Constructing the Promise of Play:
Exploring the concept of play in Stuart Brown and
Brian Sutton-Smith’s Collaborative Efforts
by
Catherine Aitken
A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts
Social Justice Education
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
University of Toronto
© Copyright by Catherine Aitken 2019
ii
Constructing the Promise of Play:
Exploring the concept of play in Stuart Brown and
Brian Sutton-Smith’s Collaborative Efforts
Catherine Aitken
Master of Arts
Graduate Department of Social Justice Education
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
University of Toronto
2019
Abstract
What is the promise of play? In this thesis, I explore how two preeminent play advocates, Stuart
Brown and Brian Sutton-Smith, attempted to construct a comprehensive answer to this question
during their collaborative efforts between 1991 and 2001. Engaging their archival materials
located at the Strong Museum in Rochester, New York, I examine how Brown and Sutton-Smith
sought to gain support for their project The Promise of Play by conceptualizing play as a singular
phenomenon worthy of intellectual and public attention. Working from a Bourdieusian
framework, I posit that Brown and Sutton-Smith’s collaborative efforts create space to explore
how meaning about play is produced through exchanges, negotiations, and differences in
opinion, that is, through relations. Instead of accepting play as an inherently promising concept
or subject of study, I examine how this notion appears within the context of Brown and Sutton-
Smith’s collaboration, and interrogate its implications for Play Studies today.
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Acknowledgments
This project would not have been possible without the Strong Research Fellowship,
which provided me with the opportunity to spend two weeks examining the archival materials of
Stuart Brown and Brian Sutton-Smith at the Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play in
Rochester, New York. A special thank you to Christopher Bensch, Beth Lathrop, and Julia
Novakovic for welcoming me to the Strong, answering my questions before, during, and after
my time in Rochester, and for creating an environment that made me feel supported and
abundantly curious about all things play. My experience there remains my fondest graduate
school memory. In light of this, I want to thank Stuart Brown and Brian Sutton-Smith for
keeping diligent records of their personal and professional ideas about play, and for donating
them to the Strong. This thesis exists because of it.
I am especially grateful to Diane Farmer, my advisor for this thesis, who showed
enthusiasm and encouragement towards my questions and interests from the very first email I
sent her, before I’d even decided to apply to graduate school. I’ve learned a lot from Diane. She
helped me develop a way of documenting, and dwelling with, my own process of meaning-
making while at the Strong, which proved to be invaluable while writing this thesis. Her
inquisitive approach to research and scholarship enabled me to gain deeper insights into the
direction of this project than I would have on my own. I feel lucky for the time I got to spend
getting to know Diane these past two years, laughing, sharing stories, and discussing methods,
which kept me motivated, excited, and hopeful while writing this thesis.
A big thank you to Tanya Titchkosky, my second reader, whose course pushed me to
reexamine not only what I know, but how I know it, and further, how I think about, write, and
express that “knowing.” Tanya’s own work and assignments had me interrogate the academic
norms, traditions, and practices I am co-implicated in, and offered up ways to think anew.
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Tanya’s support for my “non-normal” papers for her class inspired me to think more deeply
about what thesis “is” and “should be.” I admire Tanya’s scholarly work. Her contribution to this
thesis has been incredibly thoughtful and helpful.
Thank you to my friends, family, and colleagues in San Diego and Toronto. To Danielle
Grenrock and Cat Shelling, for our weekly and monthly phone calls that kept things feeling
manageable and purposeful. To Franny and Poe, for much needed levity throughout this project.
To all the play-minded people I met in Toronto, whose passion for play kept me motivated and
helped me understand play advocacy within the context of Toronto. To the Vallas’, Hancock’s,
DePascle’s, and Lanter’s, for delicious holiday meals to look forward to, and tons of laughs. To
my mom, for her unconditional listening and love of learning that is unparalleled by any one I
know. And my dad, for understanding the process of writing a thesis more intimately than most,
and for the open-heartedness and playfulness he brings to his own work, which, from my sense
of it, is not easily matched.
And Adam. For everything. I could not have imagined a better companion these past two
years. You next. I can’t wait.
Lastly, this thesis is dedicated to my friends and playwork colleagues at the New
Children’s Museum in San Diego, California, who I had the good fortune of working intimately
with for two years: Megan Dickerson, Diana Weisbrot, Iyari Arteaga, Jill Grant, Leah Nevarez,
and Hannah Mykel. Thank you for questioning everything about children’s play, adult agendas,
museums, capitalist agendas, and much, much more. I have an overwhelming amount of respect
for you all, for the thoughtfulness, creativity, criticality, and kindness each of you brought, in
your own way, to NCM. Thank you.
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Table of Contents
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... ii
Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................................ iii
Chapter 1. Introduction: The Unfolding of Play Studies ...........................................................1
The play luminaries in question: Stuart Brown and Brian Sutton-Smith ...................................4
Thinking Tools ............................................................................................................................8
Chapter 2. Beginnings and Background ....................................................................................13
The Developmental Paradigm ...................................................................................................16
Play for play’s sake ...................................................................................................................18
Encountering Brown and Sutton-Smith ....................................................................................23
The Stuart Brown and Brian Sutton-Smith Papers ...................................................................30
Chapter 3. Stuart Brown’s Conception of Play.........................................................................34
Going to the archives ................................................................................................................36
Interpreting Brown and Sutton-Smith’s Collaboration as a Field .............................................40
A dominant conception of play emerges ...................................................................................42
Play as a pathway to normalcy ..........................................................................................44
Chapter 4. Conflicts: Sutton-Smith’s Challenges to Brown ....................................................58
Challenge One: Play is Idyllic ..................................................................................................61
Challenge Two: Play is an Individual Phenomenon .................................................................65
Challenge Three: Returning to play as a pathway to normalcy ................................................70
Chapter 5. Orientations to the concept of play .........................................................................76
Doxa: The logic behind the promise of play .............................................................................78
Play expertise and constructing the audience as “in need” ..............................................80
Orienting towards the concept of play ......................................................................................85
Chapter 6. Endings ......................................................................................................................89
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Archival References .......................................................................................................................94
References ......................................................................................................................................97
1
Chapter 1. Introduction:
The Unfolding of Play Studies
“To be in the world is to play with its possibilities for creating meaning”
— John Wall (Ethics in Light of Childhood, p. 52)
The three-hour documentary series, The Promise of Play, aired on PBS in the U.S. during
the fall of 2000. By August 2001, the series failed to generate enough revenue to pay its co-
creators: California-based play advocate, Stuart Brown, New Zealand and U.S. based play
scholar, Brian Sutton-Smith, and U.S. film producer, David Kennard. “The losses absorbed are
painful,” Brown (2001) expressed in a post-release email to Sutton-Smith, with expenses yet to
be reimbursed to the series contributors, the California Institute for Play (IFP) and Independent
Communications Associates Productions (InCA), and with considerable lack of continued
promotion for the series. The email, “summer news from Stuart,” marks an end to the archival
materials that document the decade-long collaboration between the play advocates, Stuart Brown
and Brian Sutton-Smith. In it, Brown (2001) indicates that interest in their ongoing collaborative
efforts are “languishing and going nowhere,” that it may be wise for Sutton-Smith to carry on
with “play matters” on his own. This 2001 email contrasts the enthusiastic spirit which initiated
the two play advocates’ collaboration, and their desire to create “a common cultural language of
play which will shift play to a more central position in cultural awareness and cultural practice”
(Sutton-Smith, 1998, p. 2).
While “summer news from Stuart” marks an ending to Brown and Sutton-Smith’s
collaborative efforts on the subject of play, it also marks a beginning of different sorts: the
upswing of interdisciplinary scholarship organized under the banner of Play Studies. Today,
there are at least two academic journals designated to the study of play, The American Journal of
2
Play (2008) and The International Journal of Play (2012), as well as several collections of
essays on play, such as, Philosophy of Play (2013), Philosophical Perspectives of Play (2015),
The Handbook of the Study of Play (2015), and The Cambridge Handbook of Play (2018), with
contributors working across disciplines to theorize, analyze, and explore play’s meaning from
multiple Western perspectives. And while play was explored, theorized, and studied well before
2001, Play Studies is markedly different in how it articulates its disciplinary aims and
contributions. For example, the Handbook of the Study of Play (2015) ends its introduction with
this mission statement: “We hope that you agree with us that the scholarly discussions that
follow contribute both to a better understanding of play and its importance, and to a greater
appreciation of its significance in our professional and everyday lives” (Johnson, p.xv). In this
statement, play is described as a singular phenomenon that can, and should, be studied in its own
right.
The introductory comments to The Handbook of the Study of Play (2015) also implies
that the promise of play, at least metaphorically, continues to be pursued today. But what is
inherently promising, important, or significant about play? And why are we encouraged to have a
greater appreciation for it? In this thesis, I explore how Brown and Sutton-Smith’s 1998 shared
vision to elevate play “to a more central position in cultural awareness and cultural practices” (p.
2) continues to shape dominant practices in contemporary Play Studies, specifically those that
conceptualize play as a universal concept that is, in its universality, inherently important,
significant, and promising. I argue that statements like, “the promise of play” and “play is
important,” are propelled by the assumption that play can, and should, be elevated to a unitary
concept in order to be taken seriously—publicly, institutionally, and academically. Yet, this task
requires that play—as a concept, practice, and subject of study—gets dehistoricized and
3
decontextualized, which erases how struggles over play’s meaning have shaped what and who
gets labeled play(ful), when, and how.
This thesis explores how the current increased academic interest in play has been
informed by a series of decisions and negotiations that took place between the 1990s and early
2000s, throughout “the quiet period” (Smith & Roopnarine, 2019) of play scholarship. During
this period, Brown and Sutton-Smith were hard at work developing “a new story about play”
(1998, p. 1) which they hoped would “displace and subsume the older activist theories that [had]
characterized [the 20th] century” (Sutton-Smith, 1998, p. 1). The “new story about play” that
Brown and Sutton-Smith developed, I argue, has far from ended. I draw from archived
correspondences, drafts, and notes between these two play advocates to ask: How do scholars
decide, define, and describe what play is and is not? What knowledge about play gets produced
when research and scholarship is intent on advocating for its importance, significance, and
promise?
I am hardly the first to question dominant discourses surrounding play. This project is
inspired by thinkers—working within and outside the category of Play Studies—like Wendy
Russell, Elizabeth Gagen, Susan Grieshaber and Felicity McArdle, Megan Dickerson, and Robin
Bernstein, whose work challenges some of the most sacredly upheld ideas about play: that play is
good, that play is moral, that play is fun, that play is for children, that play is definable. It is
because of their work that I became curious about the ways in which archival materials might
generate insights on the unfolding of Play Studies, and the assumptions, practices, and ideas it
has accumulated along the way. This curiosity led me to the Strong’s Brian Sutton-Smith Library
and Archives of Play, located in Rochester, New York, which houses numerous archival
collections related to the study of play, including the Brian Sutton-Smith Papers and the Stuart
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Brown Papers.1 It was within these Papers that I learned about the complex professional
relationship between Brown and Sutton-Smith, curated by archivists at the Strong, and it is my
hope that this thesis contributes to scholarship that challenges long-held ideas regarding play.2
The play luminaries in question: Stuart Brown and Brian Sutton-Smith
To anyone familiar with Brown and Sutton-Smith’s work in Play Studies, their decade-
long collaboration may seem perplexing. At least it was to me. Brown is known for his
psychiatric perspective and approach to play, often drawing on his involvement in the Charles
Whitman Case in Austin, Texas, to posit why play is important throughout childhood, and the
consequences, according to Brown, for those who fail to engage in it. In 2009, he co-authored the
celebrated book, Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Invigorates the Soul, and Opens the
Imagination, with Christopher Vaughan, which has since been cited in sixty newspaper articles
and over fifty dissertations.3 Brown is also the founder of the Institute for Play (IFP), a
California based not-for-profit which is committed to “research and development pertinent to
understanding and communicating the nature and promises of play to people everywhere”
(Brown, 1997). While Brown’s work is not as scholastically acclaimed as Sutton-Smith’s, he has
1 Throughout this thesis, I will abbreviate and refer to the Strong’s Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play
as the Strong Archives of Play so as not to confuse the place with the scholar in question, Brian Sutton-Smith. When
I describe the Strong Museum as a place, I will abbreviate this further to the Strong.
2 A special thank you to the Strong’s archivist, Julia Novakovic, for curating Brown and Sutton-Smith’s archival
materials (particularly the Stuart Brown Papers) in an accessible way that highlighted their collaborative efforts,
making it possible for me to draw connections between their play-related work.
3 The cover of Play: How it Shapes the Brain, states that the book is authored by “Stuart Brown with Christopher
Vaughan.” However, the anecdotes, experiences, and ideas regarding play throughout the book seem to be solely
Brown’s, and read as personal “I” statements, not “we.” Additionally, the post-book interviews and reviews make no
mention of Vaughan, focusing solely on the anecdotes, experiences, and ideas expressed by Brown throughout the
book.
These numerical findings are based on a search conducted on the U of T libraries ProQuest database.
5
been a keynote speaker at the Association for the Study of Play (TASP) and his 2009 Ted Talk,
“Play is more than just fun,” has nearly two million views. Though Brown, like many scholars,
believes there is no singular definition for play, in a 2009 interview with The American Journal
of Play, he was asked to “take a stab” (2009) at defining play, to which he replied:
Play is an ancient, voluntary, inherently pleasurable, apparently purposeless activity or
process that is undertaken for its own sake and that strengthens our muscles and our
social skills, fertilizes brain activity, tempers and deepens our emotions, takes us out of
time, and enables a state of balance and poise.
Brown’s impromptu definition of play could fall under a number of what Sutton-Smith
(1997) calls “rhetorics of play” in his most well-known and cited book, The Ambiguity of Play.
In it, Sutton-Smith (1997) outlines how claims about play are often undergirded by unchecked
ideological values rather than being about play itself. Sutton-Smith (1997) might then argue that
Brown’s definition is shaped by ideas about progress (strengthens social skills), fate (play is
ancient), frivolity (apparently purposeless), and the self (enables balance and poise), which then
ground his claims about what play is and what play does. In many ways, Sutton-Smith
contributed to play scholarship by persistently calling-out and deconstructing the long-held
beliefs which preoccupied much of the prevailing research and scholarship about play up until
the early 2000s.4 His research and writing on play is far-ranging, employing various
frameworks—children’s folklore, psychology, anthropology, and sociology—to examine what
he understood to be the “sociopolitical” (2008, p. 111) complexity of play, historically and in
contemporary life.
4 Sutton-Smith wrote many responses and critiques to well-received articles regarding play and childhood. One of
his more well-known critiques appears in an article he wrote for Psychological Review in response to Piaget’s
(1951) Play, Dreams and Imitation of Childhood. The article, “Piaget on Play: A critique” (1966) argues that Piaget
(1951) reduces play to a cognitive function and in doing so, Sutton-Smith (1966) contends, fails to provide anything
“fruitful for the explanation of play” (p. 110).
6
Sutton-Smith first engaged with play as a subject of inquiry in 1949 for his dissertation
about children’s unorganized games in New Zealand, and has since (co) authored more than 300
articles, 40 books, and numerous reviews about play (1998, p. 1) in New Zealand and the U.S.
His influence on Play Studies is most explicitly marked by his death in 2015 in the U.S., which
was followed by a flurry of obituaries recounting the breadth and influence of his scholarship on
all-things-play.
Before I spent two weeks engaging with the archival materials in the Stuart Brown and
Brian Sutton-Smith Papers at the Strong Archives of Play, I wondered what brought them
together in the first place, or at all. To me, their epistemic differences seemed to extend them the
status of intellectual enemies more than collaborators. And yet they were heavily invested in
each other’s approaches to play from 1991 to 2001. I went to the Strong Archives of Play
without knowing much about their collaboration, other than what I found in the finding aids on
the Strong’s website, which indicated the boxes and folders that contained the correspondences
and notes between Brown and Sutton-Smith, but not much else. My initial preoccupation during
this project, then, was to uncover what propelled Brown and Sutton-Smith to collaborate, and
what ways of knowing and theorizing play were sustained throughout, and as a result of, their
collaboration. This preoccupation is particularly important to me as an M.A. student and as
someone new to Play Studies, as I continue to find that its key thinkers were named and
designated well before my arrival. Brown and Sutton-Smith are among those who have gained
the status of “play luminaries” (Rollie Adams, 2013, p. 151) and, as a result, are considered
necessary to the foundation of Play Studies. Their work has been recommended to me, more than
once, and their names often appear in references, introductions, and blogs that circulate ideas
about play. I want to understand why they have been recommended to me and what this might
mean about the state-of-play today.
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I proceed with two assumptions, (1) that meaning about play is not fixed, but gets
continually co-created through language, academic or otherwise, and (2) in order to grapple with
dominant discourses about play today, we need to throw into question the ideas of those who are
considered foundational to the study of play. Why, for example, is there more scholarship that
emphasizes the benefits of play instead of addressing how play can perpetuate racism, sexism,
ableism, and other forms of oppression? And more broadly, why does Play Studies appear as it
does, and not otherwise?
This thesis, then, is not really about play itself. I am not intent on defining what play is or
is not, or what it means to play or not. I am more invested in thinking about how meaning about
play has been constructed historically. As such, I hope to contribute to the work Henrick’s
(2015) remarks “remains to be done” in the study of play. In his essay, “Where Are We Now?
Challenges for the Study of Play,” he observes:
For the most part, scholars have examined play (however defined) as a relatively unitary
concept that can be compared to or correlated with other occurrences in the world.
However, because play is composed of several aspects or qualities, […] this raises
questions of how those different qualities intersect to produce and reinforce the behaviors
we label as play. (p. 384-85)
As Henricks (2015) elucidates, there are still questions that need to be addressed in Play Studies,
especially surrounding how play scholars decide what behaviors get labeled play to begin with.
Brown and Sutton-Smith’s collaborative efforts, I argue, are integral to this ongoing process of
deciding, and by engaging with their collaboration, I seek to explore what behaviors they labeled
play, and why. This thesis, then, is also not really about Brown and Sutton-Smith as people. My
aim is not to label them, or their work, as good or bad, right or wrong. My aim, instead, is to
engage with and untangle a sliver of the historical context from which the notion that play can be
a unitary concept was founded.
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Thinking Tools
I draw on two of Pierre Bourdieu’s analytic tools to anchor my discussion of the archival
materials: the concepts field and doxa. In order to understand why Play Studies—its key
theorists, theories, practices, and concepts—appears as it does today, it is necessary to examine
what Bourdieu understood as the “history of struggle and the players involved” (Swartz, 2013, p.
29), which have had a hand in shaping present-day meanings and practices related to play. For
Bourdieu, it is not enough to recount or describe what happened in the past in order to
understand why some ideas and practices proliferate, get taken for granted, or feel “natural.”
Instead, he argues that it is imperative to situate these ideas within the context from which they
were produced and analyze this historical context as a social space where agents—individuals,
groups of people, or institutions—struggle for various forms of capital, or power, be it economic,
cultural, social, or symbolic (Deer, 2008, p. 120). This social space is what Bourdieu calls a
field.
Throughout this thesis, I draw on the concept of field as an analytic tool to help me
unpack three facts of Brown and Sutton-Smith’s collaboration. First, I examine the struggles for
power that gave shape to their collaboration, as Brown and Sutton-Smith attempted to secure and
persuade one another, as well as potential funders and publishers, of the legitimacy of their
project The Promise of Play. Second, I explore what was at stake in the making of The Promise
of Play for Brown and Sutton-Smith. And third, I engage with the beliefs and assumptions about
play that went unquestioned by Brown and Sutton-Smith throughout their collaborative efforts,
despite their competing conceptions of play. In these ways, the concept of field will allow me to
highlight how power and politics were at the center of Brown and Sutton-Smith’s collaboration,
and subsequently, the documentary series The Promise of Play. From here, I investigate the ways
in which play has never been a neutral subject of study, but continually formed by struggles to
9
conceptualize, narrate, and have influence over the answer to the question: what does it mean to
play?
The second Bourdieusian concept I draw on is doxa. Doxa refers to “a set of fundamental
beliefs which does not even need to be asserted in the form of an explicit, self-conscious dogma”
(Deer, 2008, p. 115). Doxa encompasses what gets taken-for-granted in a field; it is what informs
and underlies any struggle for power.5 Because Brown and Sutton-Smith had different ideas
about what play is, and what it means to play, they both brought several unquestioned, yet
competing, beliefs about play to their collaborative efforts. As such, I draw on doxa while I
engage with their correspondences, proposals, scripts, and notes as a way to explore how Brown
and Sutton-Smith’s exchanged, challenged, and questioned each other’s assumptions, and later in
the thesis, I explore what assumptions about play they shared, despite their otherwise competing
conceptions of play. In this way, doxa will help me analyze what got taken-for-granted during
their collaboration and explore how these taken-for-granted assumptions informed, and continue
to inform, ways-of-knowing and relating to the concept of play.
Field and doxa are not straight-forward concepts that can be applied in the same way to
different contexts and questions. Instead, they need to be “developed on a case-by-case basis”
(Thomson, 2008, p. 72). The versions of field and doxa I develop throughout this thesis, then, are
unique to Brown and Sutton-Smith’s collaboration, to the concept of play, and perhaps most
importantly, to the questions I’ve asked about them. This is, in part, why I find these concepts so
5 When I use the phrase “struggle for power,” I am drawing from Bourdieu’s conception of power, which is
informed by his concept field. In a field, power does not exist as a fixed or isolated object, but instead is made
through relationships—exchanges between people, ideas, materials, and so forth. In this way, the phrase “struggle
for power” conceptualizes power as a process that is always in the making. Throughout this thesis I, too,
conceptualize power as a process that gets made by and through Brown and Sutton-Smith collaborative efforts.
10
appealing.6 They allow me to be conceptually curious, while orienting my inquiry towards the
interrelations between people, ideas, archival materials, past and present. I use them here as
Bourdieu offered them, as “thinking tools” (Grenfell, 2008, p. 2) that open-up relational ways to
understand what gets considered important, necessary, legitimate, and why.
Chapter One, “Background,” is a mix between a literature review and personal narrative.
I explore how my experience working as a playworker at the New Children’s Museum in San
Diego taught me specific ways of relating to and conceptualizing play and then, I put this
experience in conversation with two major themes that emerge in Play Studies literature: the
developmental paradigm and play for play’s sake. I examine how these themes have preoccupied
much of play scholarship, and explore how they informed Brown and Sutton-Smith’s most
notable published works: Play: How It Shapes The Brain, Opens The Soul, and Invigorates The
Imagination (Brown, 2009), and The Ambiguity of Play (Sutton-Smith, 1998). From here, I
situate these texts in relation to the Strong Museum of Play and the Brian Sutton-Smith Library
and Archives of Play, which provided the context and materials for this thesis. Lastly, I introduce
the primary source of analysis for this thesis, the Stuart Brown and Brian Sutton-Smith Papers.
My aim, in this chapter, is to describe how my experience at the New Children’s Museum not
only influenced my interest in play, —as a concept, subject of study, and way of being—but also
led me to the Strong.
In the next two chapters, I analyze the archival materials—letters, emails, proposals,
drafts, scripts, and notes—from the Stuart Brown and Brian Sutton-Smith Papers, located at the
6 A thank you to Diane Farmer for suggesting I explore Bourdieu when I was flummoxed with an overload of
archival materials.
11
Strong in Rochester, New York. Chapter Two, “Making-Do,” begins by exploring the
implications of doing archival research. Even though I visited the Strong and read many of
Brown and Sutton-Smith’s correspondences, I do not claim to know the full story of their
collaboration. Instead, I consider what it means to make-do with the fragmented quality of the
archival materials available, exploring how Bourdieu’s concepts generate creative ways to
engage this dilemma. Then, I analyze several of Brown’s initial correspondences and proposal
regarding The Promise of Play, when he attempted to secure funding for the project by
contacting literary agents and organizations. I engage with three archival documents in
particular: a 1994 letter to potential funders, an email addressed to Brown titled, “Re: Play” from
a potential literary agent in 1996, and a proposal “I. Why Play? II. Who Plays? Who Doesn’t?
III. How to Play.” I map how Brown conceptualizes play within these documents, arguing that
his initial conception of play influences the direction for The Promise of Play, and as a form of
symbolic power, lays the foundation for the conflicts between him and Sutton-Smith that ensue.
Chapter Three, “Conflicts,” investigates these conflicts. In it, I examine various
conceptual challenges Sutton-Smith poses to Brown. To do this, I engage with two archival
documents: a response written by Sutton-Smith to Brown, “Commentary on SB – The Power of
Play, why who how – JAN, 98’” regarding the ideas presented in Brown’s (1998) proposal, and
“Play’s Promise For The Human Future,” a script Sutton-Smith wrote for The Promise of Play in
1998 as an alternative to Brown’s proposal. In these documents, Sutton-Smith urges Brown to
reconsider his conception of play and implement a more ambiguous conception in its place. I
then explore how these conflicts led, in part, to the disintegration of Brown and Sutton-Smith’s
collaborative efforts and consider how they influenced the final version of The Promise of Play.
12
In the last chapter, “Orienting Towards the Concept of Play,” I search for mutual interests
and goals that, despite their conceptual differences, Brown and Sutton-Smith shared when it
came to asserting why play is important and why anyone should care. While I engage with a few
archived correspondences and advertisements, this chapter more broadly addresses the question:
what, if anything, is the promise of play? I explore how Brown and Sutton-Smith’s answer to this
question was wrapped up in an advocacy paradigm, which persists in Play Studies today. More
than a promotional slogan, I argue that The Promise of Play produces a way of relating to and
understanding play that decontextualizes and dehistoricizes play’s not-so-pleasant meaning(s)
and implications.
It is hard for me to write about play, or about the archival materials of Brown and Sutton-
Smith, without drawing on my personal experience as a playworker and at the Strong. Play, to
me, is embodied in and made meaningful by these experiences. Throughout this thesis, I weave
in accounts and reflections of my time at the Strong, and when possible, of my reactions to the
archival materials, which I tracked in a notebook during my time at the Strong. As much as this
thesis is about Brown, and Sutton-Smith, and the concept of play, it is equally, and maybe more
broadly, about meaning-making processes and change. By including my process of making
meaning in these pages, I hope this thesis explores alternative “possibilities for creating
meaning” (Wall, 2010, p. 52) when it comes to the experiences, actions, phenomenon, moments,
and people we label play(ful).
13
Chapter 2.
Beginnings and Background
“My evidence—such as it is—is almost always intimate. I feel this—do you? I’m struck by this
thought—are you?”
—Zadie Smith
(Feel Free, p. 2)
I became interested in play, as a concept and professional practice, while working as a
Museum Playworker at the New Children’s Museum in San Diego, California. My role there was
to observe and record how play unfolded in various museum spaces and exhibits, share these
observations and stories with my colleagues during daily huddles, and together, work to create
environments that maximized children’s opportunities to play. Sometimes this meant adding or
removing loose-parts (pillows, fabric, bouncy balls, rope) to an otherwise static exhibit, and
other times this meant becoming a loose-part myself, responding to what we called ‘play cues’
by following a child’s lead. An aspect of my role was to question what I thought I knew about
working with children and to question why monitoring and teaching and tidiness were the roles
typically assigned to children’s museum staff.
Under the guidance of the Exhibition Manager, we began exploring what play meant to
each of us. We created play-maps of our childhoods—Where did we play? Who was with us?
What things/objects/stuff did we play with? What did it feel like? —and read play theory and
Op-Eds that described the importance of child-led play. Our concern was this: If children’s
museum staff are typically trained to enforce rules and monitor spaces, to act as authorities and
teachers, can they be otherwise? If so, how might play offer different ways to relate to museum
spaces, children, our jobs, and each other? Our collective reflections on our own play, alongside
articles that advocated for child-led play, confirmed to me that play was not an activity that
14
should (or could) be prescribed or predicted or even adult-led. Play varied too much from person
to person, place to place, and day to day.
Our work was inspired by a lineage of play advocacy and professionalism that originated
in the U.K. during the 1940s. The job title, Museum Playworker, derived from the term and
profession of playwork, which roots are often traced to the post World War II Junk Playground
Movement in Europe and the U.K. (Brown, 2015, p. 320). During this time, the soon-to-be child
rights activist, Lady Allen of Hurtwood, visited the first outdoor Junk Playground in Emdrup,
Denmark (Wilson, 2009). Within it, children had space to dig, build, and manipulate different
materials. Lady Allen was excited by this site, convinced this kind of environment could provide
post-war children with space to regain the freedom, spontaneity, and curiosity that, for her,
characterized childhood (Allen, 1975, p. 56).7 Lady Allen is credited for bringing the philosophy
of Junk Playgrounds to London and adapting them to what are now known as Adventure
Playgrounds, the primary site from which the playwork profession has evolved. Today, playwork
is a government funded profession in the U.K., which has, more recently, begun to influence
various organizations and practices, such as those in North America.8
7 There is an interesting history surrounding what drew Lady Allen to the Junk Playground. Junk Playgrounds were, for Allen, an
attempt to address and solve children’s delinquency ‘problem’ during the war. To my knowledge, there has been no explicit
research on what Allen meant by delinquency and the need to resolve it, though some research questions the ways in which Junk
Playgrounds, as spatially separated environments, teach children where play does and doesn’t happen. See: Russell, W. (2013).
Towards a Spatial Theory of Playwork in E. Ryall, W. Russell, & M. MacLean (Eds.), The Philosophy of Play (pp.) Milton Park,
Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Other articles extrapolate more on the process of ‘resolving’ delinquency: Kozlovsky, R. (2006).
The Junk Playground: creative destruction as antidote to delinquency, Threat and Youth Center, Teachers College, April 1, 2006.
8 Some organizations and places which utilize the title and/or philosophy of playwork in North America include: Ithica
Children’s Garden, Parish School Houston Texas, EarthDay Canada, The New Children’s Museum, The Playwork Camperence.
15
Since its beginnings, playwork has been informed by the assumption that play is a
complex and necessary process of being in and relating to the world, for children and adults
alike. Or, that play is not trivial. This assumption is reflected in the Playwork Principles, which
offer a broad definition of play as, “a process that is freely chosen, personally directed and
intrinsically motivated” (“The Playwork Principles,” 2019), as well as the role the playworker
has in actualizing this definition, which is “to support all children and young people in the
creation of a space in which they can play” (“The Playwork Principles,” 2019). While we did not
have the same resources or support as playworkers in the U.K. at the New Children’s Museum,
the Playwork Principles provided us with a framework; a way to articulate why we encouraged
spontaneous play instead of planned teaching or monitoring in the museum spaces, and a way to
advocate for the importance of play in children and young people’s lives.
Even though the Playwork Principles provide a map for thinking about and relating to
children’s play, they cannot be applied like a formula. And as we discovered at the New
Children’s Museum, upholding their ideals proved to be challenging. For one, children’s
museums have historically been sites where children are supposed to learn. Yet this learning, as
Dickerson (2016) points out, is driven by educational trends and norms that aim to turn profit;
“in a capitalist system children are pots to be filled with skills so they can make better pots that
can be sold and therefore increase the gross national product” (p. 8). In many children’s
museums, model super-markets, schools, and roads are supposed to teach children how to be in
the world by preparing them for the skills and roles that, ostensibly, make up proper adulthood.
And while the implications of these spaces tend to get bypassed by the label “cute,” they are
predicated on the idea that children’s play should be (and is) a socialization towards the “basic
knowledge that undergirds the society” (Athey, 1984, p. 19).
16
This developmental way of relating to exhibits in children’s museum, coupled with the
fact that children’s museums in the U.S., like other U.S. based cultural institutions, are exclusive
spaces maintained through private donor funding, grants, and consumer generated revenue, made
our site for playwork, and our task to “create a space where all can play,” (“The Playwork
Principles,” 2019) particularly difficult. Still, playwork felt like a compelling museum practice
with the capacity to challenge notions that children’s play is inherently socializing and always
productive. And although the exhibits at the New Children’s Museum were primarily designed
and built by adults, there were not model super-markets or schools or roads, which we hoped
would open up space for play to become more “freely chosen and personally directed” (“The
Playwork Principles,” 2019) than might be possible in other museum environments.
The Developmental Paradigm
Our site-specific version of playwork was propelled by the shared agreement that the
dominant narrative circulating about play within children’s museums—as a socializing behavior
that helps individuals develop into productive members of society—was an insufficient way to
understand the behaviors, moments, experiences, spaces, among other things, that get labeled
play(ful). This narrative does not just inform children’s museum practices, but has proliferated in
academic research since the 20th century (Sutton-Smith, 2008). During the 1980s, there was an
increase in empirical research which sought to examine how play was a necessary stage of
human cognitive and social development (Pellegrini & Hawley, 1984). For scholars in the
behavioral and social sciences, this increased interest in play was a positive sign, indicating that
play was being taken seriously as subject of academic study, rather than being dismissed as
frivolous or trivial (Pellegrini & Hawley, 1984; Johnson, 2015). While this developmental
research extends beyond the concept of play, it has been employed by play scholars to delineate
what play is and is not, who plays and who does not, and to explore the implications these
17
oppositions have for individuals and society. If children don’t play or don’t have access to play,
the developmental narrative contends, they may not be able to lead healthy, productive, or
normal lives (Frost, 2010).
But are there discernible behaviors, spaces, and moments that can be labeled play and
others not play? And who decides what a healthy, productive, and normal life is to begin with?
These are questions that the developmental narrative, as a framework for engaging with the
concept of play, fails to address. While the developmental narrative has furthered interest in play
scholarship, its scientific-backed, empirical approach to play leads with several assumptions: that
development, through play, is “universal, standardized, and inevitable” (Tisdall, Kay, & Punch,
2012, p. 253), and that this universal, standard, and inevitable development can, and should, be
observed and measured and recorded to differentiate play from non-play. Yet, as Henricks
(2015) points out, this conceptual framework is “committed to a view of play as springing from
individual resources—both biological and psychological—of the player” (p. 178). In this way,
what constitutes a healthy, productive, and normal life depends on, and can be determined by,
the actions of an individual. From this point of view, play gets constructed as important and
necessary because it teaches people (children specifically) how they ought to be in the world.
Play, under this framework, gets instrumentalized to justify normative ideas about adulthood,
development, and play itself.
Scholars working across academic disciplines have not only dismantled the
developmental narrative’s driving assumptions, but have mapped how it operates historically,
and in different spaces, to “justify adulthood supremacy” (Tisdall, Kay, & Punch, 2012, p. 253)
over children who get categorized under a slew of derogatory, and contradictory, labels:
uncivilized, innocent, passive, unruly, evil, empty-vessels (James, Jenks, & Prout, 1998). This
18
scholarship is critical of the ways in which developmental narratives produce children as adults-
in-the-making, ostensibly becoming more civilized, moral, educated, and socialized as they age.
Not only this, the developmental narrative promotes a version of childhood rooted in white
supremacy (Canella & Viruru, 2004; Cedillo & Nxumalo, 2017), wherein the model child
continues to get constructed as the “middle-class white Western child” (Farley & Garlen, 2016).
The developmental narrative, then, not only constructs children as adults-in-the-making in order
to justify adult supremacy, but hides imperialist thought and racial biases under the guise of the
scientific truth that claims there is a “natural” difference between normal and abnormal
development (Canella & Viruru, 2004, Bernstein, 2011). And in order to challenge this narrative,
Canella and Viruru (2004) argue, “adults must be willing to rethink and reconceptualize what
they think they know about the child and childhood” (p. 63) rather than assuming children need
our help to become “like us.”
Play for play’s sake
But when it comes to the study of play, there is, for the most past, a noticeable break
from this critical scholarship. If, as Henricks (2015) contends, the developmental narrative
continues to dominate the way play gets conceptualized today, why has there been so little play
scholarship that wrestles with how it came to hold a foundational place in Play Studies, or that
challenges the way it continues to dominate meaning-making processes surrounding the concept
of play? Instead of engaging these questions, the response to prevailing developmental
narratives, by many play scholars and advocates alike, has been to invest in an alternative, if not
oppositional paradigm: play for play’s sake. Rather than conceptualizing play as a stage of
developmental, the paradigm play for play’s sake begins with the assumption that play is
inherently contradictory—in theory and practice—and therefore hard, if not impossible, to
define. Play can be fun and serious, productive and unproductive, socializing and subversive to
19
social norms. Play can arise from an individual and be produced by culture. Play can transform
individuals and is transformed by individuals. In this way, play for play’s sake invests in a more
fluid and dynamic understanding of play, which can be summarized through this adage, “Trying
to define play is like trying to define love; it’s too big for that” (Sturrock, 1995).
While there is not a delineated body of literature devoted to the expression play for play’s
sake, I use it here to signify a paradigm within Play Studies literature that theorizes, at least
nominally, the “general character of play” (Henricks, 2015), “play itself” (Sutton-Smith, 1997),
and “play for play’s sake” (Brown, 2009), in search for a “coherent view of play” (Eberle, 2015).
I began to notice this theme while examining play literature that did not explicitly employ the
developmental narrative to make sense of play. During this search, I continued to encounter a
consensus among play scholars working across disciplines: that there is something universal, yet
undefinable, about play.9 Uncovering what this something is has, in part, shaped the field of Play
Studies today, as play scholars grapple with the “concept of play itself, for that issue—essentially
determining what is to be studied—is preliminary to other concerns” (Henricks, 2015, p. 381).
“Play itself,” as Henricks (2015) contends, is a crucial aspect of Play Studies since determining
what play is informs how it ought to be theorized, studied, and articulated. Johnson reiterates this
point in the introduction to the 2015 Handbook of the Study of Play, describing how the two-
volume handbook is “the first printed work to examine play in general, both the study of play
9 I am by no means claiming to have read all literature that thinks, engages, and theorizes play. When I refer to Play
Studies literature, I am referring to a smaller pool of play scholars who publish their work in the volumes of books
and journals I mentioned in the introduction. Even the term play scholar is, to my knowledge, a fairly recent way
scholars refer to their own, and others, research about play. I am drawing my observations about the paradigm play
for play’s sake, then, from this pool of scholars, and particularly those included in the two-volume handbook, The
Handbook of the Study of Play (2015). In the handbook, play scholars wrestle with the past, present, and future of
Play Studies, and I found the volume helpful in discerning how Play Studies thinks about and describes itself.
20
and its application in society, in a way that is interdisciplinary and scholarly” (p. xi). Defining, or
delineating, what play is and is not, then, has been a key component of the forming of discipline
Play Studies. In this way, the play’s for play’s sake paradigm pushes against—implicitly or
explicitly—the developmental paradigm by orienting towards this question: what is play? In
doing so, play scholars, like Henricks, Eberle, Johnson, Brown, and Gray, attempt to locate the
universal, yet undefinable something that, for them, makes play, play.
At the New Children’s Museum, play for play’s sake took on an anti-capitalist and
reflective slant. Because we agreed that play was undefinable, contradictory, and ambiguous, any
attempt to put a value on it was also an attempt to profit off it.10 The dominant developmental
narratives, expressed in statements like ‘play helps children learn’ or ‘through play children
develop into healthy adults’ seemed to justify the institutional agendas to profit more so than
attend to children’s play. In order to challenge the taken-for-granted developmental narratives
circulating within children museum spaces, then, I needed to examine my own assumptions
about what I thought play was, should be, and how play ought to unfold in museum spaces. Why
did I label certain behaviors, moments, experiences, and actions playful, and others not?
In our discussions, play for play’s sake became a tactic to articulate, and justify, the work
we were attempting to carry out within the museum; it enabled us to examine the limitations of
our own beliefs about children’s play, which in turn, helped us understand, and hopefully,
support various forms of children’s play that transpired in the museum spaces. The task, then,
became about creating our own version of playwork, one which took into account the historical
10 My description and interpretation of my time at the New Children’s Museum is my own. I use the word “we”
because, while working at the New Children’s Museum, my co-workers and I had many conversations about play,
and what it meant to us, though not in the exact terms described out here.
21
and spatial barriers presented by the museum, and as such, refused to use the developmental
narrative to categorize play as either productive or unproductive, normal or abnormal, seeking
instead to understand children’s play as something more than the process of becoming-adults.
While play for play’s sake, as a framework, allowed us to broaden our role within the museum, it
became difficult to ignore the ways in which our social position (as museum staff) and context
(the museum itself) informed what play became in the museum spaces. And while the Playwork
Principles define play as something “freely chosen and personally directed” (“The Playwork
Principles,” 2019), I continued to notice how prevailing ideas about what it means to play
contributed to the way I, and others, perceived and responded to children’s play.
These tensions became most apparent to me during various daily play-related exchanges I
witnessed, or took part in, at the museum. For example, there were times when parents and
caregivers stopped their children from engaging in pretend play fighting or pretend gun play.
While some expressed that they found this type of play inappropriate for the museum space,
others made clear that the violence it was complicit in and perpetuated was more than “just
play.” And while these adults’ had an understandable desire to separate their children’s play
from very real, contemporary issues like gun violence, much of the play I witnessed was
informed by current social norms and political issues, so much so that it became impossible to
separate play from the “real world.” There were many moments, for example, when children
excluded each other from their play based on pre-existing social categories, e.g. “boys vs. girls”
or “older kids only!”, and when I participated in imaginative play with children, I found that I
was sometimes type-casted as mom, or sister, and assigned the ensuing normative social duties:
stay home, clean, cook. And more pointedly still, there were moments when children’s play
explicitly reflected our social and political climate: When Trump was elected, I remember
22
witnessing children pretend to be him, pontificating orders—sometimes to no one in particular,
sometimes at other children—as Mr. President.
My response to moments like these varied. Sometimes I went along with it, other times I
tried to counter them playfully, and occasionally, I did what playworkers’ call “adulteration,”
(Wilson, 2008, p. 7) using my authority as an adult and museum staff, well-intentioned or
otherwise, to stop the progression of moments I deemed, at the time, unbecoming. Yet, despite
my opinion of whatever was unfolding during children’s play, it seemed that when children were
following their instincts, ideas, and interests, these instincts, ideas, and interests were forming in
response to real circumstances and social norms. In light of this, when does something or
someone stop being play(ful), and what is our role, as playworkers, in responding to this fissure
that divides what/who gets labeled play and non-play? And further, if deciphering what play is
depends on what play is not, then what are the social and political consequences of labeling
something play?
While my co-workers and I had constructive conversations about what types of play we
deemed unbecoming, and why, I have not come upon Play Studies literature that grapples with
these dilemmas at length or in depth.11 So even though play for play’s sake provides an
11 There is playwork literature that offers support and guidance to playworkers regarding the various kinds of
dilemmas that may arise while practicing playwork. For these, see: Brown, F. (2000). Playwork Theory and
Practice. Birmingham: Open University Press; and more recently, Kilvington, J., & Wood, A. (2010). Reflective
Playwork: For All Who Work with Children. London & New York: Continuum International Publishing Group.
However, Russell (2010) offers an insightful and thorough critique of Playwork: For All Who Work with Children in
The American Journal of Play. In it, she argues that the book’s theoretical sections on play are problematic because
they are too often propped up by “unsubstantiated claims and poor referencing” (p. 265). Russell (2010) posits that
in the effort to make the book accessible to play practitioners, the authors draw uncritical and strictly anecdotal
conclusions about the positive impact of playwork on children everywhere, which Russell contends is a “contestable
assertion” (p. 265) that fails to adequately engage with how play gets conceptualized, and by whom.
My argument, then, is not that these dilemmas are not being discussed at all, but that when they are, more often than
not, they are followed by an assertion that play, and playwork, is the solution to the “social ills of childhood”
23
alternative framework to the developmental narrative, it creates few possibilities to dwell with
the ethical issues brought forth by my experience working at the New Children’s Museum.
Instead, research about play continues to center around the question: What is play? And
subsequently, I argue, knowledge about play gets produced on either/ or terms: Play gets
conceptualized as either a universal phenomenon that exists for its own sake, regardless of
context and social structures, or, play gets conceptualized in service of the developmental
narrative, as a means to develop children into normative, and thereby acceptable, adults.
Encountering Brown and Sutton-Smith
I first encountered the work of Brown and Sutton-Smith while working at the New
Children’s Museum. My boss had put together a library with books on play for us to peruse,
check-out, and read during quiet periods at the museum.12 Brown’s (2009) Play: How it Shapes
the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul and Sutton-Smith’s (1998) The
Ambiguity of Play were on the shelf, and since beginning graduate school, they have continued to
surface during my internet and library searches, especially when I began thinking about this
thesis. And now, they have come to exemplify, for me, a unique mingling between the
developmental and play for play’s sake paradigms. In the remainder of this chapter, I briefly
analyze how Play: How it Shapes the Brain and The Ambiguity of Play employ both paradigms
in order to make a case for the importance of play. The fact that these books, which are divergent
in their style, content, and conceptual approach to play, both arrive at similar end points further
(Russell, 2010, p. 265). As I will examine later in this thesis, the act of elevating play as “the solution” strips
discourse from critically reckoning with what (and who) needs to be solved in the first place.
12 Thank you to my boss, Megan Dickerson, for providing us with books and time to read them, for valuing my
intellectual curiosities and inquiries. I do not know if I would have been propelled to engage with Brown and
Sutton-Smith if it were not for that bookshelf.
24
fueled my desire to engage with the archival materials that document their collaboration efforts. I
end this chapter, then, by introducing the Strong Archives of Play, as well as Brown and Sutton-
Smith’s holdings within them.
Play: How it Shapes the Brain tells an evolutionary story of play. Play is not only
beneficial to daily life, Brown (2009) asserts, but is a “primal activity” (p. 15) that has been a
major element of animal and human survival. And while Brown (2009) resists defining play
“because it is so varied” (p. 15), he comes up with six features that inform his assertions about
play throughout the book. According to the list, play is: apparently purposeless (done for its own
sake), voluntary, has an inherent attraction (it is fun and feels good), is free from time,
diminishes consciousness of self, has improvisational potential (open to chance), and is
continuously desired (2009, p. 17). These features, Brown (2009) advances, amend the gap
between research that interprets play as an aspect of development, with what he calls the
“emotional” (p. 34) side of play; its illusive qualities that are fluid and undefinable, which make
it singular and function for its own sake.
Brown (2009) pursues these six features of play throughout Play: How it Shapes the
Brain to arrive at his thesis: the fact that play is, above all else, evolutionary transcendence.
Throughout the book, Brown (2009) weaves together personal experience, scientific studies on
animal and human play, neurology, and what he describes as peoples’ “play histories” (p. 26) to
make this claim.13 In the section, “we are built for play,” Brown (2009) claims that evolution has
enabled humans to be the most playful species on the planet, and simultaneously, the most
13 These play histories consists of interviews Brown has conducted with various people, organizations, and
institutions regarding the meaning of play in their lives.
25
dependent on play for survival; “When we stop playing, we stop developing, and when that
happens, the laws of entropy take over—things fall apart” (p. 73). Development here does not
just indicate the process of children becoming adults, but is put in relation to transcendence. If
we continue to develop through play, as individuals and as societies, there will continue to be
human progress and innovation (Brown, 2009). According to Brown, in order for play scholars
and advocates to appreciate play fully, they need to approach it evolutionarily, as an unfolding
that, in many ways, has influenced and determined human survival.
As readers, we are asked to believe the claims Brown (2009) makes about play at face
value: play is mysterious because Brown (2009) describes it as undefinable and difficult to
theorize; play is evolutionary because Brown (2009) draws on studies that show how it manifests
in the lives of animals and humans alike; and play is important because Brown (2009) has
recorded its impact on humans through play histories and brain imaging. In this way, Play: How
it Shapes the Brain reads more like a self-help book about how to become more playful, than a
contribution to defining what play is and what play is not, the very things Brown (2009) purports
to do.
And while Play: How it Shapes the Brain has not, to my knowledge, been extensively
criticized by play scholars or advocates, when it has, it gets criticized for its broad conception of
play rather than Brown’s (2009) method for arriving there.14 In a book review, play scholar
David Kuschner (2010) argues that Brown’s (2009) broad conception of play causes the book to
“lose sight of important defining characteristics that distinguish play from other types of
14 Though there are lively comments, reactions, and critiques to the book from readers on Goodreads.
26
activities” (p. 376). By doing so, Kuschner (2010) continues, Brown’s (2009) conception and
convictions about play become unreliable. If play is “like oxygen,” as Brown (2009) asserts it is,
then it loses its defining power, the very aspects, qualities, and characteristics that for Kuschner
(2010) make play, play. Yet, by the end of Kuschner’s (2010) review, he concludes that despite
Brown’s (2009) broad and vague conception of play, Play: How it Shapes the Brain is an
important contribution to Play Studies because Brown’s passion for play is clear throughout:
“Stuart Brown cares deeply about the value of play for both children and adults, and this book,
an embodiment of this passion, provides strong support for those who believe that play is a
necessary part of the human experience” (p. 376). Kuschner’s (2010) critique gets subsumed by
his support for Brown’s (2009) cause: to elevate and raise awareness about the importance of
play, past and present, for everyone. In this way, the conception of play Brown (2009) advances
in Play: How it Shapes the Brain does not really get taken up or critiqued, but becomes a
backdrop to Brown’s passion for play.
Sutton-Smith’s (1997) The Ambiguity of Play also contends that play is “a necessary part
of the human experience,” but reaches this conclusion by deconstructing the ideologies that
underpin prominent play theories. Sutton-Smith (1997) leads with the notion that play is
ambiguous and when scholars attempt to theorize play, they “fall into silliness” (p. 1). This
silliness gets produced, for Sutton-Smith (1997), because play can be used as a label for a variety
of “happenings” and because of this, there exists a confusion not only about what play is, but
how it ought to be theorized and interpreted. The Ambiguity of Play flushes out what Sutton-
Smith (1997) defines as play rhetorics, the “persuasive discourse, or an implicit narrative,
wittingly or unwittingly adopted by members of a particular affiliation to persuade others of the
veracity and worthwhileness of their beliefs” (p. 8). Before arriving at a definition of play,
27
Sutton-Smith (1997) elucidates that it is imperative to examine the rhetorics that underpin,
propel, and make claims about play convincing to begin with.
Sutton-Smith (1997) then identifies seven rhetorics which he argues undergird most play
theories: play as progress, play as fate, play as power, play as identity, play as the imaginary,
play as self, and play as frivolous:
People simply take it for granted, for example, that children develop as a result of their
playing; or that sports are a part of the way in which different states and nations compete
with each other; or that festivals are a way in which groups are bonded together; or that
play is a desirable modern form of creativity or personal choice; or that, contrary to all of
these, play is a waste of time. (Sutton-Smith, 1997, p. 12).
These rhetorics exist in relation to one another and instead of being separate from what Sutton-
Smith (1997) terms “play itself,” (p. 6) they shed light on a characteristic that, for Sutton-Smith
(1997), more aptly characterizes play’s ambiguity. And in many ways, Sutton-Smith’s (1997)
inquiry throughout The Ambiguity of Play is one determined to unearth whether ambiguity is the
outcome of the seven rhetorics, or if ambiguity is what best characterizes “play itself.” The
Ambiguity of Play explores this inquiry by devoting a chapter to each rhetoric, describing the
work of its most faithful rhetoricians and deconstructing its underpinnings.
And while Sutton-Smith (1997) argues that the variety of play rhetorics confirm play’s
theoretical ambiguity, by the book’s conclusion, he uses them as a springboard to generate a new
rhetoric he deems more universal, and less culturally bias: “Clearly a book of this kind is
unsatisfying unless it can lead one beyond these particular rhetorics toward some more central
definition or more universal rhetoric” (p. 217). In this statement, Sutton-Smith (1997) assumes
the desired way forward from his deconstruction of the play rhetorics is to create a new one that
transcends the rest. And for the remainder of The Ambiguity of Play, Sutton-Smith (1997)
explains the logic behind his eighth play rhetoric, play as adaptive variability. Thanks to new
28
studies and technologies, Sutton-Smith (1997) explains, play as adaptive variability can be
mapped through the processes of evolution, brain imaging technology, and studies of children’s
cognitive behavior. Drawing from Stephen Gould’s evolutionary theory, he makes the case that
play has similarities to the evolutionary process, “If quirkiness, redundancy, and flexibility are
keys to evolution, then finding play to be itself quite quirky, redundant, and flexible suggests that
play may have a similar biological base” (p. 224), and draws on recent brain imaging and
cognitive behavioral studies to corroborate this claim. This eighth rhetoric, Sutton-Smith (1997)
suggests, is more reflective of “play itself,” and more broadly, “the general character of play” (p.
12) than any other play rhetoric to date.
It is hard to find reviews of The Ambiguity of Play that engage with, or critique, his
eighth rhetoric. Instead, reviews either focus their attention towards Sutton-Smith’s (1997)
breadth of knowledge about play theory, and his work to deconstruct the cultural biases
underpinning taken-for-granted play rhetorics (Williams, J., 1998; Wein, E., 2000; Cranwell, K.,
2001), or extrapolate on Sutton-Smith’s (1997) provocation that play is ambiguous (Henricks, T.,
2008, Meckley, A., 2015).15 And while I agree that The Ambiguity of Play has created
possibilities to grapple with upheld assumptions regarding the concept of play, I argue
thatSutton-Smith’s (1997) eighth rhetoric warrants examination as well. For play as adaptive
variability to make sense as a rhetoric, play needs to be conceptualized on its own terms, as a
singular phenomenon that transcends rhetorical attempts to define it. But when it comes to
15 In addition to the thesis advanced in The Ambiguity of Play, the book also functions as an encyclopedia about
play and play theory. At the end of the conclusion, Sutton-Smith (1997) includes an extensive list of scholars who
have advanced particular play rhetorics, categorizing them by date and theme.
29
justifying his eighth rhetoric, Sutton-Smith (1997) leans on the developmental paradigm to
structure his logic:
The argument so far is that play variability is analogous to adaptive variability; that play
potential is analogous to neural potential; that play’s psychological characteristics of
unrealistic optimism, egocentricity, and reactivity are analogous to the normal behavior
of the very young; and finally that play’s engineered predicaments model the struggle for
survival. (p. 229)
This statement employs the developmental narrative in spades and broad strokes. In it, Sutton-
Smith (1997) expands the developmental narrative by suggesting that play itself—its variability
and adaptability—is part of the “engineering” with which the ultimate developmental process has
unfolded: the struggle for humans to survive. In this way, play gets constructed as fundamentally
distinct and therefore beyond rhetoric, but also as deeply embedded in humans—everywhere,
always—developmental capacity to evolve.
In this way, The Ambiguity of Play’s conclusion is eerily similar to the thesis Brown
2009) develops throughout Play: How it Shapes the Brain, ten years later. Brown (2009) and
Sutton-Smith (1997) both arrive at the conclusion (albeit not a closed one) that there is a “play
itself,” which is evolutionary and therefore universal, and in order to “speak more confidently”
(Sutton-Smith, 1997, p. 230) about “play itself,” its universal qualities need to be pursued and
placed at the forefront of play scholarship. Even though these books were published ten and
twenty years ago, this way of conceptualizing play, I argue, is all-too-familiar today. The
mingling between play for play’s sake and the developmental paradigm, whereby play gets
conceptualized as a singular, allusive, and ambiguous concept, and then gets employed to explain
human evolution, progress, and civilization, continues to preoccupy much of research about play
today that touts the banner Play Studies. Given Brown and Sutton-Smith’s divergent play-related
work and trajectories, I began to wonder: What compelled Brown and Sutton-Smith’s
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evolutionary conception of play? Why were they hellbent on creating a universal theory of “play
itself”? Is a universal theory of play even possible, or desirable?
These questions inspired my desire to engage with the Stuart Brown and Brian Sutton-
Smith Papers at the Strong National Museum of Play, the site and source of this thesis. My aim,
in visiting the Strong, was not to dismiss Brown and Sutton-Smith’s work as being a thing-of-
the-past, or to debunk their work for failing to consider the questions and dilemmas that drew me
toward the concept of play. Instead, I wanted to understand how the concept “play itself” has
unfolded within and continues to make sense in Play Studies. Before I begin engaging with the
archival materials, I describe how the Strong influenced my analysis, and more broadly, what the
Strong has meant to this project.
The Stuart Brown and Brian Sutton-Smith Papers
The Strong National Museum of Play is part collections-based and part interactive
museum. Located in Rochester, New York, the Strong gets its name from Margaret Woodbury
Strong who, in 1968, donated her collection of dolls and toys, alongside her estate, to found the
museum, then named the Margaret Woodbury Strong Museum of Fascination. Since then, the
museum has grown in size, scope, and content. Today, the Strong is a multi-faceted institution
that, alongside maintaining its original status as a historical, collections-based museum, is also
home to various interactive exhibits, a second floor Library and Archives, as well as housing its
own peer-review publication, The American Journal of Play. In several museum spaces, artifacts
from the collections are displayed in the background of otherwise interactive, loose-pats and
play-based exhibits. This mixture of research and play, scholarship and family programming,
gives the museum a distinctive quality.
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In a 2013 interview with The American Journal of Play, the Strong’s CEO, George Rollie
Adams, suggests that part of the museum’s current success derives from its decision to evolve
into a museum devoted solely to play. This turn towards play took place in the early 2000s,
Rollie Adams (2013) explains, when the Strong staff decided that play was the main
characteristic that threaded together the museum’s core holdings (p. 141). Since then, the
Strong’s mission has reflected this turn towards play, with its educational mission to “explore
play and the ways in which it encourages learning, creativity, and discovery and illuminates
cultural history” (“The Strong Website”). While this has meant increasing programming for
families and children, it has also meant significantly expanded its archival collections to include
a breadth of scholarship, research, artifacts, and digital databases collectively unified under the
subject of play. In this way, the Strong was (and is) more than just a site for this thesis project. It
is a cultural institution producing knowledge and programming surrounding play. The scholars
who write for The American Journal of Play and those who have donated their work to the
“Archival Collections Related to the Study of Play,” represent, according to the Strong’s website,
those “who have significantly advanced knowledge of the role of play in learning and human
development and the ways in which it illuminates cultural history” (“The Strong Website”).
Brown and Sutton-Smith’s work is included in this description. The Stuart Brown and
Brian Sutton-Smith Papers make up part of the “Archival Collections Related to the Study of
Play” located in the Strong Archives of Play, which seek to illuminate the lives and work of
various play scholars, chronicling how their play-related research has advanced play scholarship
and Play Studies. Brian Sutton-Smith donated his collection to The Strong in multiple shipments
from 2007 through 2014. The collection is massive, with 171 archival document boxes filled
with manuscripts, lectures, primary research data, photographs, correspondences, and more,
documenting Sutton-Smith’s interest in play-related research and scholarship since the 1940s.
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The breadth and depth of Sutton-Smith’s involvement, and influence, on play research is also
made apparent in the collection’s “Biographical Note” included in the Finding Aid; “For
combined diversity and magnitude, as well as for impact on the thinking of others, Sutton-
Smith’s body of scholarly work on play is unparalleled” (p. 4, Finding Aid). The Stuart Brown
Papers, by comparison, are smaller in size and scope. Donated to The Strong in 2016, Brown’s
collection documents his meandering, yet wide-ranging research and interest in play, beginning
in the 1960s with his play-related research on the Charles Whitman Case, to his present-day
involvement with the National Institute for Play.
The goal of this project is not to represent the entirety of Brown or Sutton-Smith’s play-
related research and work. Instead, this thesis analyzes a sliver of The Stuart Brown and Brian
Sutton-Smith Papers: their collaborative efforts between 1994 and 2001. These efforts spread
across a dozen boxes in both collections but are consolidated primarily in Boxes 10 and 11 of
The Stuart Brown Papers. My analysis, then, will draw primarily from the archival contents of
these two boxes, with contents from other boxes sprinkled in for context and story. I hope this
specificity will strengthen my analysis, as I will be able to explore drafts, emails, letters, and
notes in the margins of these documents in depth and at length. These scribbled comments and
conversations, I argue, are quite literally marginalized from broader discussions about the state-
of-play within Play Studies, which tend to emphasize the significance of already-published,
already-acclaimed work. While the correspondences, revised drafts, and notes only represent a
fraction of Brown and Sutton-Smith’s play-related work, in this thesis I bring them to the
forefront in order to reimagine alternative approaches to the question: What is play?
Returning to the Zadie Smith quote with which I began this chapter, I too find that my
evidence, and subsequently, my knowledge of play, are intimate. My interest in play didn’t begin
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with play theory or scholarship, but instead bubbles up from and is sustained by my experiences
and relationships. They feel site-specific and it is hard to detangle my knowledge from the
people, places, and experiences that have shaped my view of, and interest in, play. In various
ways, I have tried to show how the developmental and play for play’s sake paradigms perpetuate
the assumption that the concept of play is neutral, and as such, have propelled my desire to
investigate more deeply the things that do, and do not, get labeled play(ful). Since it is
challenging for me to detangle my knowledge of play from my experiences, I am left wondering
who Brown and Sutton-Smith were pursuing a universal conception of “play itself” for? What
new knowledge, or promise, did this concept of “play itself” present to them? In the next chapter,
I begin engaging these questions by examining Brown’s initial proposals for The Promise of
Play.
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Chapter 3.
Stuart Brown’s Conception of Play
It was my second day at the Strong and I was ready to begin sifting through the Stuart
Brown Papers. This is exciting, the archivist told me, suggesting I was the first person to look at
the Stuart Brown Papers.16 I was the first? Immediately I felt nervous and eager. I also felt a
sense of responsibility: I need to tell the truth about these documents. I need to show what
happened. Being “the first” (besides the archivist) to open those boxes and folders, to read those
correspondences and notes, felt like detective work, inspiring in me the need to gather clues, get
it right, tell a compelling and accurate story about Brown and Sutton-Smith’s play scholarship.
But this initial detective-inspired sense of responsibility could equally be described as a
sense of authority, or more broadly, of power. For some time, tellers-of-the-past have granted
themselves the authority of Knowers-of-the-Past, in their visits to the archives and brush-ups
with primary documents. In that moment, I imagined joining their self-professed ranks. So much
so that when I revisited the archivist’s words later that day—“You are the first”— I launched
into this daydream: I am in conversation with a play scholar (at a conference, on the street, it
doesn’t matter where!) when Brown’s contribution to Play Studies is brought up. This play
scholar pontificates, “Brown did this” or “Brown said that,” to which I reply, smirking, “No; it
wasn’t quite like that” (Steedman, 2001, p. 145).17
16 I am not using quotation marks here because these are not the archivist’s words verbatim, but my memory of
them.
17 I am appropriating this phrase from a line in Carolyn Steedman’s (2001) Dust. While I use it here for narrative
effect, Steedman uses the phrase to express a sentiment about going to the archives: “Thus the authority of the
historian’s seemingly-modest ‘No; it wasn’t quite like that’” (p. 146).
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The timing of this daydream is somewhat ironic. It’s only my second day of two weeks at
the Strong, I have yet to open up the documents that make up the Stuart Brown Papers, and
already, I’m imagining myself in the future, not only knowing something about Brown, but
knowing more than others. I try to quell this daydream in the weeks that follow. It’s not an
admirable way to go forward, research-wise, I think. But, does being “the first” automatically
endow anyone with more knowledge, or possession of that knowledge? Even though the
daydream is momentarily satisfying, I decide it has no lasting relevance to the meaning of this
project. I chalk it up to my lack of experience in the archives, as well as a splash of insecure-
graduate-student-ness, and try my best to move on.
Make-Do-Methods
Making-do is a succinct way to describe my time at the Strong Archives of Play. Upon
my arrival, I did not have a specified, pre-planned method for engaging the archival materials.
My main intentions were these: read as much as possible, take pictures of the documents to
revisit later, and pay attention to patterns. I wanted to be open to unexpected possibilities, while
maintaining the broad, overarching question of this project: Why does Play Studies appear as it
does, and not otherwise? And the archived documents I engaged with surprised me; there were
more straight-up assertions about play by Brown, Sutton-Smith, and others than I’d anticipated,
and less follow-through on these assertions than I’d expected. There wasn’t much “proof” of the
contexts, methods, and frameworks that constituted the claims I read in the Stuart Brown and
Brian Sutton-Smith Papers, the very things I’d been hoping to find.
Lorimer (2010) describes this absence of a clear path forward “make-do-methods,” an
approach to archival research that adapts its mode of inquiry to account for the unpredictability
involved in the process of doing archival research. What might the slew of proof-less play
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assertions require of me, as a reader? And why does a lack of explanation, or “proof,” produce
suspicion in me? Does it make cl
