ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we introduce the ‘raison d’être’ of the book: our curiosity and concern about the way playing has been conceptualised and introduced into public health discourses to reduce childhood obesity. With widespread calls for children’s play to be protected and further promoted, we examine whether the engaged and organised promotion of children’s play may make children’s play less free and less “simply for fun”. We introduce our interest in the discussions around children’s play in Canada, and the emerging interest within Canadian public health and introduce the themes that fuelled research and debate on children’s play. Our departure point in this chapter, and for the book as a whole, is that there is currently an increasing techno-rationalism around play and growing fears over whether children play enough, in the right ways, whether play is indeed “on the decline” and whether this evacuates pleasure in play. Finally, we present the theoretical framing of our research, the methodologies we drew on, and briefly outline the remaining chapters of the book.
