"Is This Play?" Refraning Metaphoric Action on
Indianist Playgrounds
Petra Tjitske Kalshoven, McGill University
We believe that the paradoxes of abstraction must make their appearance in all
communication more complex than that of mood-signals and that without these
paradoxes the evolution of communication would be at an end. Life would then be an
endless interchange of stylized messages, a game with rigid rules, unrelieved by
change or humor.
-Gregory Bateson
Introduction
On a summer evening in 2003, I was part of a big circle of people sitting in a
meadow in the Belgian Ardennes. I had spent a few days with a group of European
Indianists, and as this tribal council marked the end of a two-week camping event, I
thought it was the appropriate moment for me to rise and thank them for their
hospitality. Rather than the obligatory display of courteous nods that I expected, my
gesture provoked a debate about the legitimacy of my very presence at the camp. I
felt particularly ill-at-ease and did not know if I should react. I kept silent. The next
day, I left as planned. Something very unpleasant had happened, and I felt relieved
that I could go elsewhere with the material I had gathered and interview other
Indianists in other places.
In hindsight, I am no longer sure whether anything hostile or even unpleasant
had occurred. Perhaps I had taken what had been said too much at face value.
Perhaps I had mistaken play for the real thing. Perhaps the entire episode had given
rise to a misunderstanding on my part that was emblematic for the type of activity
under observation: a form of play with ambiguous frames.
My anthropological research concerns what I would like to call "play
communities": groups of enthusiastic amateurs who study and reenact, on European
soil, their specific versions of nineteenth-century Native American life by producing
replicas of artifacts and clothing and wearing these in homemade settings reminiscent
of living history museums. This knowledge-intensive leisure activity is known as the
Indian hobby, Indian hobbyism, or Indianism. I spent the better part of 2003 and the
first half of 2004 in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and the Czech
Republic interviewing Indian hobbyists and participating in Indianist camps.
K n"Is This Play?"
Play
In Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Gregory Bateson has written an influential
theory of play as metacommunication. Describing his observations of monkeys
engaging in seemingly aggressive behavior that turns out to be play, he writes, "[T]he
statement 'This is play' looks something like this: 'These actions in which we now
engage do not denote what those actions for which they stand would denote'
(1972:180). When humans engage in play, they enter a framework in which signals
stand for something other than what they would normally stand for: a framework
bearing the cautionary message "This is play." In other words, play is about
metaphoric action. A more complex form of play, Bateson writes, is the game
constructed not upon the premise "This is play" but on the question "Is this play?" In
this case, the interest of the game is in toying with the premise itself.
Bateson's theory is embedded in a discussion of schizophrenia.
Schizophrenic patients, he argues, are carried away by their fantasies because they fail
to grasp the metaphoric nature of these fantasies.  Being unable to set
"metacommunicative frames," schizophrenics take everything literally (1972:190-91).
Understanding metacommunicative action is thus a matter of understanding which
frame is invoked. Bateson describes a frame as a psychological concept that delimits
a set of messages or meaningful actions and helps the subject understand such
messages (1972:186-88).
The notion of "frame" has been taken up by Erving Goffman (1974) in Frame
Analysis to develop an understanding of the organization of human experience.
Goffman praises Bateson's paper for "allowing us to see what a startling thing
experience is, such that a bit of serious activity can be used as a model for putting
together unserious versions of the same activity, and that, on occasion, we may not
know whether it is play or the real thing that is occurring" (1974:7). In Goffman's
approach, the process of transcription that transforms a primary framework (which is
meaningful in itself without harking back to an "original" activity) into "something
patterned on this activity-but seen by the participants to be something quite else" is
called keying (1974:44). This process can be applied several times, resulting in
multiple re-keyings. A frame can thus incorporate a number of re-keyings, and each
transformation may be thought of as adding a layer or lamination to the activity
(1974:80-82). Indian hobbyism, seen in this light, may be considered an activity
involving multiple transformations. As a form of representation drawing on historical
sources (in themselves representations or keyings of a supposed historical reality),
Indian hobbyism, as such, is already two laminations removed from the supposed
original. Within the context of the hobby, as I hope to show, numerous activities are
organized and staged that involve yet additional transformations.
Goffman  distinguishes between  make-believe, contests, ceremonials,
technical re-doings (including rehearsal and experimentation), and re-groundings as
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basic keys (1974:48). He notes that the framing of an activity is often marked by a
special set of "brackets," as with the keying signals in Bateson's discussion of the
message "this is play" (251-54).1 Goffman's numerous examples are drawn from the
realms of sports, games, ritual, experimentation, practicing, and performance.
However, he stresses that serious, everyday life is also often already patterned upon
cultural standards, thus constituting "a laminated adumbration of a pattern or model
that is itself a typification of quite uncertain realm status" (1974:562). Individuals'
framing may lead to ambiguity, misframings, and frame disputes, which are resolved
upon reaching a clear frame, "which occurs when all participants in the activity have a
clear relation to the frame" (1974:338).
Often, the term "play" is featured in Goffman's examples, independent of the
particular realm of activity he is drawing on, but he does not accord it a special status
in the process of keying. In my approach of Indian hobbyism, however, this is what I
propose to do.    While drawing on Bateson's and Goffman's work on
metacommunicative framing, I will use play as my guiding principle in considerations
of keying in hobbyism. This choice of perspective is partly motivated, as will become
clear from my discussion of hobbyism, by the contentious use of the term "play" by
hobbyists themselves.
Within the discipline of anthropology, the idea of play has rarely taken center-
stage as theoretical concept, perhaps with the exception of Clifford Geertz's (1972)
use of deep play as a characterization of the Balinese cockflght and Victor Turner's
(1982, 1984) later work on the liminal and the liminoid. A much more central
theoretical concept, ritual, has lately been extended to include non-religious
phenomena and is seen to provide room for new anthropological interest in forms of
play (see Limon 1989; Coleman and Elsner 1998). Theorists of play differ in their
classification of play in relationship to other types of special activity, such as ritual.
In Homo ludens, Johan Huizinga (1967) includes ritual in the realm of play.
According to Huizinga, sacred earnest and make-believe or fun are indissolubly
connected in play (1967:24). Play is about pretending, even about "just pretending,"
but that does not mean that it is_not serious. Emphasizing the important role of play in
human society, Huizinga considers societal institutions as functioning in the realm of
play whenever they can be classified under the headings of performance or contest.
Consequently, play in Huizinga's approach includes poetry and the performative arts,
philosophy, and, as prime examples of contest, law and war.
For Bateson, unlike Huizinga, play is not an umbrella concept but part of a
complex of phenomena (together with threat, histrionics, games, and ritual) which
have been important in the evolution of human communication due to their
metaphoric nature. He notes that in ritual, as in play, the metaphoric may be
misunderstood for the "real." An example of this would be a peace-making ceremony
involving ritual blows turning into a battle (1972:182). In Goffman's terminology,
"Is This Play?"
such instances of "breaking frame," viz. mistaking mock acts for real acts, are called
"down-keying" (1974:359).
Bateson's single complex of phenomena, transposed in more recent
anthropological terminology, could be said to include the performative and mimetic
(threat and histrionics), the competitive (games), the ritualistic (ritual), and the ludic
(play and fantasy), elements which will all be important in an analysis of Indian
hobbyism. In Performance Theory (2003), theater scholar Richard Schechner
discusses play, games, sports, theater, and ritual as performative genres that may be
grouped in games, sports, and theater on the one hand, and play and ritual on the
other. The basis of his classification is "the different quality and use of the rules that
govern the activities.... Play is 'free activity' where one makes one's own rules....
Ritual is strictly programmed.... Games, sports, and theater . . . mediate between
these extremes" (2003:15). Schechner also suggests that "play is obviously the
ontogenic source of the other activities: what children do, adults organize," thus
according a somewhat more overarching status to the concept of play (2003:15).
What is attractive to me about using play (as an activity practiced by adults)
as an umbrella concept for the study of Indianism is the juxtaposition of its
seriousness as suggested by Huizinga (the importance of playing by the rules-
following the appropriate ritual, wearing the appropriate, "authentic" clothes,
excelling in a game) and the self-reflexive irony that seems to be part of it (it is only a
game, after all, an "as if' situation as opposed to real life). Using play as my central
concept, I look upon the performative, ritualistic, competitive, mimetic, ludic, and
ironic as my analytic tools, powered by Goffman' s notion of keying. Although play is
considered especially difficult to defme, I fid Helen Schwartzman's (1978) approach
inspiring because it allows for a broad interpretation, as does Huizinga' s conception of
play. Drawing on Bateson, Schwartzman stresses the creative force of play as a mode
of activity that constitutes its own reality and concludes that "play is an orientation or
framing and defmiing context that players adopt toward something (an object, a
person, a role, an activity, an event, etc.), which produces a text characterized by
allusion (not distortion or illusion)e4ransformation (not preservation), and 'purported
imitation' of the object, person, role, etc" (Schwartzman 1978:330). Brnging in
frame analysis, I conceive of such allusion, transformation, and imitation as instances
of "playful" keying.
Only a minority of Indian hobbyists would immediately agree with the term
"play" as a categorization of their hobby.2 As became apparent in field interviews, in
most hobbyists' perception, play implies a lack of seriousness, whereas many take
their hobby quite seriously as an activity in which they invest a lot of time, effort, and
money. Some have become very knowledgeable on aspects of Native American
nineteenth-century material culture and would rather consider their involvement as a
dedicated form of amateur ethnology.3 Since the term "play" is immediately
associated with playing cowboys and Indians and thus with children's activities, it
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provokes resistance on the part of Indianists who feel they are seldom taken seriously
by professional students of Native American history and material culture.
In the episode during my fieldwork among Indianists in August 2003 that I
will discuss in this paper, when I was under the impression that communication was at
least partly breaking down, I was a guest of a group that explicitly, and even defiantly,
used the term "play" to refer to their hobby. Their playground was the Buffalo Days
Camp (BDC), an event with a reputation of "historically correct" strictness among
European Indianists. Before turning to this episode, I will describe the contacts and
events leading up to it, which will serve to paint a picture of part of the Indianist
scene, the social networks underlying it, and the various ways of "living" the hobby.4
Performance and Offentlichkeitsarbeit: A Hobbyist Family in Eastern
Germany
One of my first contacts in the hobby led me to a hamlet near Cottbus in
eastern Germany. My visit in March 2003 with an Indianist family in an old
farmhouse near the Polish border proved a very interesting introduction to Indian
hobbyism "eastern style" that would lead to an invitation to stay in their teepee during
the Indian Week (the biggest Indian hobbyist event in the former East Germany) later
that year. The hobby turned out to be quite a presence in this family's daily
surroundings. On their property, teepee poles were stacked up along the driveway and
deer hides were drying on frames. Gifts from fellow-Indianists and homemade
replicas were scattered all over the house. On the living room table, a piece of
Cheyenne beadwork was taking shape. The impression of a curiosity-cabinet-turned-
living-space was enhanced by a collection of stuffed birds and animals, a buffalo
head, Cheyenne, Crow, and Blackfoot baby carriers made by the hostess (a different
one for each of their sons), a dried trunkfish from a Polish flea market, and English
redcoat jackets from a theater company. An old-fashioned Canadian map of North
American tribes adorned the kitchen wall.
My host, Ralph,s w4& the chief of one of the local clubs and a member of a
war society within the hobby, the eastern variant of the Crow Owners or Kangi Yuhas.
My hostess, Karin, told me that she was the third generation of Indian enthusiasts
along the female line. Her grandmother had been a pioneer of Indian-style camping in
a make-shift teepee and her mother still actively participated in Indianist events.
Karin and Ralph eamed some money on the side (as they explained, to help
pay for vacations abroad) by organizing events and shows (Veranstaltungen and
Auftritte). The couple had a leaflet in which they offered their services, ranging from
dance performances and talks on Plains Indian life to teepee tours and flint-knapping.
Such public performances (Offentlichkeitsarbeit, community work) used to be part of
regular club activities. These days, however, Ralph and Karin put up shows in
collaboration with a few Indianist friends.6 They guided me through photo albums
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"Is This Play?"
filled with pictures taken during such shows-in schools, at fairs, or at country-style
trucker festivals. Their goal, they told me, was to show people that Native Americans
lived differently from what is usually shown in westerns.7
Play Acting or Plain Acting
The hobby, both as something private and as a source of additional income,
seemed to be entirely integrated into the family's daily lives and gestures. During
later visits, as a guest in their teepee and in their house, I was always struck by the
naturalness and matter-of-factness with which they switched between Indian outfits
(daily, ceremonial, and society dress) and "normal" clothing, and between house and
teepee. With the exception of special occasions, their behavior did not seem to
change significantly between "normal" and "Indian play" contexts. I expected
instances of keying to be accompanied by a marked behavioral change on the part of
the Indianists in the form of role-play. During hobbyist outings in Karin's and
Ralph's company, however, I was puzzled by the lack of such make-believe.
Certainly, Bateson's message "this is play" could be said to be conveyed by the very
costumes and setting, and by the change in gestures and activities. Moreover, life in
camp at the Indian Week as I observed it was punctuated by many marked moments
of special play, re-keyings within the re-keying that is hobbyism: performative play
(as when the Crow Owners went through the camp asking for gifts and the people
came out to contribute and take pictures), ritualistic play (as when the Crow Owners'
wives treated their men and former Crow Owners to a meal during which the men
took turns making speeches about shared history), competitive play (games of chance
in the society teepee or games of skill on the meadow), mimetic play ("Plains Indians"
trying out Woodland steps, mimicking other hobbyists; dance leaders and singers
mimicking historical models, instructing others), and ironic, verbal play ("Woodland
Indians" mocking "Plains Indians"). But most of such moments of play had occurred
in similar ways before, I was told, and appeared to have become part of day-to-day
life in camp, part of the normal array of gestures, which, as a whole, did not seem to
involve any explicit role shifts marked by the warning label "this is play."
This does not mean that Karin and Ralph did not reflect on their hobby lives
as opposed to their everyday lives. In a taped television interview with a local
journalist that Ralph showed me during my visit in March 2003, he mentioned that he
appreciated a tendency in the hobby towards a more ernsthaft (serious) approach.
Concrete changes as a result of this tendency, he explained to me, included a more
structured organizational framework for events, with societies playing a policing role,
and a general improvement in people's outfits. In the old days, hobbyists could walk
around at the Indian Week in a sports outfit, but such lack of historical rigor was no
longer tolerated. When I asked him why he approved of this more ernsthaft approach,
Ralph answered that it enhanced nachempfinden and that it felt better to be properly
dressed in proper surroundings.
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Nachempfinden, and also nacherleben, were terms that I would often hear
mentioned in my fieldwork in the former East Germany. Empfinden translates as "to
experience," erleben as "to relive, to experience," and the prefix "nach" may be
rendered as "through copying/mimicking." Both terms are used by Indianists to
express their principal goal in the hobby: to acquire an understanding of how life used
to be in the period and among the people under study, not only by reading about them,
but also by going, at least partly, through the same motions. This conception of the
hobby resonates with Goffman's notion of keying in the sense of technical re-doing.
Most of my discussion partners in the former East Germany would contrast
nachempfinden or nacherleben with spielen or schauspielen, to play or to act a part, of
which they would usually disapprove.8 This discourse would often include the claim
that too much emphasis on authentic representation of the historical model might be
detrimental to genuine, meaningful experience. As one of the main initiators of
powwowing in East Germany told me during an interview, a step considered wrong
by the book would be just fine if the dancer felt it to be appropriate during his or her
performance. Among Goffman's examples of technical re-doings, experimentation
would perhaps be the best label for this approach.
As we leafed through Ralph's and Karin's photo albums, an invitation to the
Buffalo Days Camp turned up for each documented year. The couple had not yet
participated in this "1830-1870 Plains Indians only" event. They knew a Belgian
BDC participant, however, who had attended the Week in the GDR even before the
fall of the Wall and was quite appreciated because of this.9 Karin and Ralph gave me
his telephone number. When I called him in Belgium, he referred me to his son.
In Quest of Authenticity: A Hobbyist Couple in Belgium
In April 2003, I met Paul and Helen, a couple with, as it turned out, quite a
different stance towards the hobby. They lived on the outskirts of Antwerp in a
townhouse in which Indianist objects were only sparsely and tastefully displayed. In
the corridor, smart drawers had been installed to contain the large collection of
pictures of Native American-artifacts from ethnology museums that the couple had
acquired over the years. They told me they had lent out replicas to ethnography
museums in Belgium on several occasions and had been involved in restoration
projects of ethnographica.
Paul joked that his early efforts in the hobby were characterized by "a high
Winnetou content."'1 Through study and experimentation, this had since changed.
The driving force behind the couple's Indianist activities had become to attain the
highest possible degree of authenticity. At the same time, they emphasized the
importance of sheer enjoyment and of poking fun at their own (and at other
hobbyists') seriousness, for example by dressing up in shockingly inauthentic
children's play outfits, thus satirizing their own efforts-in frame analysis tenns, a re-
keying of a re-keying.
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"Is This Play?"
As I found in subsequent interviews and conversations in the field, the term
"authenticity" is used among European hobbyists to characterize their own
productions and performances as more or less accurate ("historically correct")
renderings (keyings) of the emulated model. Authenticity in European hobbyist usage
is thus located in the relationship between hobbyists' output and the historical model.
According to Paul and Helen, the best venue to experiment with historically correct
reenactment would be the annual Buffalo Days Camp (BDC), an initiative by a
German Indianist that had taken place at different locations in Europe over the
preceding eight years.
Play as a Learning Tool
Paul explained during the interview in Antwerp that his main responsibility at
the BDC consisted in designing choreographies by compiling ethnographic sources.
He had also volunteered to document the history of the BDC by drawing ledger books
as an alternative to historically incorrect photography. Paul and Helen stressed that
they played Indian (more specifically, Lakota): in their view, play was something very
positive, implying learning, acquirng skills, and experimenting. The challenge at the
BDC, they told me, was to learn both intellectually and physically.
At the BDC, as Paul and Helen explained, participants did not try to portray a
specific historical figure as interpreters do in living history museums. They did have
nicknames, however, reflecting a trait of their personality in the Native American
language of the people they sought to emulate. Paul suggested that playing at the
BDC involved the technique of method acting, in which improvisation is important.
Slipping into another world, if only for ten minutes, was an experience he particularly
enjoyed. This was highly personal, he stressed, and possibly disconcerting for people
who were less prepared to let themselves go. He appreciated the BDC for providing a
sheltered environment suited to this kind of experimentation, which would not be
possible at just any camp. In fact, at one particular Indianist event, the annual
gathering in western Germany called the Indian Council, Paul had found himself in
real trouble when he used a reenactment of a running competition to engage in
mockery of older Indianists, a practice that he claimed attested to historical examples.
The older men had taken these insults personally and excluded him for several years
from the Council." From the perspective of frame analysis, the older Indianists
interpreted the mockery in a primary framework of ordinary communication instead of
recognizing it as keyed activity. They were down-keying, removing a lamination
from the frame, with a frame dispute as a result (Goffman 1974:359,343). In
Bateson's terms, the metacommunicative message "this is play" was not adequately
conveyed or understood. Problems were likely to arise among participants in the
hobby, Paul felt, from not being clear about the rules of the game. Sometimes, he
admitted, he tended to play according to his own rules without having explained these
properly beforehand.
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Although their hobby spilled over into their normal lives in various ways (for
example, through close friendships with fellow Indianists), reality to Paul and Helen
remained explicitly the daily (work) environment as "Westerners." In contrast to
many East German hobbyists that I interviewed, they did not seem to regard Native
American lifeworlds as a source of inspiration or a guiding rod for (ethical) behavior
in their "normal" lives.'2 What it did seem to offer them, however, was a space in
which to engage in rituals (interpreted not in a religious sense, but rather as
meaningful shared gestures) that they felt were lacking in modern Western European
life. They were well aware that other Indianists criticized the BDC approach for being
too rigorous or too individualistic. In their view, other hobbyist networks, especially
in western Germany, focused much more on Gemutlichkeit (conviviality) or,
especially in eastern Germany, on solidarity, with everybody (including the less
skilled or rigorous) welcome to join in.
Hobbyist Playgrounds
In the summer of 2003, I was preparing for my first big event: Ralph and
Karin had invited me to the Indian Week in early August, where I could stay in their
teepee as a guest of the Crow Owners Society and wear appropriate dresses,
moccasins, and leggings from Karin's elaborate hobby wardrobe. A few days before
leaving for the camp site in Thuringia in eastem Germany, I spoke to Paul on the
phone. To my surprise, he invited me to spend three or four days at the Buffalo Days
Camp in the Belgian Ardennes, in mid-August, immediately after the Week. There
was one condition, however: I was welcome only in the guise of a female
anthropologist not later than 1880. In great haste, I called theater companies that
rented costumes and I managed to secure a more or less suitable outfit, with a hat and
parasol. I decided my role model would be Alice Cunningham Fletcher who visited
the Omaha reservation in Nebraska for the first time in 1879 to do anthropological
research. In terms of frame analysis, this spell of participant-observation, in itself
already a keying (more specifically a re-grounding) according to Goffman,'3 was thus
bound to undergo a re-keying, a further lamination, as a staging of "normal"
participant-observation.
My ten days at the Indian Week, a gathering involving hundreds of teepees,
left me with a wealth of impressions and data that made me wonder whether the idea
of "play" still held in a context where people seemed to go about their daily business
(albeit hobby business in hobby clothes) as if everything went without saying. Except
for the overtly staged and planned actions, ranging from a society dance to Lakota
lessons, people seemed simply at home. They had been doing this for years. Still, the
setting was extraordinary, and participants marveled at its extraordinariness, while
playing by specific rules aimed at creating a specific atmosphere, in a clearly
demarcated playground that was not accessible to outsiders.'4 But apart from
explicitly framed occasions, when someone became a story-teller or defied the chief
of a rival society, role-play was rare.
"Is This Play?"
I was expecting something different at the Buffalo Days Camp. When the
BDC was mentioned by participants at the Week, it was mostly with some disapproval
in which the word "play" was often featured: it was considered "too extreme,"
participants were said to be playing as opposed to experiencing (nachempfinden), and
the camp was said to be more about individualistic showing-off than about social
sharing. Playing, in Week participants' discourse, seemed to imply being theatrical,
putting on a show, instead of being sincerely, personally involved in worthwhile
emulation of Native American values. Thus, Week participants seemed to draw moral
distinctions between different types of mimetic keying (detached and heartfelt).'5 Few
people had experienced the BDC themselves, however. One couple (members of the
Crow Owners Society) who had participated in the BDC invited me to make a stop-
over at their home on my way to the BDC in Belgium. They playfully prepared me
for all that could happen upon my arrival there, warning me that I was likely to be
abducted by warriors on horseback.
Alice Fletcher among the "'Indians"
Armed with a detailed map indicating the farm where the BDC meadow could
be found, which my hosts had sent through e-mail, I arrived at the spot in the Belgian
Ardennes nicely on time, by car. On an improvised parking lot near the farm, I
changed into the theater outfit (a synthetic horror in the blistering sun) and waited for
someone to escort me to the camp, well out of sight. I left my laptop and camera in
the car trunk, knowing that such modern equipment would not be appreciated here.
Transcribing fieldnotes into the laptop would have to wait until after my stay. Only
an old-fashioned notebook and a pencil were to accompany me on this hobbyist site.
This would not be a major departure from my accustomed way of recording. All
events and interviews discussed in this paper were recorded by taking elaborate notes
on paper and, if necessary, pausing to write out a quote, without using audiovisual
devices, with the exception of a camera. During my fieldwork, I took pictures of
Indianists at home after interviews and at many hobbyist events, both open and closed
to the public, but not at the BDC. Whenever possible, I transcribed my notes into my
laptop on the evening or day following an event or interview, using a simple code to
protect informant privacy and adding observations and annotations.
After a while, Helen came to meet me, in a buckskin dress stripped to the
waist. She was pleasant as ever. We walked through a meadow down to the camp (a
circle of about twenty teepees) close to a narrow, shallow river. Under a shelter made
out of branches, women and children were resting. Helen introduced me and I
murmured a few sentences of the speech I had prepared as part of the role-play of
Fletcher, expressing that I had come hoping I would learn a great deal from them. It
tured out that the men were holding a meeting in the society teepee. Some of them
were members or ex-members of the "west" Crow Owners Society, the counterpart of
the "east" Kangi Yuhas whose guest I had been at the Indian Week. Paul was not
available for consultation, and Helen was not sure how to proceed. She showed me
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the teepee where I would stay with Paul, herself, and Michael, the lead musician and
guardian at the camp. The heat was oppressive, and Helen felt like a swim.
Abandoning the role I was expecting to play, I got rid of the heavy costume and
waded into the river as naked as she was, a practice with which I was already quite
familiar since the Week.'6 Shedding one lamination from transformed participant-
observation to normal participant-observation within the frame of "playing Indian," I
was soon reminded by a third bathing woman that another layer of play was still
expected to be added: she asked us whether we would all be moving into role-play so
that "the game may begin." Helen inquired whether I had a specific historical figure in
mind. The choice of Alice Fletcher did not surprise her. As a man approached the
bank of the river, Helen held her breath. He could snatch my clothes! I felt excited
and terrified at the same time at the prospect of such a spectacular start of the game,
but the warrior went away without paying any attention to us.
We were properly dressed in our play clothes when the society men, in
breechclouts, emerged from the central teepee, Paul among them. He introduced me
to the initiator of the BDC, Udo, an engineer with whom I had had contact through e-
mail and who had agreed to an interview at a later date, in spite of misgivings about
journalists and other outsiders likely to misrepresent Indianism. Paul felt that as long
as no complaints were voiced concerning my presence, a formal presentation to all
participants would not be necessary.
Over the days that followed, I did not play Alice Fletcher in any sustained
way. I pretended to feel a bit Fletcher-like when striding about in my robes shaded by
the parasol or when accepting a blanket to sit upon while recording goings-on in my
old-fashioned notebook. Outfit does make a difference. People were either busy with
private projects (carving a bow, asking others for advice, cooking, cleaning a hide) or
involved in planned actions that, other than what I had seen during the Week, were
carefully prepared beforehand and executed in a rather cerebral fashion. Sometimes,
an action was interrupted because of a perceived flaw in its staging-a detail that did
not match historical descriptions or images, of which Paul kept copies in his teepee.
After an action, participants vpuld discuss its quality and their personal experience
with a view of improvement next time. Frames would be shifting constantly, both in
terms of activity and in terms of discourse. Indianists could be involved in a
"historical" task within the setting of the hobby, such as quilling, while discussing
problems at work (the primary frame outside of the hobby) or ideas for an action (a
quilling contest in which their replicas would be judged, modeled after an event
described in historical sources). They could also be engrossed in a staged action and
experience, if only for a fleeting moment, "how it could have been," achieving a
temporary belief in an illusion (self-deception, a form of fabrication according to
Goff man), before stepping out of frame into everyday hobby life.
Because of the international character of the camp (in 2003, about 45
hobbyists participated, from Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and
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Hungary), stage directions before and even during actions would be given in English,
German, and sometimes in French, keying the actions as rehearsals rather than
performances. Although preparing for actions by consulting historical sources seemed
to be an integral part of the experience for participants at the BDC, opinions varied on
the amount of preparation needed. The night before I arrived, a spontaneous raid had
taken place, to the disapproval of those who had been left in the dark and were
subsequently "massacred."
In general, I noticed that considerable self-reflection went into BDC practices.
The word "play" was used as a standard term to refer to hobbyism, sometimes in
explicit defiance of other hobby networks in which people were said to be too
insecure (towards outsiders who ridiculed play) or too carried-away (due to an
idealized understanding of the historical model) to admit to the play nature of their
activities. This attitude towards the hobby was quite different from the prevalent
approach at the Week, where the accent seemed to be on the inspiration that hobbyists
could draw from Native American historical examples rather than on meticulously
accurate representation.
I was not the only "white person" present at the BDC: one of the French
Indianists had brought her cowboy husband. Our status as white outsiders became
part of an unmistakable play situation when Paul announced a performance and we
were invited to sit on a blanket as an audience, together with Paul's elderly father, to
watch a series of war dances especially put on for the entertainment and
enlightenment of the white visitors. Michael, the musical leader, gave me some
historical background information about the dances they were about to perform. I
inquired after the headdresses that some of the men were donning. Did a headdress
signify prestige in the hobby, as it would have done in the historical model? No, he
answered, unfortunately not. Some fifteen years ago, Michael elaborated, he had been
involved in playing a game (ein Spiel spielen) during which only "tribal leaders,"
people who had made an impact on the hobby, were allowed to wear a headdress. As
he had a policing function at the time, he asked a newcomer to remove his brand-new
bonnet. Unfortunately, this newcomer reacted badly and sat sulking in his teepee
throughout the game. Michael seemed to consider this an example of a ludic initiative
by one party mistaken for a putdown by another. The basic problem, Michael
claimed, was that the hobby was a game without rules (ein Spiel ohne Regeln).
When everyone had dressed for the occasion and stood assembled on the open
space in the teepee circle, Paul and Michael explained the rules for the upcoming
performance, which was set around 1870. At last, I felt we could all act out a role;
there was no ambiguity about which frame to invoke. Some of the dancing men came
up to the audience as if to challenge the white visitors. Thinking of the adventure
novels and westerns that were part of my European cultural baggage, I tried to look
them straight into the eye so as not to show any fear. At less intimidating moments, I
took notes frantically. It felt like a translation exercise in which the translator is given
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a text that has already been translated and now has to be translated back into its source
language: inevitably, the resultant text will be quite different from the original.
In the afternoon, a fishing party was organized. Led by Michael, the women
and a few men stepped into the river to chase the fish towards the other men, who
were waiting with their arrows on the string. Paul had appropriated my dainty hat. It
suited him fine. I hesitated, then took off my laced boots, girded up my skirt, and
followed the others into the water, lashing it with a twig, as they did. Rather soaked
after all the excitement, and no longer feeling very dignified, I returned to the teepee
in disarray and gladly accepted Helen's offer of a calico dress, moccasins, leggings,
and a belt with a pouch containing fire-making tools. Paul added a knife in a sheath to
my outfit. The other women remarked amusedly that I had gone native. Udo's eldest
girl asked me whether I was playing Indian now. I wore the Indian dress for the
remainder of my stay, quite relieved to be able to dispense with the heavy
"anthropologist's costume" in the relentless heat.
When the Anthropologist Becomes Data
That evening, I rose and thanked my hosts at the tribal council that was held
to evaluate that year's BDC. Paul took the floor and asked participants whether they
wanted me to pay the full contribution that, according to the rules, was due by anyone
staying longer than two nights at the BDC, or whether they considered my presence as
constructive as such and would waive the contribution. After several endless
moments of silence, a French Indianist got up and declared that it was not his
intention to hurt the visitor, but that she would never be able to understand what drove
him as an Indianist. A woman rose and complained about the participation of the
cowboy (who had already left) with his big mustache. The leader of the French group
then took the floor to defend the cowboy, claiming that the latter's presence at the
camp as the husband of a Native American woman had been historically correct. He
went on to vent his discontent with the concept "historically correct," which he felt
was used rather opportunistically by the camp's leaders. He asked for an explanation
of what it exactly stood for.
Several people subsequently attempted to define the "historically correct."
They emphasized that at the BDC, the historically correct was a product of specific
BDC rules rather than a reference to real history. Udo mentioned that some Native
Americans were known to have had beards during the reenacted time period, but that
beards were banned at the BDC to prevent it from resembling a trappers' camp.
Udo's wife Ela, a highly respected and skilled hobbyist, pointed out that hunting was
impossible and that their teepees were made out of canvas instead of buffalo hides.
The "historically correct," she argued, was a compromise, and it was exactly this, she
claimed, which enabled her to invoke BDC rules and speak out against people (no
matter how kind or well-dressed) who walked around not having been introduced or
announced, and were present without the general consent of the people. In fact, she
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"Is This Play?"
added, she should have torn the clothes from my body and had me work as a servant
in her teepee. Paul then countered with a historical example of a white guest in an
Indian camp who, after a row with his host, went to live in the teepee of another
Native American. Therefore, Paul claimed, it was historically correct to have a guest
who had not been introduced to everyone and who could even be an object of
controversy. Native American camps used to swarm with white visitors at the time.
Nevertheless, he added, they could either decide to act in accordance with the
historically correct and welcome such visitors, or agree upon a revision of BDC rules
that would regulate, for example, the number of visitors per event. The matter was
not brought to a vote. It was decided to review the issue later.
After the meeting, I sat gloomily and rather shaken in the teepee, pondering
my unwelcome presence. Noting my dejection, Michael volunteered that Ela' s
remarks were not to the point since I was the guest of an important member of the
tribe, a chief, as it were-she would never have dared to touch a guest enjoying such
protection.
The next day, I was relieved that I could travel on as planned. I left without
having discussed the matter in any depth with Paul or Helen, who did not seem to be
surprised or in any way affected by the altercations at the tribal council. I paid my
contribution to the treasurer and took leave of the people with whom I had interacted.
Udo confinned that I could call him and Ela for an interview at their home.
Discussions in the Aftermath
A few weeks later, I ran into Paul, Helen, and Michael at an event in
Hamburg featuring Native American music by a German who, traveling with Michael,
had learnt to sing on North American reservations. The event was open to the public,
and a number of hobbyists showed up in "old-style" outfit. Helen and Paul wore T-
shirts and jeans, and Michael, as a powwow enthusiast, a ribbon shirt. I asked Paul
whether there had been any follow-up to the BDC tribal meeting. The proposed
solution regarding non-Insdianist guests, he told me, was to ask them to embody a
historical figure bringing all the necessary props, such as a trader with trade goods.
When I raised the subject of the lack of role-play in connection with my visit, he
answered that role-play had not been necessary in my case because I was playing
myself: an anthropologist.
A month after the BDC, I paid the planned visit to Udo and Ela, feeling rather
apprehensive. Ela, an ardent craftsperson, proved eloquent on the intricacies of
materials and techniques. She told me that she considered playing her passion-this
included sports, party games, and going all the way in role-play. When I mentioned
my uneasiness at the BDC as to the role I was supposed to play, she said that things
should have been better prepared and playfully added, "If only I had not felt so sick on
the day of your arrival, I would have stolen your things or initiated some other kind of
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game." I suddenly wondered whether her confrontational speech at the tribal meeting
had to be seen in another light: not so much as an expression of irritation concerning
unannounced outsiders, but as an expression of frustration over a lost opportunity for
play-perhaps even as a way to make up for a lost opportunity for play by using the
presence of the outsider as a source of inspiration for a confrontational speech, an
alternative opportunity for keying. I started to wonder even more about the semantics
of the tribal council when Udo expressed satisfaction with the intervention by the
French hobbyist who had risen and claimed that this woman (meaning me) would
never understand him. Usually, Udo said, this particular hobbyist was rather quiet and
kept to himself. Do you mean he was playing a role? I asked. Perhaps, he answered.
In any case, the manner in which the Frenchman had intervened came across as very
"Indian," Udo felt, and it pleased him because of that. It contributed to the illusion
that Udo sought to create in the hobby. As far as the BDC's initiator was concerned,
he explained, a teepee camp where all participants did their utmost to play Indian in
an aesthetically pleasing and historically correct manner was key to a satisfying hobby
experience.
As I probed him further on the issue of role-play, Udo mentioned that all
possible variations existed in the hobby along a continuum with, on the one extreme,
the Indianists who played a part 24 hours a day and, on the other, the Indianists who
remained themselves no matter what outfit they wore. This is the reason, he claimed,
for all the conflicts that occur during camp life: you can never be quite sure whether
the other person is playing a role and insulting you as part of the play situation, or
whether he or she is really attacking you as a person. You never know when
switching [umschalten] occurs. In other words, Udo pointed to misframings as a
source of misunderstanding in the hobby. Ela offered an example of how differences
in knowledge about the historical model might also lead to misunderstandings. When
borrowing a cooking pot in camp, she would return it "dirty" with food sticking to it,
because, playing by the historically correct rules, she wanted to act as an Indian
woman would have done. The woman on the receiving end, however, might take
offense, since, according to modern standards of polite behavior, the pot should have
been returned properly cleaneA. In terms of frame analysis., she either failed to invoke
the right frame or was ignorant of required behavior in the right frame. To avoid
misunderstandings, Ela said she would make some little joke to explain her gesture.
In other words, she would make the frame explicit and clear to both women.
Udo's and Ela's remarks on misunderstandings resulting from switching (or a
failure to switch) from "normal behavior" to role-play seemed to echo Michael's on
Indianism as a game without rules. In a similar vein, Paul had mentioned several
times, both during the interview in Antwerp and at the BDC, that he was perhaps
prone to playing by rules that he had failed to discuss with fellow-hobbyists
beforehand, thus creating misunderstandings and tensions, as during the incident at the
Council which resulted in his exclusion. What seemed to be at play were frame
disputes.
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Is This Play?
In a study of ritual and performance, with one chapter dedicated to play,
Richard Schechner discusses what he calls "dark play," a special and somewhat
dangerous form of play (1993:244 ). Dark play is play that breaks its own rules and
in which players derive pleasure from playing with non-players, those who are in the
dark about what exactly is going on. In Goffman's analysis, this would be an example
of fabrication.  Although my Indianist discussion partners presented the
misunderstandings discussed above as interfering with straightforward enjoyment, the
initiatives or pranks they described often seemed to start off in a mischievous manner,
with the "offenders" being quite conscious of the fact that some others might not
approve of their behavior. Besides, during my fieldwork in various hobby networks,
participants often told stories (directly to me or around the campfire) of mischief in
which they had purposefully broken the rules and irritated other players, or of which
they had been the victim. Part of the fun in Indian hobbyism may therefore be said to
come from dark play or fabrication.
According to Schechner, dark play underlines the rigidity of Bateson's play
frame. The frame breaks down, Schechner argues, because in dark play, the message
"this is play" need no longer be conveyed (1993:4041). As I mentioned earlier,
however, Bateson suggests subtle plays within play may cause one to wonder, "Is this
play?" He even refers to the "labile nature of the frame 'This is play' " (Bateson
1972:182). Precisely because of such ambiguities, further elaborated on by Goffman,
frame analysis lends itself well for coming to grips with some core notions of Indian
play. As I walked onto the BDC grounds, I expected to enter a play frame
overlapping with the actual, physical playground. And in a sense, I did. On the
grounds, people were staging a different world, a hobbyist world in which they
dressed differently and were discussing what games to play and how to play them
most convincingly. And yet, within this hobbyist world, moments of other play (other
keyings and re-keyings) occurred, in which the games were no longer discussed but
acted out, as when the "tribe" performed their dances for the "white visitors," with
participants gathered on aid around the dance floor, the more restricted playground
for this specific moment of play. As became clear from what I was told about
misunderstandings in the hobby, however, these shifts in frame might not always be
noticed or agreed upon by all participants. In Goffman's tenms, misframings may
occur. Some misframings seemed to be linked to generational differences (as the
events leading up to Paul's exclusion. from the Council, where a rebellious streak
could be discerned in the young men's initiative). Others may be attributed to
different traditions and approaches (Westerners seen as "playing" too much according
to Easterners looking for nacherleben). Not only did frames appear to change
abruptly and alter the mode of communication, but players could act according to
different frames while seemingly playing the same game-the game being multi-
layered or involving multiple laminations.
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During my visit at Udo's and Ela's, I did not notice any discomfort on their
part concerning Ela's having turned my presence at the BDC into an issue during the
tribal council. Instead of communication having broken down, we seemed to be on
good terms and they were quite willing to share information and experiences. It was
only later that I started to wonder whether I had misjudged the entire affair. Had I
been taking discussions at the tribal council too much at face value (in a primary
framework), whereas (some) people were actually playing at holding a tribal council?
Certainly, the presence of outsiders had raised irritation within the play frame, which
was thought to have been disturbed-the play rules were thus up for revision. The
discussion was about rules and about the camp's leading concept: the historically
correct. The matter under discussion was thus a lamination removed from the real
play action, taking place in a more detached (down-keyed) frame. From this
perspective, the scene was similar to Bateson's example of two canasta players who
stop playing and start discussing the rules: "At the end of this discussion, we can
imagine that they return to playing but with modified rules" (1972:192). And yet, this
discussion was played out within the setting of a tribal session, and the wording and
manner (an introduction in Lakota, terms such as "the people" and "whites" versus
"Indians," the intervention by the French hobbyist) fitted this particular frame and
would not have fitted the ordinary, everyday frame of a discussion in a conference
room. While the players engaged in metacommunication about their play, the "game"
seemed to continue.
When I ran into Michael at a powwow in Germany a month after having
visited Udo and Ela, I told him about my stay at their house and asked him whether he
thought Ela's speech could have been, at least partly, role-play. He reacted surprised
at first, then amused; he had not thought of that, and it would certainly put matters in a
different light.
The incident at the BDC, where I had come as part of the game in the guise of
an anthropologist avant la lettre and turned into an object of controversy after having
gone native (but not quite), put the spotlight on what I now realize to be perhaps the
major driving force behind tlw-politics of Indian hobbyism: the very question, either
implicit or explicit, "Is this play?" If answered differently by different players (or non-
players) sharing the same stage, misframmgs may result. These may be resolved
("cleared" in Goffman's terminology) through a revision of the rules. On a more
general level, divergent Indianist attitudes towards the question, "Is this play?" can be
said to be a major factor in causing schisms within clubs or the hobby as a whole, and
may lead to disappointments where different communities meet, as with the Western
influx at the Week. In some clubs or networks, an (either implicit or explicit) answer
in the affirmative is not considered socially acceptable, since it is perceived as
demeaning towards the hobby or its historical model, or towards contemporary Native
Americans. In other Indianist circles, it is considered naive not to view the hobby as
play, and a sign of insecurity or hubris to present it as something "more serious."
Some hobbyists mentioned that towards outsiders, such as journalists, terms such as
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s"Is This Play?"
"experimental ethnology" rather than "play" are used in order to avoid ridicule. The
matter is complicated by the wide range of (usually implicit) interpretations and
appreciations of "play" among Indianists: for example, play as a learning tool or as
something that requires skill and expertise, or play as something disrespectful or
unworthy of respect. One Indianist's play may not be another Indianist's play. To
complicate matters even further, the question "Is this play?" arises for quite a different
reason as well: would "play" still be an illuminating tool for thinking about Indianism
in situations where it becomes questionable whether any significant boundaries exist
at all between normal life and the Indian hobby, especially when the hobby may
provide (additional) income, as in Ralph's and Karin's case?
As a result of my half-baked performance at the BDC culminating in those
confrontational moments at the tribal council, my expectations that "play" would be
key in my investigation into the Indian hobbyist phenomenon were confinned, but in
much more subtle and intricate ways than I had imagined: as a question driving the
hobby's dynamics rather than as a straightforward characterization of it.
A few months after my stay at the BDC, I wrote a journal on the basis of my
fieldnotes adopting two alternating frames: a "modern" account printed out on a
computer, and a "nineteenth-century" account that I produced by hand on paper made
from rags in a local paper mill according to an 1870s procedure, interspersed with
quotes from Fletcher's Camping with the Sioux: Fieldwork Diary of Alice
Cunningham Fletcher copied in the old-fashioned handwriting of my father, a much
appreciated collaborator in this project. I sent it to my principal contacts in order to
thank them for their hospitality, and also to show them that I had made an effort to
contribute something tangible in the spirit of their camp-to play along in this
ambiguous game, as a modern observer hovering into and out of the play frame, as a
contemporary observer within the play frame, and as a historical character safely in
another time and place. Udo sent me a short e-mail after having received the package.
I was pleased to read that he and his wife felt that the journal was quite good and that I
had mastered the theme quite well. But perhaps I was misframing and they were just
kidding me.
Acknowledgements
This research was made possible by a grant awarded by the Fonds quebecois de la
recherche sur la socite et la culture and by a McGill University Internal Research
Grant. Many thanks to the protagonists in this story who invited me to their houses
and playgrounds. I am also grateful for the anonymous reviewer's very helpful
comments. Special thanks are due to Professor Toby Morantz for suggesting Alice
Cunningham Fletcher as a model for role-play.
K-Kalshoven
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Notes
lAs a second form of transfornation complementing keying, Goffman distinguishes
fabrication, "the intentional effort of one or more individuals to manage activity so that a party
of one or more others will be induced to have a false belief about what it is that is going on"
(1974:83). Examples of fabrication include deceit, hoaxing, illusion, and self-deception.
2The actual terms used by my discussion partners in German, Dutch, and French were
Spiel, spel, and jeu, respectively, and more often the verb: spielen, spelen, jouer. The semantic
fields of "play" and these terms do not perfectly overlap, however; the nouns in German,
Dutch, and French may be used very concretely to mean "game" or "match." The need to
distinguish sharply between play and games (as some theoriticians of play do) is thus less
pressing in my fieldwork context, but the terms used are even more subject to divergent
interpretations. Cf. Schechner (2003:24, n. 22): "I separate play from games in the following
way: play is an activity in which the participant(s) set her/his own rules, while a game has
generally acknowledged rules"; Schwartzman (1978:219): "In games, the paradoxical
reference system of play is embodied in a codified system of rules that organize the use of
objects, space, and time, as well as player activities.  Here it is not necessary for
metacommunication to occur continually to define or 'frame' the players' actions, as this is
achieved by the game's explicit rule structure. In games, the ambiguity and paradox inherent
in play, which necessitates constant metacommunication for maintenance of the event, has
been 'ruled' out." Contrast Huizinga (1967), who conceives of games as a form of play.
3See Kalshoven (2004) on Indianism as a quest for knowledge.
4Scholarly literature on Indian hobbyism is scarce and often based on little dedicated
fieldwork. See Broyles GonzAilez (1989) on her experiences with a club in the Black Forest;
Turski (1994) for an insider's account of hobbyism in the GDR; HimAlainen (1998) on
Finland; Bolz (1999) on a visit to a club near Frankfurt; Schultze (1999) on shamanism at the
Indian Week in eastern Germany; Hans (2001) and Sieg (2002) with accounts based on
interviews with hobbyists in Gernany; Feest (2002) on hobbyism as a European (rather than
specifically German) phenomenon. Estimates of numbers of Indianists vary widely; in
Gernany, where hobbyists are organized in clubs and umbrella organizations and thus easier to
trace than elsewhere, several tlousands (perhaps between ten and twenty thousand, Feest
2002:31) of Indian hobbyists are active. Wildwest shows (Buffalo Bill, Circus Sarrasani) and
Volkerschauen (shows featuring "exotic" peoples) are considered to have been major impulses
for the emergence of Indian hobbyism in Germany (Bolz 1999; Kreis 2002). Cf. Conrad 1999
for early contacts between hobbyists and Native Americans in Dresden and Leipzig. On
Indian hobbyism in the United States, see Deloria (1996, Ch. 5).
5The names of my discussion partners have been changed in this paper.
6In GDR times, clubs were often sponsored by companies or cultural institutions and were
expected to reciprocate (or to generate additional income for the club) by participating in
community events (see Turski 1994:32-33). In my interviews with hobbyists in eastern
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"Is This Play?"
Germany, they often expressed a moral obligation to do something for the public good and
enlightenment, even though the practical obligation no longer existed.
7The obligation to counter cliches is often mentioned by hobbyists involved in
Offentlichkeitsarbeit. Ironically, because of their primary interest in a historical image of
Native Americans, Indianists are reproached by outsiders for perpetuating cliches; cf. Sieg
(2002).
8Cf. Turski (1994:12): "Wir wollten nicht 'Indianer spielen,' sondern aufklarensch
wirken" [We did not want to 'play Indian,' but enlighten people], i.e., correct the "falsches
Indianerbild" [incorrect, stereotypical image of Native Americans] portrayed by other groups.
9Since the fall of the Wall, an increasing number of Western hobbyists have flocked to the
Week, which is considered less commercial and more intimate than comparable events in the
West. Not all Easterners are happy with this influx, as they feel the Week is changing because
of Western influences. During my fieldwork, Eastern hobbyists often vented frustrations on
the subject of perceived Western cultural and financial domination and the high unemployment
rate in the East. This was the year (2003) in which Wolfgang Becker's hit nostalgic comedy
Goodbye, Berlin was released.
l0Winnetou is the Apache hero in Karl May's late nineteenth-century adventure novels.
Karl May is now universally rejected by Indianists as a useful source of information because of
the lack of historical accuracy of his novels' characters and settings. As a cultural icon in
hobbyist history, however, he remains of interest, and hobbyists in the Dresden area often
mention the Karl May Museum in Radebeul, with its impressive collection of Native American
artifacts, as a major inspiration for joining the hobby.
"1I later interviewed veteran hobbyists with prestigious positions at the Council who had
been involved in this particular incident. According to these veterans, tolerating disrespectful
behavior towards older hobbyists would set a bad example for younger participants and
besides, in the historical situation, the older men could have reacted to the insults by declaring
a war, which was obviously impossible in the hobby context. Declaring the practice of
insulting "historically correct" would, according to these veterans, amount to a conveniently
selective attitude towards listory on the part of the rebellious youngsters.
12Contrast Turski (1994) on developments in East German hobbyism during the 1980s:
"Als neue Komponente im Hobby trat die stiirkere Orientierung auf die indianische
Lebensweise auf, und zwar nicht nur als 'Studienobjekt', sondern als praktische Orientierung
fur die eigene Lebensgestaltung" [As a new component of the hobby, participants became
more strongly focused on the Indian way of life, not only as an 'object of study,' but as a
practical guiding rod in giving meaning to their own lives] (30).
13See GoffMan (1974). He describes a re-grounding as "the performance of an activity
more or less openly for reasons or motives felt to be radically different from those that govern
ordinary actors" (74-75).
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14Huizinga includes the need for a playground in his characteristics of play, which he
defines as limited in both time and space (1967:10).
15But cf. Goffman (1974:269-270): "In formulating a separation of some kind between
person and role, one should in no way precommit oneself to notions about the 'essential'
nature of each. There is a tendency to assume that although role is a 'purely' social matter, the
engine that projects it-the person or individual-is somehow more than social, more real,
more biological, deeper, more genuine.... The player and the capacity in which he plays
should be seen initially as equally problematic and equally open to a possible social
accounting."
16According to some hobbyists in the former East Germany, the general German practice
of FKK (Freikirperkultur or nudism) is on the wane because of more prudish Western
influences. I have heard remarks to the contrary, however, from sources in the West.
Although Indianists consider FKK appropriate within the frame of Indian play, it could be
argued as belonging to the primary framework of German experience.
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