ABSTRACT
The play, games, and leisure time activities of children have been carefully studied by generations of scholars. The functional, interactional, recreational, educational, and socializing effects of such behaviors have been catalogued, recorded, and placed within competing typologies and theories. The play and games of young children have been viewed not only as social productions but also as social institutions that mirror the outside world of the adult. A social order is defined as a produced network of identities and social relationships. It consists of the rules, objects, situations, identities, and social relationships a set of individuals has produced through interaction. The child's world of play, whether solitary or conjoint, involves active participation in an ongoing network of interconnected social worlds that are differentially bounded and framed by what is termed the "rules of the game". Games, it has been suggested, are complex social and interactional productions.
