One caveat: There are thousands of games around the world, and no encyclopedia can include them all. We have made an earnest effort to include the most popular and widespread games—hundreds of them—in an attempt to provide a good representation.