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- Convenors:
-
Sarah Craycraft
(Harvard University)
Katherine Borland (Ohio State University, Columbus)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Transfers:
- Open for transfers
Short Abstract:
This panel explores longstanding adult play communities: embodied practices that have developed an (often utopian) ethos and recognizable form. How might the alternative worldmaking involved in recreational practice inform understandings of folklore and performance in the era of late capitalism?
Long Abstract:
This panel explores the varieties of embodied practice that result in longstanding adult play communities: practices that have developed an (often utopian) ethos in addition to a recognizable form. Examples include Ultimate Frisbee, Contact Improvisation, Drumming and Singing Circles, Nudist Colonies, etc. How do groups engaged in voluntary, collaborative, creative, embodied practice sustain their practice over time and across space? How do participants understand their participation in a lifestyle as well as a recreational activity? To what degree are these forms codified and regulated? What are the elements of such practices that “bleed” into the everyday life of practitioners? How important are founders or founding moments to the practice? How does the physical practice encourage ways of relating that offer alternatives to socially prescribed roles and behaviors? How are members initiated into the form, policed, disciplined, excluded, ejected from it? To what degree are recently invented practices comparable to body-centered traditions of the premodern era? How might the alternative worldmaking involved in recreational practices inform our understanding of folklore and performance in the era of late capitalism? By asking these questions and exploring these forms, we turn to the body (itself politically and discursively produced) and the work that embodied practice can do in the world—a tool for unwriting, (re)scripting, and (re)performing forms of knowledge and the work of play.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper Short Abstract:
Old or odd women who stray outside gender expectations, attain power, or whose bodies don’t fit beauty norms, often seem troublingly weird, witchy, “childless cat ladies.” We’ll examine inspiring moments of women (re)finding voice and ways to play, fly, sing, build worlds, and celebrate existence.
Paper Abstract:
Women considered odd, weird, and/or old are often distrusted, hated, or harmed, because their very existence troubles patriarchy, historically. Women’s bodies are held to different standards of aging and beauty than men’s, and women who stray outside gender expectations or attain power are “unwritten” as weird, witchy, maybe “childless cat ladies.” Nevertheless, many memes, jokes, parodies, performances, and stories revise such conceptions (unwriting the unwriting) into celebratory, playful, moments of cultural resonance despite dark times. Wit and will, often playfully employed, are key to (re)conceiving gendered and embodied “weirdness.” Many women called “witch” have been killed or harmed for seeming irritating, aggressive, inconvenient, old, or “weird,” which since Shakespeare’s weird sisters mostly evokes troublingly powerful witches. Yet jokes, memes, songs, popular culture, contemporary fiction, etc. lean into and (re)consider such notions, playfully, demonstrating resistance and ways women matter. Kamala Harris (whose laughter irked many), RBG, some pop-culture witches and other weird characters are (re)claiming and (re)configuring “weirdness” in playful, hopeful ways. Wicked’s Elphaba transforms the wicked witch, the weird woman, into a hero, who sings and flies (modes of play) joyfully, resistantly. Historically rare, such main characters are growing in popularity and power, magically unwriting and (re)building, during difficult times. Recent hopeful pop culture representations of women are magically transforming, (re)writing gendered possibilities for women to survive and thrive hopefully despite profound challenges. Women are taking up space, using bodies and voices (singing, laughing, flying, playing), (re)engaging agency to (re)embody persistence and joy.
Paper Short Abstract:
Subcultural space Tukikohta fosters grassroots cultural activity. This presentation examines it through the concept of heterotopia, focusing on the dominant values shaping the space and the practices that are adapted to sustain these values, such as safer space rules and harassment contact persons.
Paper Abstract:
Tukikohta, a former depot facility in Oulu, Finland, functions as a social space for grassroots cultural activities, offering rehearsal spaces for bands to play and office facilities for various associations. One of its central events is the annual punk festival, Hässäkkä-Päivät.
This study is part of a broader article-based dissertation examining urban grassroots participation in Oulu, the European Capital of Culture for 2026. In exploring Oulu’s cultural landscape, I observed that Tukikohta—widely regarded by its participants as a subcultural space—holds significant importance within the local cultural scene. In July 2023, I participated in the festival as a volunteer and collected ethnographic research data, including a field diary, recorded interviews with participants, and photographs.
The study investigates the significance of subcultural spaces for festival participants and the cultural practices emerging within Tukikohta. To understand the values of this “alternative space” I applied discourse analysis to transcribed interviews, drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia—an “other” space functioning as a counter-space distinct from its surroundings.
This framework highlights how participants perceive Tukikohta in relation to other cultural venues. Initial findings suggest that independence—rooted in creative participation and a non-profit ethos sustained by communal voluntary work—and inclusivity—reinforced through harassment contact persons and safer space policies—are core values of Tukikohta. The space operates as an alternative to commercial festivals, bars, and clubs, which participants see as unable to sustain these values.
Paper Short Abstract:
This paper explores the dynamic relationship between religion and play in Slavic Native Faith, where play is an integral part of ritual practice. Drawing on ethnographic research, it examines how bodily engagement blurs the distinction between play and religious ritual.
Paper Abstract:
This paper explores practices relating to pre-Christian times among members of contemporary religious groups. While historical reconstruction undoubtedly falls into the category of play, in the case of Slavic Native Faith, play goes beyond an attempt to recreate the past. It is considered one of the codified elements of religious ritual, which is reflected in both practice and the understanding of play. Drawing on ethnographic research in Poland, this paper presents a diverse range of activities, including feasts, joint singing, wrestling and tug-of-war, workshops where ritual objects are crafted, such as masks for Forefathers' Eve, or garlands for Kupala Night. The question is how to describe the relationship between religious practice and play among the believers, and how they themselves perceive this interplay. Religion constructs the body in play and the activities undertaken by the participants have a specific ritual purpose. Elements of play and ritual frequently overlap, making it challenging to distinguish between them. Following the body and focusing on the body during play reveals this fluid and ambiguous boundary, particularly when the bodies of the participants are “shared with the gods”. At the same time these activities follow structured rules and take place in a playful atmosphere. Furthermore, these practices reflect historical notions while adapting to the contemporary needs of Slavic Native Faith believers. Play within religious practice also functions as a form of embodied training, fostering friendly competition, connection with nature, and relationship-building within the group.
Paper Short Abstract:
Contact Improvisation, as a dance-based investigation of the physics of weight sharing, momentum and touch, has migrated from the U.S. across the globe, with centers of practice on many continents. How do communities establish and sustain themselves, given the form’s anti-capitalist, nonheirarchal ethos? Case studies will be shared.
Paper Abstract:
The dance form called Contact Improvisation developed as an investigation into the physics of weight sharing, momentum and touch during the 1970s, and has since migrated around the world, attracting postmodern dancers, body workers, those interested in alternative and self-organizing communities, play enthusiasts, and others. It differs from adjacent practices, such as yoga and contemplative dance in being an intentionally unpatented and noncodified form. One does not get certified to teach Contact or to host contact jams, retreats or festivals. In keeping with the principals of radical inclusivity, contact workshops, jams and retreats are typically donation-based or offered at cost. Nevertheless, the dance has taken root and been maintained over decades in locales throughout the U.S., Europe, South America, Asia, and Australia, well beyond the influence of the form’s U.S. founders. In this presentation I will explore the qualities necessary to introduce and sustain a practicing Contact community over time. How, given the anti-capitalist ethos of Contact, can skilled practitioners continuously create new generations of dancers? After defining the jam as the quintessential form of the practice, I will present case studies of established scenes in cities like Melbourne, Chicago, and Montreal as well as smaller locales, such as Mazomanie, Wisconsin and Calca, Peru to explore the structuring principles for the community of practice, recognizing that tensions exist between the many ways that Contact is currently appreciated and understood.
Paper Short Abstract:
Iceland’s municipal pools are its largest playgrounds and most interesting public spaces. It is here that neighbors and strangers encounter one another, here that society manifests itself – first nude in the showers, then in swimsuits in the water. With the first ones built in the early 20th century, the cultural history of the public pools reveals how play, pleasure, and community gradually took primacy over their original design for hygiene, sport, and survival. The lecture builds on long-term ethnography and a qualitative questionnaire combined with archival research and a quantitative survey of people’s pool habits and attitudes.
Paper Abstract:
Iceland’s municipal pools are its largest playgrounds. These outdoor, geothermal pools have no customers, only poolgoers: people of all ages, backgrounds and body types, with different postures and perspectives on life. 79% of the adult population goes to the pool; 40% of adults go to the pool regularly year-round. Only a third of them actually go there to swim; one goes to the pool for pleasure, for play, for wellness, and to be amongst others and take part in the community. The pools are the most interesting public spaces in the country, made possible by the most important public good: hot water bubbling out of the ground. It is here that neighbors and strangers encounter one another, here that society manifests itself – first nude in the showers, then in swimsuits in the water. Leaving status symbols and prescribed roles in the changing room, the pools encourage ways of relating that differ from social relations in dry public spaces. Bodies of various shapes and sizes float together in the pools and hot tubs, and everyday life stands stark naked in the communal showers. With the first ones built in the early 20th century, the cultural history of the public pools reveals how play, pleasure, and community gradually took primacy over their original design for hygiene, sport, and survival. The lecture builds on long-term ethnography and a qualitative questionnaire combined with archival research and a quantitative survey of people’s pool habits and attitudes.
Paper Short Abstract:
This paper explores the role of “spirit of the game” in negotiating community and the work/play binary, at various scales and venues, in ultimate frisbee, with the goal of better understanding how and vernacular and institutional practices are entangled, embodied, and contested in adult play forms.
Paper Abstract:
“WORK HARD, PLAY HARD”—so reads the caption of a jersey this author won at the 2011 USAU college ultimate frisbee national tournament in Boulder, Colorado, USA. While the “work/play” binary is representative of many embodied forms of adult play, “ultimate frisbee” presents a unique opportunity to understand the tension between emergent, utopian grassroots play and codified play-turned-work. A team-based, non-contact lifestyle sport founded in 1968, ultimate frisbee has long been understood within and outside the sport as counter-cultural, with concepts like “play” and “community” serving as cornerstones for all levels of competition (including recreational, collegiate, and club ultimate). Yet, ultimate frisbee is complexly and increasingly institutionalized—televised and professionalized, branded and commodified. Nothing exemplifies these tensions more clearly than discourse surrounding the sport’s concept of “Spirit of the Game,” an ethos of fair play that dictates on-field assessments of play and off-field performances of sportsmanship and camaraderie. This paper asks, what is the work of community in adult play forms, and what sorts of vernacular and institutional practices are used to negotiate and (re)define spirited play, and to what ends? Based on observation and fieldnotes from over ten years of play (international, domestic, collegiate, and recreational), this paper charts preliminary paths for ethnographic study of the role(s) and performance(s) of “spirit of the game” in negotiating community and the work/play binary, at various scales and venues, in ultimate frisbee, with the goal of better understanding how vernacular and institutional practices are entangled, embodied, and contested within and through adult play forms.
Paper Short Abstract:
The paper explores an emerging play community, the practitioners of Martial Arts around the globe. Based on my fieldwork at a Scottish HEMA club, I aim to discuss how this self-motivated group sustain itself and grows, and why people practise HEMA even though it can be a risky combat sport.
Paper Abstract:
In this paper, I will explore the Historical European Martial Art (HEMA), a globally practised combat sport, through an ethnographic study in Elgin, Scotland. Focusing on the new local HEMA swordplay club, The Elgin Broadsword Society (EBS), I examine how this ‘rediscovered,’ ‘reinvented,’ and ‘lost’ martial art is practised locally in North-East Scotland. I will discuss the practice of HEMA at EBS, highlighting the important role of pain and bodylore in codifying and regulating the practices of HEMA in this newly formed club, which has developed a unique ‘Chevalerie-like’ ethos.
For some practitioners, HEMA blurs the boundaries between history, imagination, and reality. An interesting observation from the fieldwork is how HEMA has encouraged club members with different heritages to study historical sources and collect swords, beyond the martial practice itself. While practitioners clearly acknowledge that they do not need sword-fighting techniques in the 21st century and that some aspects of HEMA are ahistorical, they view HEMA as an alternative way to experience ‘realistic’ history by wearing armour and swinging swords. To an extent, they are also ‘performing HEMA’ for themselves, as HEMA help them transcend normal life.
To summarise, this study aims to demonstrate that HEMA is more than a combat sport but a cultural practice with profound social implications, offering alternative ways of relating and understanding within the community. By situating HEMA within the broader context of embodied practices, this paper contributes to our understanding of their impact on everyday life in the late capitalism era.
Paper Short Abstract:
Founded in 1986, Monroe County Civic Theater has provided a communal space for play, exploring ideas of creativity and work, and autonomy outside of commercial theatre. As a participant-observer for sixteen years, the author has played with a broad range of hopeful actors, directors, and theatre-makers, who have collectively defined who they are as individuals and artists.
Paper Abstract:
Monroe County Civic Theater (MCCT) is an “all volunteer” non-profit community theatre group based in Bloomington, Indiana, that was founded in 1986. Since its founding, MCCT has committed to an inclusive theatre-making experience for anyone who wants to participate. Auditions do take place for full-length shows, including an annual Shakespeare in the Park offering in late spring/early summer each year, but anyone who wants to take part is included in some capacity.
The “amateur” designation of MCCT belies the extensive training and experience that many of the regular participants have. As a play-making community, the frame of the theater experience, within a community and amateur framework, provides opportunities for people of all ages to play together in ways that provide structure, but also provide scope to break out of routine and daily expressions of self. Since there is no charge for many of the shows, MCCT allows a certain flexibility and freedom in the kinds of plays and revues that it produces and supports. Still, productions require some investment in time, money, materials, and adequate spaces in which to perform. The MCCT Board (of which the author is a current member) guides the behind-the-scenes fundraising and provides another opportunity for people to play together outside of their personal and professional lives. The framing of the idea of community theatre as a space for play allows a freedom that is not as easily experienced in professional productions.
Paper Short Abstract:
The aim of this proposition is to establish a dialogue between pogo punk and roller derby, both of which reconfigure the use of the bodies of practitioners and researchers. In both cases, the acceptance of intimate proxemics strengthens the sense of community and challenges the society of the spectacle.
Paper Abstract:
In ethnographic research, the body is the privileged interface between the researcher and his social actors. Fieldwork also involves shaping the researcher's body. As part of his research into punk culture in the Franche-Comté region, Sacha Thiébaud has joined a music group and regularly goes to concerts to ethnograph dance of pogos. For her part, Orlane Messey has begun observation with a French roller derby team. Our studies through these two ‘alternative’ practices brought us face to face with a particular use of the body, that of a ‘proxemia’ of the intimate (Hall, 2014 [1976]).
In our “society of the spectacle”, whether in music or sport, the collective effervescence expressed through physical contact contrasts with the immobility of spectators. Accepting contact with strangers was seen as a prerequisite for integration. Nevertheless, each of these body cultures has its own way of operating. On the punk scene, physical proximity appears to be a way of breaking away from an individualistic society and strengthening the bonds of solidarity. In roller derby, it's the link between proxemics and the question of gender that goes hand in hand with a reversal of feminine stigmas, such as the promotion of body bruises.
Finally, whether we're talking about punk or roller derby, this proxemia also extends backstage, particularly in the toilets of music venues or the changing rooms, which provide spaces for observing how these cultures function. These observations call into question the limits, both spatial and physical, of the field and of ethnographic engagement.