Giochi sociologici: conflitto, cultura, immaginazione

Starting from a constructivist and relational approach to the prioritisation of the constant and reciprocal relationship between the individual dimension and the societal dimension of contemporary social dynamics, the book critically discuss the social dimension of the games. The game is older than society. Though the idea of society is theoretically defined, it presupposes human cohabitation and institutional structures. Superior mammals don't need to wait for human beings who teach them to play. Nor we can tell that human societies added a really essential notion to the very notion of play/game. The game doesn't live in the human nature, it is human nature that lives in the game: every fundamental feature of the human game is realized in the animal one. So we have to raise an important fact: the game is not a mere biological activity, or a physiologically fixed reaction of the mind; the game, as it is, is an emergent function in the social horizon. Man, playing the games, takes part in something exceeding the immediate instinct of conservation; he put a sense in the action, before routine and habits. Every game means something new. If we recognize a social determinism in this active principle, so we say too much; if we think only of instinct, we say nothing. The game is an intangible process in social relations, however we consider it.