Playing with social identities: Play in the everyday life of a peer group in day care

Abstract

In this chapter, it is argued that children when playing in day care are also playing with social identities. This holds true whenever they play together with peers, both when engaged in symbolic group play and when playing games with rules. Through Schousboe’s comprehensive model of spheres of realities in playing (see Schousboe, The structure of fantasy play and its implications for good and evil games (Chapter 2). In Schousboe I, Winther-Lindqvist D (eds.) Children’s play and development: Cultural-historical perspectives. Springer, Dordrecht, 2013) and Lev Vygotsky’s insight that all playing involve rules as well as pretence, children’s playing is analysed as an activity involving the making, remaking and exploration of social identities among the children. The paper is informed by ethnographic observations in two different Danish day-care centres and draws on illustrative examples with symbolic group playing as well as game playing with rules (soccer) among 5-year-old boys. Findings suggest that day-care children’s playing and negotiation of roles, positions and rules are intrinsically concerned with processes of social identities, both those that are anchored in the social reality and those anticipated and imagined.