Brian Sutton-Smith Libri

This volume presents the theory, history, practice and institution of sport, demonstrating its influences on human culture. It argues that sport in America, as in many countries, is a mixture of big business, popular culture and potent politics.

Sutton-Smith focuses on play theories rooted in seven distinct "rhetorics" - the ancient discourses of fate, power, communal identity, and frivolity and the modern discourses of progress, the imaginary, and the self. In a sweeping analysis that moves from the question of play in child development to the implications of play for the Western work ethic, he explores the values, historical sources, and interests that have dictated the terms and forms of play put forth in each discourse's "objective" theory.