Passatella
An Economic Game
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5632162 |
|---|---|
| Authors | John Davis (0000-0003-1164-9000, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1964 |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 191 |
| Publication date | 1964-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | British Journal of Sociology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-1315 • E-ISSN: 1468-4446 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/588465 |
| OpenAlex | W2332618409 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
G AMES HAVE BEEN NEGLECTED by social anthropologists for reasons which are comprehensible but not compelling. It is clear that the manner in which games were written about in the early years of this century (e.g. Stevenson, 1903) is often a formidable obstacle to the understanding of them. And the accident that games were used as trace-elements in the reconstructions of diffusionists perhaps encouraged the tendency already apparent in the descriptions, to relegate games to the marginal provinces of arts and crafts. There is a further reason that particular games, by definition not serious, may in fact also be unimportant. If we ask why games are hard to describe clearly, then it can be seen that in part it is because they have, so to speak, a logic of their own. Actions are performed according to rules peculiar to the game, and an account has to be given of the rules. A social anthropologist who wishes to describe how a canoe is built can rely on his reader having some mental image of a canoe, and on photographs and drawings; he is able to take the canoe for granted, he can dismiss the technical acts in a sentence, though they may last a month, and he can relate to them the social organization which is their permissive and occasionally their formal cause. But the description of a game, if the social relationships are to be understood, involves a list of actions-alternative actions, consequent actions, forbidden actions-each of which has its own moral value and excitement
Economic geography · Economics · Sociology · African Studies and Ethnography · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Sociology and Norbert Elias
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,07 |
| Citation span | 1968 - 1988 (21) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |