Play has often been snubbed as a serious research topic. The combination of its supposed uselessness and its association with the world of childhood has led to a general lack of reflection about play on the part of high culture. Nevertheless, play experience is symbolic, polysemic, ambivalent, laden with affect and a potential generator of contradictory and transformative knowledge (Huizinga, 1980; Fink, 1987, 1992; Suits, 1978). Due to its rich variety of expression and multiple meanings, it eludes the rigorous conceptualizations and reductionism favoured by contemporary mainstream educational science, which views play mainly as a teaching aid or as an opportunity for socialization, culturalization, transmission of contents or as a means of furthering linguistic, cognitive or affective development. When we speak about the relationship between playing and childhood, we have to go beyond the real and concrete child, and also go beyond a univocal kind of game - as symbolic play. Altho...
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