Paper short abstract:

By presenting cases of mimicking, synchronized activity, non-verbal communication, word play, silence or ignoring and direct refusal, the presentation shows the many ways in which preschool children break the rules and playfully deal with social norms.

Paper long abstract:

An ethnographic study in two Slovenian kindergartens shows the many ways in which children break the rules and playfully deal with social norms. By presenting cases of mimicking, synchronized activity, non-verbal communication, word play, silence or ignoring and direct refusal, I observe children's play through the lens of intersubjectivity and shared intentionality and argue that through these joint activities children also initiate and maintain social interactions. Helen Schwartzman (1978) noted that in order to participate in shared play, children constantly communicate their intentions to each other and recognize the intentions of the other. I maintain that children play with order and disorder, chaos and the cosmos and explore the limits of what is allowed and actually possible (Sutton-Smith 1997; Huizinga 2003; Henricks 2009). Play as such inevitably involves subversive acts through which children explore ideas, concepts and actions beyond the norms of society, whether or not society allows such exploration. In these playful actions the rules are undermined, boundaries are explored, and yet the action remains within the rules of play. In this way, play is a key experience of human existence alongside work, ritual and communitas (Henricks 2015). Like play, the ritual reflects and preserves social reality and enhances meanings (Hamayon 2016).

Paper short abstract:

The memories of this time show that during World War II, children started playing with munitions and in places where there were visible signs of war. The conflict between what was allowed and what was prohibited was sharper than ever before.

Paper long abstract:

Children of the WWII and post-war period who grew up during the occupations by Nazi Germany (1941–1944) and the Soviet Union (1944–1991) had their own assortment of games. Estonia suffered the fate of becoming the battlefront twice—in 1941 and 1944.

The memories of this time show that during World War II, children started playing in former places of action, including areas where there were visible signs of war—mines, derelict military equipment and ruins. Children and young people appropriated the tools of war—ammunition, various fire-fighting and explosive devices, their shells and miscellaneous military items.

The commands and prohibitions aimed at children were dramatically tightened, and concerned mostly areas and items that were forbidden for playing. The conflict between what was allowed and what was prohibited was sharper than ever before, but there was no way to enforce the prohibitions. The line between dangerous and safe ways of playing, as well as games and hooliganism, was thin. Depending on one’s point of view, such children's activities could be classified as hooliganism, disobedience, dangerous risk-taking and sometimes even anti-Soviet acts. The memories also touch upon accidents that happened both to the autobiographers themselves and others around them. In the memories of boys, however, the enthusiasm and joy of performing and testing their courage are ever-present.

The sources for this presentation include various autobiographical books, in which childhood events are recalled more than 50 years later; oral interviews and manuscripts preserved in the Estonian Folklore Archives at Estonian Literary Museum.

Paper short abstract:

At computer game events ritual and play are fused to become a playground for ritualized practices, community building and playful engagements, enabling participants to grow beyond their own expectations in a middle-zone between “pretending” and “believing”.

Paper long abstract:

Computer game events attract thousands of people to celebrate digital gaming culture at locally situated events. Digital communities meet in manifested settings, making the contemporary entanglements of “the digital” with everyday practices visible. Playing games is the proclaimed purpose of the events, but they also facilitate making a game out of everything, by affording playful engagements with oneself, other people, objects and processes. Being a gamer becomes a ritualized performance, that allows people to overcome perceived limitations of who they are as an individual. But playing also becomes a medium for the communicability of togetherness, being part of a collective and shaping an imagined community. While this community oscillates between strong bonds and loose temporary alliances, many people return year after year, developing ritualized practices and forming family-like relationships. This includes extensive preparations of bodies, objects and event spaces to allow an intense yet playful experience, exemplifying how the boundaries of inner spaces and “magic circles” are situatively formed and broken up.

Based on a multi-methods and multi-sited ethnography at 16 computer game conventions in Europe, I will discuss the contemporary dynamics of entangled online and offline worlds, in which the distinctions between game and ritual are collapsing. The events become a playground for ritualized practices, playful explorations and challenging encounters. Rituals are merged with games to serve community building and allow the participants to grow beyond their own expectations, combining “pretending” and “believing” to become “bigger than oneself”, in a middle-zone between ritual and play.

Paper short abstract:

How do developing burial rituals challenge authority regulation and cultural norms? I discuss ash scatterings as an arena for negotiating individual authority over death and colliding ideals of order and dignity.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I discuss how developing ritual practices exist in relation to, and in tension with, authority regulation and the law, from the example of ash scatterings and other post cremation rituals and practices.

In societies highly characterized by individualism, individuals frequently encounter opposition as the handling of human remains, burial-places and memorials are strictly regulated in law texts as well as in the rules and established practices of official authorities. Ash scatterings and other post-cremation rituals and practices offer striking examples of a conflict present in the West today; as ever growing postmodern ideals of individualistic death practices collide with the laws and routines of modernity. In Sweden, as in most of the other Nordic countries, ash practices are strictly regulated. Here I discuss recurrent cases where interviewed surviving relatives have somehow broke the rules and thereby possibly the law, as they scattered ashes in the shoreline or covertly divided it into smaller parts.

Although passage rites are held to include liminal stages of norm breaking, they are generally considered to confirm and reinforce social order and roles. There is a need for further research into how passage rites can transcend not only cultural norms but also laws and regulations. How do relatives, professionals and official authorities negotiate conceptions of authority over death? And how are varying cultural conceptions of order in relation to the remains established and challenged?

Paper short abstract:

"Naughty Games" are a previously neglected group of games played at hen parties. A number of these are subverted children's games. Their manipulation is what Boussiac terms "the profanation of the sacred". These games encourage rule-breaking for both playful and ritualistic outcomes.

Paper long abstract:

Due to its ludic nature, the hen party is an excellent event for examining the complex relationship between play and ritual. Since the 2000s, hen parties have become increasingly sophisticated rite of passage rituals, involving several different component parts, one of the most important being the playing of games. Between 2012 and 2016 I researched hen parties in Northern Scotland, gathering information on the variety of games played, as well as their purposes. My work brought to light a previously neglected group of games, which encourage rule-breaking and which I have termed "naughty games". This paper will explore how the inner spaces of games and rituals are established, controlled and manipulated. It will conclude that the hen party is a playful ritual, but that within it there are elements of ritualistic play.