Politics in highly playful experiences

Leland Masek concentrates on how politics has been classically defined as an instance of both “to be ruled and to rule”. If political action has been defined as active freedom from rules, the expression of approval or disapproval over rules or as creation and obedience to rules, playfulness has been defined as a similar set of relationships between individuals and rules. Scholars have claimed that the “playful attitude is one of freedom”, that playfulness is “playing with the rules as opposed to playing by the rules”, or that it implies following a clearly defined set of rules or breaking rules. This raises the question of the interconnection between playfulness, politics, and rules. By analyzing an empirical, qualitative, interview dataset of 125 highly playful experiences of political action across 43 different countries, politics is analyzed using Alexander&s;s model of politics as existing in 4 distinct relations to rules: conversation, command, commentary, and coordination. It appears that playful experiences include subversion of normally binding rules, imaginary political scenarios, creation, and obedience to rules, as well as playful discourse on binding government regulation. Leland concludes that highly playful experiences have a revealing interconnection with political action.