ABSTRACT
Kristin Alexander (Alexander, Miller & Hengst, 2001) has remarked that children’s involvement in fictional or oral narratives (so-called ‘story attachments’) constitute a ‘homeless phenomenon’. By that she means, story attachments are ever-present in real children’s lives, yet as a topic have not carved out much space for intense study within the bounds of any one social science discipline. In many respects, play similarly is a homeless phenomenon, neither the central province of anthropology nor psychology nor education nor therapy, but rather a visitor to all these fields, borrowing space at the edges of disciplines rather than occupying the central space of any given field.
