Abstract
Playfulness is easily overlooked in studies of total institutions because it does not match what we expect from institutional order. By studying playfulness ethnographically, social life in today’s institutions can be depicted both more naturalistically and more unexpectedly. This article explores how members of Swedish youth care institutions enact and respond to playful disputes or aggression in ways that make physical contact accountable and soften or transform controversial masculinity shows. Staff tries to down-key playfight invitations to “treatment” or “learning,” but playfighting also offers youth and staff identificatory respite from the institutional regime. Playfighting is a recurrent pattern in the social life of a youth care institution and sits at the core of what inmates and staff have to deal with.
The fact that there is still no consensus on what play is or what it brings about in interaction (McMahon, Lytle, and Sutton-Smith 2005) does not stop scholars from expanding on standard play studies, such as Huizinga’s (1949/1998) Homo Ludens and Sutton-Smith’s (1997) The Ambiguity of Play. Violence also generates plenty of studies, recently Wieviorka’s (2009) theories of violent subjects, Collins’ (2008) analysis of violent situations, and Jackson-Jacobs’s (2013) study of physical fights. But in the overlapping area between “play” and “violence”—playfights or rough and tumble play—there are relatively few studies, especially when it comes to data from institutional settings.
This article tries to contribute to this area by combining an interest in the “as-if” quality of play behavior (Knutsdotter Olofsson 2003; Schwartzman 1978; Sutton-Smith 1997) with an interest in concrete situations in and around violence (Collins 2008; Katz 1988; Jackson-Jacobs 2013). My aim is to explore how members of youth care institutions engage in brief or sporadic playfights by framing and reframing various strips of interaction in institutional facilities. When such members accommodate play into their setting and its sometimes aggressive or sudden interactions (Arieli 1997; Wästerfors 2009; Price 2005), they mold play so that the setting’s ordinary affairs and identifications can be more or less maintained. Still, play does not wholly lend itself to institutional order but “sticks out,” thereby providing identificatory respite.
Approaches to Studying Playfights in Residential Treatment Settings
There are several approaches to studying playful aggression in youth care institutions. The institutional setting points at Erving Goffman’s (1961/1990) studies of total institutions, Michel Foucault’s (1977) analysis of discipline and punishment, and subsequent studies complicating their perspectives. When Kivett and Warren (2002, 22–23) analyze social control in a group home for American boys, they challenge Foucault’s picture of panopticon by attending to the boys’ “horseplay” and to how playful definitions may make staff overlook otherwise sanctioned behavior. When Bengtsson (2012) shows how boredom is a key experience among residents in Danish secure care, she similarly highlights their excitement-creative “edgework” as their way of breaking up monotony. But apart from such exceptions, ethnographic texts on total institutions seldom highlight playfights.
The fact that criminal or “troublesome” youth populate the setting in this article points in another direction: research on youth and so-called “deviant” youth. Matza and Sykes (1961; also Sykes and Matza 1957) argue that juvenile delinquents should not be seen as departing from society but as neutralizing its norms and performing its “subterranean values.” They demonstrate values that in practice are far less deviant than commonly portrayed but still not part of society’s front stage discourses. Uhnoo’s (2009, 179–210) study of Swedish youth and their oral “moral work” on violence shows that young people typically interpret their playfights as harmless whereas media discourses problematize them, depicting them as too easily collapsing into real fights, fostering “male aggressiveness,” etc. In Matza and Sykes’s (1961) terms, Uhnoo uncovers variants of adolescents’ neutralizations and subterranean values, which further underlines that the youth in treatment represented in this article not in every sense must be seen as different from others. Also affluent youth, seldom placed in institutions, may enjoy violent action (Jackson-Jacobs 2013) but ethnographers typically do not follow up this angle in studies of institutions.
I will here linger on three approaches that I have found particularly valuable: frame analysis in Goffman’s (1974) version, rough and tumble play in children play research (Reed 2005), and the “doing gender” perspective in ethnomethodology (West and Zimmerman 1987).
Goffman’s (1974, 39) frame analysis gives us the basics of how actors “project their frames of references into the world around them.” Play is an indispensable case. A playful act is so performed that its ordinary function is not realized, that is to say performed in a stylized way and attached with a meta-message: “This is not for real.” When Goffman (1974, 43–44, 45) explains “keying” in terms of conventions by which a given activity is transformed into something else, “patterned on” the original activity, the reader might very well need the experience of switching into playfulness in interaction (or humor) to fully grasp what he means.
Many leisure activities, sports events, cultural festivities, and contests are delimited by spatial and temporal brackets, which make their play element quite tangible (Huizinga 1949). When Goffman (1961, 93–112) discusses institutional ceremonies in total institutions and their “role releases” (for instance annual parties or Christmas celebrations), their inherent play with satirical or profane portrayals of the institution is surrounded by quite clear demarcations. But central for more delicate frame analyses is the kind of make-believe that is accomplished by more subtle gestures, cues, prompts, or expressions in face-to-face encounters, “the relative brief intrusion of unserious mimicry during interaction” (Goffman 1974, 48). This means that when analyzing playfights in settings not explicitly devoted to them, we should look for such “brief intrusions” or changes in face work, gestures, tone, touches, wording, movements, and mimicry, not only to identify play as a frame projected by the involved member but also to identify switches between or combinations of frames, as well as frame troubles. Following Goffman (1974, 39), one generally fails to see actors “doing” frames because events generally confirm them. People not honoring a frame, on the contrary, may help analysts to identify frames in the first place. If somebody argues “no, they’re not merely playing; it’s a real fight” (Goffman 1974, 46), or if playfulness in other ways is treated as embarrassing, worrying, or dangerous in a given setting, a fieldworker could be informed about the setting’s local (anti-) play culture and make sure that members attend to frames to begin with. “Brief switchings into playfulness are everywhere found in society,” writes Goffman (1974, 49), “so much so that it is hard to become conscious of their widespread occurrence.” Such brief switchings stand at the center in this article rather than Goffman’s (1961, 93–112) institutional ceremonies, in which playfulness and role releases are more durable and regulated.
Goffman (1974, 43, 49) also mentions the fact that bodies may be included in playthings and the fact that limits on playfulness are established in various groups. As Gordon (2008, 319) notes, Goffman draws on Gregory Bateson (1972, 177–93) and his observations of meta-messages in animal interaction but adds the complexity of human interaction. Humans not only collaboratively create frames but also layer them so that frames are maintained simultaneously or transformed in quick succession (Gordon 2008, 320). In a study of how play and work are interwoven in a family context, Gordon distinguishes sequential transformation (or reframing) from simultaneous creation (blending), a distinction that I have found inspiring. But the distinction is analytic rather than categorical. When, for instance, staff in youth care institutions try to transform playfights to occasions for “treatment” or caring, they engage in sequential transformation, but the overall result may very well be blending. Frames or footings are often not simply changed or switched but embedded with one another, laminated or layered (Gordon 2008, 323).
Youth’s “play with play”—when they sometimes leave the adults and others unsure about whether actions are “real” or not—brings us back to Bateson’s (1972/2000, 180) argument on the paradoxical nature of play. By camouflaging hostility in playfights, or by simply avoiding being entirely clear in their play signals, youth may play with the point of departure for playful actions, namely, that play does denote the inherently pretended (or in other ways referred nonplay actions) but not what those actions would denote. Playfights denote real fights but not what such fights would denote—for example, hostility, aggression, and harm—and by playing with this meta-communicative foundation, the institutional members may (1) hide hostility, aggression, harm, and hierarchy construction within play frames and/or (2) pretend such hiding activity and thereby make others uncertain about what “really” is going on. Play is labile; it not only can quickly transform into serious interaction and vice versa (Gordon 2008, 324) but also can enclose serious interaction, as well as an uncertainty whether that is the case or not. This labile quality makes playfights interesting; there is a notable effervescence or “heightened intersubjectivity” (Collins 2004, 35) in and around them.
Findings from studies of children’s rough and tumble have also been recognizable in my fieldwork. Reed (2005) found that rough and tumble among boys in nursery school serve as a way in which boys care for one another and that it appears to be “an excuse for physical contact” (Reed 2005, 59). Boys in Reed’s study could linger on the ground after being tackled, laughing with their bodies touching one another, and they interpreted videos of their own playfighting in terms of being friends. To chase and flee, to wrestle and beat with open hands, to fall and fight for fun—such actions constituted a habit of manifesting and sustaining friendship. But adults did not always understand, Reed (2005, 67) reports; they saw chaos and aggression “when what is really happening is a dance of controlled behavior.”
There are parallels to the findings that I present in this article but also differences. Boys in youth care are older, and the playfights I have observed are more short-lived and morally ambivalent. Youth with a criminal record may make use of this record in playfights by posing as a tough street guy, reciting lines from action movies alluding to their own experiences, and “pumping up” their image in a much more flamboyant way than in nursery schools. They are also much more observed by staff; playfights are shortened by commands from staff or intrinsically by the very fact that a treatment institution is the “playground.” Reed’s subjects seem to employ playfights to reproduce friendship whereas youth in care rather might try to introduce or mark friendship. Further, when Reed (2005, 68) talks about intimacy “disguised” as masculine (touching, hugging, and other gestures of caring were embedded into playfights in his study, but only repeated studies could distinguish them), I would argue that such an interpretation is only partly relevant here, although it is wholly relevant in some staff members’ perspective. Intimacy does matter, but playfights in youth care settings cannot be reduced to intimacy because their ambivalent character hinders every such reduction. Members’ ways of accounting for playfights cannot be taken as an analytic explanation; they belong, rather, to the phenomenon. (Cf. Silverman’s [1993/1997, 199] advice to “avoid treating the actor’s point of view as an explanation.”)
Finally, West and Zimmerman’s (1987) perspective on gender as a routine accomplishment is significant. “Doing gender” involves a complex of perceptual, interactional, and micro-political activities that “cast particular pursuits as expressions of masculine and feminine ‘natures,’” as West and Zimmerman (1987, 126) argue. Playfights are far from reserved to boys but often made to appear so, and the ways in which people re-associate playfight with masculinity can be unveiled through ethnographic details. In youth care settings, masculinity serves as a quite strong account for playfights because a majority of the youngsters are male, but the fact that girls also get involved (within and outside institutions; for accounts about the latter, see Uhnoo 2012, 179–210) destabilizes this account. Doing gender unfolds through discursive practices of playfight accountability, but these practices vary locally so that the masculinity and femininity that institutional members hold as “expressed” through playfights cannot be settled once and for all.
West and Zimmerman’s (1987, 135) argument that doing gender involves people’s managing of occasions so that the outcome is seen as accountable as “gender-appropriate or gender-inappropriate” resonates with staff members’ efforts to soften the masculinity shows they sometimes see in playfight situations. Gender turns out to be an emergent feature of playfights (West and Zimmerman 1987, 126), both an outcome of and a rationale for them, rather than a factor behind them.
Material and Setting
The article draws on data generated in two projects in Swedish youth care institutions. The first focuses on interpersonal conflict and derives almost all material from a small institution that I named Silverbäcken, one out of around twenty-five publicly governed “specially approved homes” in Sweden (in Swedish särskilda ungdomshem). The residents here are teenage boys with a record of troublesome family backgrounds and neurological diagnoses, psychosocial problems, school problems, gang involvement, violence, drug use, and petty crimes. I followed everyday life at Silverbäcken during recurrent visits in a three-year period, taking notes on a wide variety of events and interactions: meals, lessons, breaks, meetings, leisure activities, games, small talk, excursions, etc. I also did interviews with staff and residents (in Sweden, they are often called “pupils”), and I studied the electronic casebook journals of the boys involved (a more detailed account of Silverbäcken and my role as a fieldworker can be found in Wästerfors 2011, 45–50).
Later, I expanded my fieldwork in another project on schoolwork within these institutions (Wästerfors 2014). I visited five other institutions, doing more interviews but spending most of my time in and around lessons or other situations. These institutions also harbor young offenders (and both boys and girls, in separate wards), sentenced for serious crimes by the district courts and kept in “secure” treatment wards (so-called Closed Institutional Youth Care, in Swedish Sluten ungdomsvård). At Silverbäcken (and in many other institutions), the youngsters are mostly placed according to the Care of Young Persons Act (LVU, in Swedish Lag med särskilda bestämmelser om vård av unga), which represents a milder, more negotiable control form.
The data in these two projects show similarities. Formal etiquettes of treatment methods, pupil categories, wards, and staff practices vary across the six institutions involved, but ethnographic depictions of everyday life within these institutions are still easy to interrelate. A standard arrangement for the pupils before noon, for instance (consisting of a couple of lessons followed by a lunch break), typically involves a series of control situations recognizable from any of these institutions. Treatment assistants accompany pupils from the wards to school rooms or buildings (within the institution); teachers try to get the pupils “motivated”; pupils “don’t care” about school, long for breaks, and may doze at their desks or stir up each other in playful or quarreling interactions. Teachers invoke rules, penalties, or sometimes more personalized appeals: “give it a try,” “you did think it was interesting the last time” (Wästerfors 2014, 206–35).
All institutions share the official goal of helping young persons with psycho-social problems, drug addiction, and problems with criminality, and all institutions are basically “total” in Goffman’s (1990, xiii, 203) sense. The pupils are cut off from the wider world—on average for around eight months—and lead a closed and formally administered round of life in treatment facilities, typically situated in the countryside as a series of houses or cottages. But the caste system is not as rigid as Goffman describes it, and the institutions are a lot more permeable (e.g., if some criteria are met, youth can be allowed to go home during weekends), so there are also differences in relation to Goffman’s picture (cf. Quirk, Lelliott, and Seale 2006). “Treatment” is often implicit and integrated into ordinary days, structured by breakfast, lunch, dinner, and breaks, with school during daytime (sometimes interweaved with meetings and “talks”) and TV or leisure activities in the evening and during weekends. But sometimes treatment methods are more formalized, as in lessons in ART, or Aggression Replacement Training.
The ethnographic setup of my projects enabled me to document a wide set of interactions and institutional features departing from (1) what the research projects formally were intended to be “about” and (2) what might be expected from total institutions, for instance data complicating their “total” character. I found that ties to the outer world can be nurtured and dramatized (Wästerfors 2012) and that “fragments of home” can be accomplished (Wästerfors 2013) that is to say, personalized and homelike markers and territories. Playfights belong to this family of phenomena that complicates the rigidity that typically is associated with Goffman’s (1990, 112) analysis of total institutions, although he actually highlighted similar things: role releases, role reversals, identity joking, horseplay, etc.
Often, it has been possible for me to withdraw a bit during lessons and other everyday ongoing concerns; at other times, I have written fieldnotes afterwards or openly, during the events. My major interest has been to describe details in interactions, as they often help ethnographers to circumvent or deconstruct static concepts (such as “the youth ‘are’ so and so,” or “the institution governs them”) and instead capture “the active ‘doing’ of social life” (Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw 1995, 14). Interactional details are in that sense probably particularly needed in ethnomethodologically informed ethnography. When the analysts “bracket” a phenomenon, thereby indicating its character as ongoing achievements of local practices rather than as an obvious or given feature (Pollner and Emerson 2007, p. 120, p. 131n1), he or she can hardly fulfill the analysis without detailed portrayals of such achievements.
The institutional respite or time-out that playfights offer has also attracted me. Especially at Silverbäcken, I have been involved in some (harmless) playfight occasions, and playfulness also recurs in my present project in terms of pupils’ teasing comments, joking nudges, playfight invitations, pushes or pokes in the ribs, etc. Playfights are similar to games because of “their capacity for inducing engrossment” (Fine 1983, 182); playing or gaming people tend to forget things around them for a moment, letting themselves get absorbed into “something else.” By being present in and close to playfights, I have experienced some of the pull and fun of it.
It has also helped me to identify playfights in the first place, since the interactional cues that frame play are not always obvious or shared by all. Some situations are ambiguous; the definition “play” might lie more in the observer’s eye than between the interactants. I have tried to deal with this problem by not decontextualizing the situations at issue but look for what happened before and after, thereby arguing that a playful frame is typically accomplished without serious repercussions and treated with some kind of delight or relaxation by (at least some of) the involved actors.
Youth care entails many local and national differences regarding laws, institutions, youth, and staff (their backgrounds and routines, rights, obligations, etc.), which makes it hard to argue that what I have found in Swedish youth care settings could be directly transferred to, say, American ones. Nonetheless, there are sufficient similarities so that readers of, for instance, Arieli (1997), Kivett and Warren (2002), Inderbitzin (2005), Price (2005), and Bengtsson (2012) may recognize everyday interaction patterns across Israeli, American, and Danish settings and learn from respective fields. Ethnography does not free the analyst from taking local or national idiosyncrasies into account, but by persisting in its down-to-earth enterprise, it entails a capacity to generate analytic points across such idiosyncrasies. Contexts should be attended to, but first and foremost as they are accomplished, invoked or in other ways referred to in interaction, uncovering rather than imposing the indexicality of local practices (Garfinkel [1967] 1999, 14). This means that I will not present an overview on Swedish public youth care beforehand but will tease out some aspects of this context “backwards” as they become relevant in the analysis.
Making Physical Contact Accountable
An Interaction Order for Institutional Respites
A striking aspect of playfights is physical contact. Blows are exchanged, shoulders are hit, various kinds of brief wrestling occur. Even threats from a distance are accomplished bodily as youth shake their fists at somebody or hold their hands as fictive guns and “fire” with an oral “sound effect.” It is not a matter of authoritative directing or serious restraint from the staff’s side, nor sexual contacts or violence between youth. Rather, a play frame makes it non-instrumental. Bodies are also turned into objects, as when a boy grabs a younger boy around his waist, lifts him up, and briefly holds him above a trash can, threatening to “trash” him as a whole.
It’s Wednesday and I stand talking with Sixten (a staff member) about Wednesday afternoons being unruly. “The corridor here is so narrow,” he says, everybody’s “running back and forth” after having done their cleaning. “They have nothing else to do,” he says. And just after that, some guys come to blows: Ron, John, and Magnus start fighting for fun. They wrestle with each other, grapple each other, and shout; they do not hurt each other, and their gestures seem stylized and a bit too slow to be serious. Sixten does not interfere. At one point, John lifts Magnus and carries him over to the trash can in a corner of the corridor, holding him over the can like a rolled-up carpet, and pushes him a little bit towards the can. Magnus is small and some years younger than John, who is much bigger and obviously stronger (John is 18). “No, not the trash can!” Magnus cries, but nothing in the situation seems to indicate that he really will end up there. And he does not; John only holds him there for a while and finally lets him go. Now Lottie, another staff member, goes by. “Do you do that often?” she asks.
A situation like this would have caused staff to intervene or use the alarm if it were not for the play frame. What Ron, John, and Magnus are doing denotes a fight but not what such a fight would denote. Play is molded so that it fits into institutional order; it is accomplished outside or next to the scheduled activities, in this case cleaning.
On Wednesday afternoon at this ward, the youth did not have any other prescribed activities than cleaning, and because that took varying amounts of time depending on how dirty their shared and private rooms were, there could emerge considerable free time. Sixten in the above fieldnote indicates this (from a staff perspective) “troublesome” free time and also the narrow corridor, providing a local account for the playfight that then takes place. Between 5 and 6 p.m. (the above-cited event took place around 3 or 4), the youngsters at this institution had “the silent hour” during which they should stay in their rooms, “winding down” and giving staff space to prepare for the evening. So, when Ron, John, and Magnus playfight, they pick a moment that does not interfere with institutional order (after the cleaning and before the “silent hour”), and yet their interaction also sticks out. Sixten marks his distance, and Lottie shows surprise, and it is hard to interpret the fieldnote as something one would expect in youth care settings. There is no treatment going on, no learning, rehabilitation, work, or conventional leisure activity, and still no explicit uproar, protest, or critique. When John holds Magnus over the trash can, his posture is “patterned on” the ordinary activity of putting trash in a trash can, “as if” Magnus were trash, and his way of lingering in that posture and not fulfilling his act (trashing Magnus) constitutes his “keying” (Goffman 1974, 43–45). This is merely an indication, a dramatized fiction; this is not for real.
But play is labile (Gordon 2008, 324) and may enclose serious elements as well as uncertainties of the play status. Magnus’ cry (“No, not the trash can!”) could be a real or pretended cry for help, or both. Lottie’s relaxed comment (“Do you do that often?”) dissolves some ambiguity and defines it as playful, but still there is an element of “play with play,” since John is taking advantage of his physical superiority in relation to Magnus. Magnus could never “trash” John, who was simply too big and perceived as higher in hierarchy. Power manifestations, bullying, and pecking orders can be hidden in playfights because of their paradoxical nature (Bateson 1972/2000, 180). Although seriousness cannot contain play, play may very well contain seriousness (Huizinga [1949] 1998).
Physical contact through playfighting is especially attractive in residential treatment facilities because pupils and staff normally encounter each other first and foremost as representatives of categories, not as persons (Goffman 1990, 7–8). When inmates adapt to the institution’s mortifying processes, a kind of “person” may very well be reconstructed but now in institutionalized versions (as, for instance, withdrawal, obstinacy, perfectiveness, or conversion; Goffman 1990, 61–63). The playfights I have studied, on the other hand, represent something else. Those involved seem far from defiled or adapted but, for the moment, fairly free and happy. They touch each other in ways not associated with an institution.
After two lessons in technics in a workshop at one institution, a case of playfighting occurred between Ted, a pupil, and Hugo, a teacher, just before we left the workshop for lunch. I was close to not taking notice of it because I had followed Ted and Micke, another pupil, and their schoolwork since early that morning and had the feeling of being “done,” waiting for lunch myself. Ted and Micke had been taught in quite defined steps how to cut and weld metal into “cats,” a cat figure in black metal, with attached head, ears, tail, etc. At the top of the shelves in the workshop, there were series of such cats from previous pupils; they were way too big to bring home after the treatment period. At this point, we have taken off our blue overalls and are waiting for the other ones to finish their work and join us for the outdoor walk to the dining hall. Standing there and waiting, Ted and Hugo exchange some teasing comments and then suddenly Ted aims a kick at Hugo, in a slightly slow and “open” way (i.e., very noticeable).
Hugo grabs Ted’s leg just when Ted’s kick is about to hit its target (Hugo’s hip), he gets a grip on this kicking leg and then pushes Ted towards a desk behind him, filled with tools and a vice. Ted resists by grabbing Hugo’s shoulder, and they both measure their strengths against each other for a moment, with some moans and “argh!” It all happens very quickly and produces some noise; Ted is 19 and not a small boy, and Hugo is in his 40s. Then Hugo manages to put Ted on the desk behind him; he almost lifts him up and puts him there. The tools are pressed towards the edges as Ted’s body is pushed upon the desk, in a sitting position.
Eventually, Hugo and Ted set themselves free from each other. Hugo stands in front of Ted, who is still sitting on the desk, which one should not do at all, strictly speaking, if following the rules of the institution. They are both a little breathless, with red faces, but not irritated. “Lucky you!” Hugo says, and Ted replies, “Or you!” and smiles, both jokingly implying that the other one is the weaker and consequently got off gently. I now find myself a step back from Hugo and Ted; I must have withdrawn a bit without thinking about it (cf. Collins 2008, 12, on bystanders keeping back from a real fight). Hugo then checks his trousers and shirt, as if trying to make sure they did not get spoiled somehow. Soon after that, Micke and another teacher arrive so that we can leave for lunch.
This episode represents a “brief intrusion” in Goffman’s (1974, 48) sense, where Hugo and Ted accomplish some unserious mimicry of a fight. As they first teased each other, Hugo might very well have expected an attack from Ted, and the fact that Hugo immediately managed to grab Ted’s leg, thereby quite successfully fending off his kick, similarly implies alertness.
In the beginning, Hugo and Ted reproduce institutional convention. This is a preface for playfighting, a serious background. Hugo is the teacher, Ted the pupil; Hugo teaches, Ted is learning. They both wear blue overalls, and the workshop guides their acts. The metal cats at the top of the shelves remind us that many other pupils have done the same and that this is what Hugo usually teaches; what actors do “belongs” to the institution. Ted and Hugo act as anybody in this milieu, enmeshed with their category based identities. Then, the lesson is finished, the overalls are taken off, and waiting occurs, so there is some sort of institutional vacuum. Now the institution’s repertoire of going concerns is situationally dismantled or softened (cf. Wästerfors 2011, 65–67). As Hugo and Ted stand there, they are not occupied with welding a metal cat anymore or with teaching, learning, or cleaning up, etc. They just stand there for a while, still belonging to different social categories but not involved in “doing” them. Playfighting tends to take place “in between,” “after,” “next to,” or “beyond” the institutional program: during breaks, during movements from one cottage to another, when waiting, “doing nothing,” after having finishing things, before lunch, etc., when the institution is somewhat dismantled.
Next, the frame shifts and playfighting occurs. This time, the youth (Ted) initiates the sequence by aiming a playful kick at the teacher (Hugo), but the initiative varies; it is not always youths who start in staff–inmate cases. When Hugo and Ted touch each other, they do so within a frame established by teasing remarks and a slightly slow and conspicuous (stylized) kick, which further mark their distance towards their categorical memberships. The withheld force and the relatively gentle fighting style also belong to the play signals and the suspended role dichotomy. Ted is not trying to kick Hugo as an angry or protesting inmate in a total institution, and Hugo is not defending himself as a staff member under serious attack, but still they touch and grab each other, and they do so in an accountable way: “This is just for fun.” Not only do touches occur that in other frames would have been unaccountable but also rules are sidestepped in and through these touches. Ted is allowed to sit on a desk—he is even put there by the teacher—and a set of tools is made into a mess. For the moment, institutional order is a bit bracketed, and Hugo and Ted join in making it happen.
As a fourth step, playfighting ends and an aftermath takes place, similar to an oral narrative’s coda in a “fully formed” story (Labov 1972, 362 pp.; Riessman 2008, 84). We are brought back from the fantasy and into the ordinary world. The “as-if” quality is put in the past, and Ted and Hugo will soon be “back” as staff and pupil again, ready to go to the dining hall and resume the institutional order (a fifth step). The locked doors, Hugo’s responsibility to unlock them with his keys, and Ted’s responsibility to walk together with the other pupils will now guide their behavior. But in the interactional coda, the former playmates relax for a moment, breathless, smiling, and happy, as if situated in a limbo that is short-lived but nevertheless identificatorily significant. The state is similar to Reed’s (2005) observations of kids lingering on the ground after having tackled each other for fun, laughing and united. The actors have gone through a sequence that serves to prove that they are also able to interact as somebody else than formally expected: as playmates, persons, as Ted and Hugo.
Along these lines, playfighting constructs a momentary respite from the institution: a postponement of institutional regularity and a time-out from ordinary practices. The five steps I have tried to distinguish belong to a recurrent interaction order of playfighting: first, institutional order; then a vacuum or institutional downgrade; then a play frame that encapsulates a series of fictive blows, grips, etc.; and eventually a coda and a resuming of institutional order. Playfully framed aggressiveness through physical contact (or the use of bodies) is the indispensable phase; the rest of the steps can be varied, condensed, sometimes omitted, or just subtly indicated. But the respite that playfighting offers does not come from nowhere. It is interactionally accomplished in a particular and repeatable sequence, thereby belonging to the social texture of these settings.
The fact that Ted and Hugo are caught in between two scheduled activities (the lesson and the lunch) but hindered from autonomously moving on (pupils cannot leave a workshop by themselves, and teachers should wait for their colleagues) provides a window. Total institutions, with their characteristic “ocean of time” for the inmates (cf. Levin 1998, 179), may in that sense provide conditions for pockets of personalized interaction, as long as social control is not too strong.
The only trace of something serious in the above sequence seems to be Hugo checking his clothes in the aftermath. What if the wrestling had ripped his shirt or trousers, what if the desk and its tools had left oil stains? Even in this quite straightforward example of a mutually honored play frame, physical contact is subsequently treated as potentially troublesome. This means that a respite-producing play frame cannot be seen as omnipotent. When Hugo makes sure that his private clothes did not get damaged at work, he is starting to restore his categorical membership, and he is doing so with the slightest maneuver.
Thus, personalizations through playfighting take place in a fluctuation between category-based interaction and its transgressions. Touches that in other frames would have been prohibited or deemed as irritating, weird, violent, or sexual can be framed as perfectly alright, at least temporarily and in certain forms and amounts. One cannot say that a play frame must be established before such a touch or that physical contact in itself would “mean” play. Rather, physical contact is integrated into the playfight invitations in a more seamless way, as a corporeal aspect of meta-communicated signals. Physical contact within a play frame symbolizes a somewhat already established friendly relation, but also efforts to accentuate or accomplish such a relation.
Complicating the Interaction Order
But all cases are not as neatly packaged. In everyday life at the these institutions, playfighting can also be interrupted or failed, shortened or compressed, indicated or merely incipient, dishonored or made into a joke. It is treated far from a “sacred” thing but in itself playfully managed. If we look upon the suggested five steps that I have accounted for as a Simmelian form (Simmel 1950/1964, 42), institutional members are both respecting and disrespecting it. Even if the play element in culture often is possible to delimit to a recognizable arrangement (Huizinga 1949), it is also ambiguous (Sutton-Smith 1997), paradoxical (Bateson 1972/2000, 180), transformative (Schwartzman 1978), and labile (Gordon 2008, 324). The very spirit of playfulness invites “play with play.” In the situation below, a play frame is somewhat already established through a set of Halloween games when a youngster “slots in” an indication of a playfight: In the living room in the biggest house in the Silverbäcken’s vacation cottages, staff and pupils celebrate Halloween. During some Halloween games, a towel is being used as an eye bandage, and after one of those games but before the upcoming meal—when nothing else is supposed to happen—Nolte takes the towel and attacks me. He sways the towel so that I can see it, in front of other pupils and adults, but at the same time he is doing it quite suddenly. “David!” he shouts and flicks me on my foot with the towel. I make a counter attack in the air with my hand, pretending to have a towel, too.
Soon after this, dinner arrived and both staff and youth lined up in front of the food, served on a side table next to the kitchen. Nolte and I did not playfight as Hugo and Ted did (no grips, no wrestling), and the background is not that “serious.” The Halloween games represent a lower grade of social control than normal: a holiday atmosphere, a break from routine, something different than business-as-usual (Holstein and Gubrium 2004, 306) that might “express unity, solidarity, and joint commitment” (Goffman 1961, 93–112).
Playfights can be built on and strengthen a previously established entertainment frame, accountable for all institutional members (everybody knew what the Halloween celebration was about). At the same time, playfights can be merely indicated or flashed. By flicking me with a towel and making me respond, Nolte challenges me in a playfully aggressive manner, as if we were about to playfight. Then it all fades away. Still, some components are recognizable: The episode takes place between scheduled activities, it sticks out a bit from the order (the Halloween games were not playfighting games), and Nolte and I engage in a more personalized interaction than usual. I remember thinking that Nolte is a fun guy and that he might want to have some more contact with me, which we also got, in small talk and an interview. The respite or time-out from the institution is still there, albeit merely alluded to.
In other cases, the potentially troubling side of playfighting is made into parts of the play, along with institutional implications. Even though the playfight does not get reframed into a real fight, the playmates may behave in such a way that they remind each other and bystanders of the institutional context.
On the way back from the dining hall, Katja (staff) and Greg (pupil) cling on each other on the gravel path between the cottages. After a teasing threat from Greg, Katja stands trembling in an exaggerated way, shaking her hands in the air and her legs too; they both smile a little. Afterwards Greg attacks Katja from behind, grabbing her around her shoulders. She cries, “I’ll call! I’ll call!” (in Swedish jag larmar!), pretending that she soon will be activating the alarm phone on her belt. She laughs and carries Greg for a while on her back, eventually putting him down.
This episode serves as personalizing because Katja and Greg behaved much more relaxed and friendly after the episode than before (as did the rest of us; there were some more pupils and a staff member walking along). So, the coda occurs, before the institutional order is resumed. We walk the rest of the way to the ward in a happy atmosphere, far from what one might expect from a total institution. The institutional vacuum or downgrade also occurs (as we have left the dining hall, walking between the cottages and consequently situated between scheduled activities), but within the very playfight the institution is simultaneously made into a topic. When Katja trembles in an exaggerated way, as if pretending to be a staff member afraid of Greg, and when she cries, “I’ll call! I’ll call!” she is making their institutional whereabouts explicit in their play. It would not be right to say that the role dichotomy and its power relations are suspended; they are, rather, played with.
Another complication is playful framings that seem to wander from one set of interactions to another; for instance, from staff–youth interaction to youth–youth. The sequence below belongs to the ones that merely indicate a playfight, but still one can feel the playful-aggressive mood of interaction right through it, first between staff and youth, then among the youth.
I sit in the chair in the living room of a ward, in front of the TV. Nick, Tim, Filip, and Vladimir sit next to me. Lonnie, a staff member, comes out from the staff office to the left, strolls around calmly with a tabloid in his hands and then sits down in front of Nick, starting to pretend to pick a fight. He says things like, “What’s up?” “What’s the matter with you?” “What’s wrong?” (I can’t remember his exact words), and he is doing this in a way that everybody understands as playful: exaggerated, unprovoked, with friendly eyes in his face that do not correspond with his words. Nick responds: “What’s wrong with your face, man?” “What you doing, man?” and so on, smiling a little bit at the same time but also very confrontational. Then Nick grabs Lonnie’s tabloid—“Give it back,” Lonnie says, without much energy—and reads a headline aloud: “Mushrooms are our relatives.” Some of the other youngsters laugh. Tim then also reads for a while in the tabloid and then gives it back to Lonnie; they all hint at Lonnie’s being silly for reading such stupid news. Now Nick walks over to Filip, still sitting in front of the TV, takes his head in his hands—grabbing it around the ears and on the back—and pushes it down, hard and quickly. Filip lifts his knees in a sort of brief response, as if marking a punch on Nick’s stomach. “I know he’s kidding,” Filip says and glances at me, reassuring that everything is all right. Lonnie, the staff member, is now out of sight.
Here, there is no play frame until Lonnie (staff) arrives in the living room, teasing with Nick. Then Nick goes on teasing with Lonnie and tries to pick a playfight with Filip. My outsider status is marked by Filip’s, “I know he’s kidding,” which makes their implicit play signals explicit. At this ward, there was a recurrent playful interaction going on, sometimes involving playfighting and sometimes only teasing. So Lonnie’s initiative might be seen as his way of lightening up the collective mood, relying on a local habit and suitably inserted when nothing particular was about to happen.
Playful violence can also be part of an ongoing relation between institutional members, a sort of teasing-confrontational habit that members can move in and out of as they go along managing their everyday lives. Such complications of the interaction order also cover accounts for playfighting, so that the members’ declared reason for their actions are drawn into the frame. Ahmed (a pupil) and Mia (staff) at an institution had that kind of relation. When, for instance, Ahmed and Mia were leaving a room in a ward (I had just finished an interview with Ahmed in the afternoon), Ahmed is making a make-believe fighting pose. He walks next to Mia, and she responds by doing the same. They exchange some blows in the air, and Mia says, “You!” in a sort of fictive warning-and-threatening manner. Ahmed, 19, is not that big but looks strong and has a tough style, and Mia (in her 30s) is not far from the same: She also has tattoos and a sort of “gym look,” embodying a masculine attitude but still feminine (similar to “Kelly” in Messerschmidt 2004). We are heading towards the kitchen, and when Mia unlocks the kitchen door, Ahmed is tickling her in her side quite hard so that she has to tense herself in order to not lose her grip on the key. There are hot sandwiches to be made in the kitchen, by staff and pupils together.
A little later, Mia realizes that Ahmed has not put his headphones back, the ones you can use for CD players and computers. Pupils are not supposed to keep these in the shared living rooms (they belong to their private rooms) but Ahmed managed to hide them behind his long and wavy hair. “What’s this?” Mia says firmly. Not following the rules around the headphones and similar things has been discussed before at this ward, and now Mia is not happy. Ahmed responds, “Then confiscate them,” but another staff member replies, “You know the rules.”
Mia and Ahmed return to his room with the headphones in a far from playful atmosphere. But just a moment later, I can see that Mia gives Ahmed a punch on his back, a sort of slap. Now they are back in the kitchen, and I’m sitting in the living room with a direct view on what happens between them. Mia sees that I see, and I smile. She says that they have “an internal reckoning” going on, and she smiles, too, taking some steps out of kitchen at the same time. “He is always doing like that,” she says, referring to Ahmed slapping her. “So now you got your chance [to strike back]?” I say. She nods with a happy face. Ahmed says, “That’s how we communicate,” uttering the last word quite articulated and with an ironic smirk, as if trying to say that it is both a true and a little silly description. He is making a sandwich.
“Communicate” here stands for an account designed for outsiders like me whose observations of Mia and Ahmed’s interaction were detected. So, play frames do not merely allow Mia and Ahmed to key and re-key their afternoon in a relaxed and personal manner—despite rule-breaking and rule-upholding actions—but they also encapsulate accounts into such frames. Institutional members may move in and out of playfulness in such a smooth fashion so that even this movement’s accountability is turned playfully slippery. Is it meant to be serious or not, or both serious and not? Mia might be seen as “really” angry with Ahmed but hiding it within a playful slap, or she might be seen as “communicating” with him, thereby trying to sustain and strengthen their relation. Ahmed’s “that’s how we communicate” is said in such a way that both these and other interpretations are simultaneously relevant.
In any case, the sequence as a whole would be much more institutionally “correct” without the inserted playfulness, so there is still a feeling of respite. There is no scheduled activity going on, my interview is finished, and the upcoming meal is very relaxed. Instead of food being delivered from the kitchen or a collective walk to the dining hall, there is only an evening snack that youth and staff make themselves. The institutional order is a bit downplayed; slaps and poses like these were not taking place in the dining hall or during lessons. But even so, the marks are not as clear as in the previous cases. Mia and Ahmed use subtle and transient cues (saying “You!” tickling hard, etc.), and Mia’s superior position and masculine posture is “done” almost at the same time as the playfulness (“What’s this?” referring to the headphones).
Power relations are, in other words, embedded into playfulness, as are the facts that Ahmed is under treatment and that Mia should behave appropriately as staff. Ahmed’s “that’s how we communicate” sounds like irony over the local treatment regime, a playful comment on playfighting. But power relations are not untouched by the accomplished playfulness. If all frame shifting lines and cues were taken away, Mia and her colleagues would appear more powerful and Ahmed more subordinated, and physical contact would not appear accountable.
Troubles
When more actors are involved, and when play frames are not immediately or unambiguously honored or tolerated, the morally contestable character of playfights shows up. Playfighting may sometimes turn into quite full-blown troubles rather than respites or role releases, even if the respite quality may coexist. Now touching, attacks, and rude comments are interpreted more as in the beginning of a real fight: as instigators’ provocations (Jackson-Jacobs 2013, 37; Wästerfors 2009, 62). The following episode took place in and around the corridor at Silverbäcken’s school building after a lesson.
During the break, Ron is wrestling with Nolte (both pupils). They grab each other’s shoulders, quite hard it seems, but with light smiles in their faces, and they push their bodies towards each other. They sort of tackle each other along the wall but without anyone falling to the floor. I and two teachers are standing in a doorway, talking. Some moments later, Nolte lies on a bench at the small table in the corner of the corridor where the break snacks usually are served. Ron wants him to “exercise!” when he comes and puts his whole body over him. He seems to mean that Nolte should do push-ups with Ron as a weight (they have been talking about work-out exercises before), but since Ron, 17 years old, is much heavier than Nolte (also 17 but thinner), Nolte is squeezed between Ron’s body and the bench. He sighs and makes some vague and futile effort to hold Ron. Ann and Tommy (both teachers) now exchange glances, as if saying that this won’t end up in a good way, and Ron eventually backs off. Tommy then asks Ron what he has been doing during the weekend and if he had a good night’s sleep. Ron says, “That I had,” smiles a little and hits the book shelves so they tremble. “No, no,” Tommy says. Ron then pushes Tommy against the wall in a playful and yet forceful manner. Tommy: “Stop! Stop!” “No, my back!” “Listen when I say stop.”
“Listen when I say stop”—Silverbäcken’s sanctioned use of stop signals (among the pupils: “fys!” meaning “too physical”) is an example of Goffman’s (1974, 49) limits on playfulness, but the limit is not simply “out there”; it is invoked in interaction. The limit is drawn towards Ron’s insisted play frame, first projected in collaboration with Nolte and then on his own. When the events unfold, one of the teachers tries to explain Ron’s behavior.
As Ron and Tommy continue to quarrel a bit, Ann, the other teacher, talks to me in a low voice about Ron being “tiresome,” “like a child” (we are standing quite close to the youth). He wants to get in contact with others, Ann says, but he is so big, “it gets aggressive.” A little later, I see that Ron walks around in the corridor again, as if checking what is going on. Nolte is doing the same, and he also wrestles with and “hangs” on Tommy, trying to make him playfight. “No, stop,” Tommy says. “I’ve nothing to do!” Nolte says.
At first, we are situated in a playful respite, manifested by gestures and movements interpreted as “unserious mimicry” of a fight. Neither youth nor staff object during Ron and Nolte’s wrestling to begin with. No one is responding in terms of “this is a real fight,” and the fighting takes place during a break, when institutional order is somewhat relaxed. But later, when Ron goes on with his “exercise!” initiative and a dominating-Nolte situation replaces the standoff situation along the wall, Nolte and the two staff members object to this frame, on behalf of the victim (Nolte) but also, implicitly, on behalf of institutional order as such.
Nolte’s sigh and the fact that his and Ron’s unequal body weights now make the “play” quite predictable and one-sided (Nolte will never be able to lift Ron) seem to indicate a first departure from the play frame. Ann and Tommy’s exchanged glances similarly indicate that they define the situation in terms of risk and escalation rather than fun, and then Tommy tries to shift frame by talking about the latest weekend and whether Ron has had a good night’s sleep. When Ron insists on hitting shelves and pushing Tommy, he is met by an explicit “Stop!” The social support for any play element in Ron’s behavior is now withdrawn, even though Nolte, released from Ron’s weight, still tries to pick playful fights with Tommy.
Play, non-play, and play again are put on top of each other. Compared to Ted and Hugo’s clash in the workshop in another institution, the situation is much more unclear. Ron might very well be seen as presenting hostility and aggression as play, or playing with such a possible presentation, and Tommy’s “adult” conversation (on the weekend and if Ron had a good night’s sleep) might very well be seen as a “brief intrusion” of seriousness. Nolte wants to go on playfighting, despite the fact that he seemed physically subordinated by Ron, as if not caring about himself in the same way as staff tries to do. So, even though it would be elegant to distinguish how one frame is replaced by another, it seems more reasonable to talk about frames being embedded with one another, creating a laminated or layered impression (Gordon 2008, 323).
Ann’s comment on Ron’s behavior deserves some elaboration. In contrast to episodes like the one with Ted and Hugo, the accountability of physical contact is much more unstable here. Ron can be seen as trying to make pushes and grabs accountable when framing them as playful, but because others do not unequivocally honor this effort, he cannot be said to succeed. Ron or the others use few play-sustaining techniques (smiles, winks, or self-effacing remarks; Lee 2009, 595), which means a weak diversion to defuse escalation. This failure on Ron’s side—if Ron should not be seen as aiming at provoking a real fight—is further underlined when Ann talks about Ron’s behavior in terms of misdirected contact seeking, as if casting Ron as a clumsy giant not really aware of how others might interpret his physicality. By pointing out Ron’s physical size and using that as an account for why playful fighting in his case easily escalates into real fighting, Ann is making the corporeal aspect of playfighting into an unstable aspect as such.
This coincides with a general tendency at Silverbäcken, where staff members often defined Ron and some other “big” pupils as particularly troublesome because of their physical size: dominant, “boorish,” harmful. The labile quality of play (Gordon 2008, 324) is dressed in terms of troublesome bodies. Playfighting is also accounted for in terms of power and the misuse of corporeal domination. Staff try to compress a playfight to a minimum: to forward the process to the last step, resuming of institutional order.
When I talked with Hugo at the other institution after his and Ted’s playfight in the workshop, he just shrugged his shoulders and smiled, explaining for me that one needs to “open up” a bit sometimes; a stark contrast to Ann and Tommy’s worrying attitude towards Ron. But there were also other occasions in which playfighting could be defined as problematic at Hugo’s institution and the other way around, as a respite at Silverbäcken (and then Tommy and Ron could also be involved). So, one can hardly say that certain contexts or certain actors inevitably “lead up to” or “pave the way” for certain outcomes. Rather, previous events seem to constitute a resource for members to draw on in their local accounts whenever such accounts are expected. Ann may, for instance, easily refer to previous occasions when Ron’s body was deemed as troublesome when we both stand there watching how his playfight crumbles. Hugo may, in a similar way, refer to his and his colleagues’ habit of “opening up” in relation to youth, and consequently make their playfights sound therapeutically wise.
In any case, limits on playfulness are institutionally tied to trouble perspectives and the other way around. But also in institutions that declare such limits (“no playfights with the pupils!” as it was written on a window at the staff office in one ward), one can find staff and youth practicing and accounting for at least some discreet and brief playfighting. Staff refer to “relaxation,” “just to make some contact,” or “nothing serious,” and youth to “get to know people a bit.” Staff sometimes associated their ability to accept playfulness within the institutions with a caring, informal, and curious attitude toward youth, along with an ambition to show that one is not afraid.
In an interview with Hampus, 16, I refer to the local ban against playfights at his institution when he objects and says “We do that anyway!” “You must be allowed to make fun.” He argues that playfighting is “fun” and that he “just likes to get to know what kind somebody is, you know.” He is doing so by making some fun with him or her, as when poking another’s shoulders or wrestling a bit. He then tells me a story about Magnus Svensson, a new staff member, who “thought it was serious” when Hampus tried to playfight with him. “He pushed me to the floor” and held Hampus hard, “thought I was aggressive” when he was only kidding.
In this way, playfights can be accounted for as a character test, motivated by a search for adults who dare to loosen up and detach themselves from the expected behavior. Placed in a modern welfare institution, the youth do not solely wish to meet formal staff members but also their informal side, as if expressing a wish for more personal contact and care. Even if pupils also accomplish their respites together with other pupils, they seem more thrilled when managing to enroll adults. Staff can be proud of passing such tests, indicating that their professional selves stand above and beyond the dry and formal social worker, whereas Magnus Svensson, clearly narrated as showing his inability to play, is “disclosed” by Hampus as too institutionally loyal, and made into a narrative example of what unwanted rigidity may bring about: misunderstandings, impersonal relations, and real violence.
Hampus’s portrait of this staff member is analogous to the Russian linguist, literary critic, and thinker Mikhail Bakhtin’s picture of an agelast: a rigid non-laugher, a figure without humor (Bachtin 1965/1991, 267). Whereas the festive laugh belongs to the unruly but equal folk atmosphere during festivals and the like, the agelast embodies institutions, churches, and government. An unwilling playmate in youth care institutions is—in an equivalent way—defined as identifying too much with the institutional world, giving too little space for being a (fun) person.
Softening Masculinity Shows
In addition to physical contact, a certain kind of masculinity is on parade in playfights. A violent and action-oriented male ideal is being “done” as youth and staff briefly pose in playfully aggressive ways. Staff members sometimes account for playfights in terms of a troublesome masculinity (“that’s typical for these boys,” “that’s how these boys relate”) and try to soften these shows by transforming them into care or learning. This means that a young person’s boxing or tackling another in a treatment institution very well may end up having another kind of physical contact, mostly connoted as feminine or at least not hegemonic-masculine: a hug, a gentle hand on a shoulder, a caring touch, or an offer of this.
Again, different frames are maintained simultaneously or transformed in quick succession, ultimately creating a layered impression (Gordon 2008). Because gender is routinely and generally accomplished in interaction (West and Zimmerman 1987, 128), it is an emergent feature of these layers—both an outcome of and a rationale for playfights—but in this case it is mostly a problematized gender: a troublesome masculinity.
Reed’s (2005, 68) observation on intimacy “disguised” as masculine is relevant but first and foremost as part of the phenomenon. The teacher Ann once commented on Ron’s playful attacks on her colleague Tommy by saying that “he can’t hug you” because Tommy is male. Whereas she, as female, attracted hugs from Ron and other pupils, Tommy, as male, attracted punches, Ann said. At other wards, though, I saw male staff members giving boys hugs, so there is no reason to interpret such a comment descriptively. It is rather a micro-political activity that cast a particular phenomenon as an expression of a masculine “nature” (West and Zimmerman 1987, 126)—that is to say a violent masculine nature—and thereby account for it. When such comments are formulated close to or within playful attacks, playfight accountability is gendered in a trouble-making rather than respite-making direction. Because punches, and violence in general, are generally defined as much more problematic than hugs in society, playfights can be dressed as almost unaccountable. An adult logic seems clear (cf. Buttny 1993, 7, 76–77, on folk logic, “an implicit action theory”): hugs are morally superior to punches, and because some males “hide” their “real” hugs in punches, these males must be softened.
An intersection of this type of doing gender (West and Zimmerman 1987) and problematic playfight accountability is particularly significant when staff tries to transform pupils’ playfight invitations to caring.
During the break, Henry (pupil) is sitting next to Gabriella (staff) and hits his head on her shoulder. He is doing it silently and in a conspicuously slow or “bored” way, on and on and on. Each strike seems quite hard because Henry’s movement involves his whole torso; he is 18 and much too big for not being irritating when touching others in this way. Still, he is not doing it with an angry grimace but with a stone face, like pretending to be a robot. Gabriella sits still and ignores him. After a while, she says, “Henry wants to hug all the time.” She embraces Henry and leans toward him. Henry goes on hitting his head on her without making any effort to escape her hug, but now he is sort of seized in her arms and his strikes are much smaller and weaker. Everything is happening at the same time as various talks are played out between other pupils and staff members.
“Henry wants to hug all the time”—by imputing a motive to Henry’s actions, Gabriella shapes the situation from a pupil-invited play frame to another, reframing the exchanges in terms of hidden emotions. The intimacy and care that Gabriella provides is just vaguely accepted by Henry (his strikes turn milder, but he does not return her hug), but at least no extensive playfight emerges. At other times, I saw Henry and other pupils picking playfights by doing precisely what Henry does here: teasing another by repeatedly hitting him or her in a sort of robotic way, sometimes a staff member, sometimes another pupil. If somebody is watching TV, for instance, you may sit next to this person and go on touching or hitting his arms until he or she cannot stand it anymore and responds by “what the…!” and strikes back. It is an effective way of accomplishing direct and physical interaction, and that is also what Gabriella eventually offers Henry but not in playfully violent way. To embrace and hold is something else.
The fact that the line “Henry wants to hug all the time” is said in front of everybody together with the fact that it is not formally addressed to Henry (Gabriella does not say “you want to…”) make Gabriella’s caring response accountable. If somebody wants to hug you, it often seems reasonable to hug back, even if the request is hidden. But frame switching is also evident. “I now want to turn this into something else,” Gabriella seems to be declaring. Henry’s small attacks cannot go on, it is not suitable here and now, Gabriella does not want to turn the interaction into a playfight.
In more complex sequences, staff responses also can be playfully presented.
During the lunch, Dardan (a young pupil, around 15) talks about a robbery in his hometown and says that he has been falsely accused of being involved. He makes clear that he very well could have been doing this but this time he was innocent. At the same time he is teasing Lisbeth (staff): He sits and punches her in her stomach with both hands, with a somewhat mean smile on his face. “You, stop,” Lisbeth says, “sit properly.” Dardan changes his posture and “sits properly” in a sort of exaggerated way, but he goes on hitting Lisbeth. She then grips his hand and stops his movements. “I am sitting properly,” he says, “you only said I should sit properly.” A little later, Lisbeth says that Dardan “really” wants to hug her. They have not seen each other “in a long time,” she says (Lisbeth has not been working for a couple of weeks), “do you want to sit in my knees instead?” She smiles and her talk sounds half serious, half ironic. Larry (staff) says in a joking tone from the other side of the table: “Stop cuddling with the staff!” Dardan, a bit threatening: “I can cuddle with you later, in my way.” Larry, in flat tone: “We can cuddle in my office.” Dardan does not respond.
Again, a presumptive “real” and emotional motive is imputed (Dardan “really” wants to hug Lisbeth) in order to transform Dardan’s masculine posture. He is not only punching Lisbeth in her stomach—doing this playfully and not seriously because the latter would have resulted in immediate responses from the surrounding adults—but he is also slightly bragging about his robbery experiences, thereby pumping up his criminal self-presentation. Lisbeth does not hug Dardan but nonetheless manages to stop him physically, and then offers him another form of physical closeness. Her slightly ironic tone seems to lay the ground for Larry’s joking “stop cuddling with the staff!” Staff members now seem to share an ironic frame that de-masculinizes Dardan’s punches. Dardan strikes back by redefining “cuddle”; “ . . . in my way” stands for violence. His talk is now beyond any playful connotations. Larry’s subsequent response is institutionally indexical. It refers to a “talk,” sometimes held in his office, that is to say a corrective meeting where the pupil is reprimanded by staff (Wästerfors 2011). Everybody knows what it means when Larry or his closest colleagues jokingly talk about such private sessions (here: “We can cuddle in my office”), because that is how “talks” are routinely done at Silverbäcken whenever pupils have broken rules or behaved badly.
The gendered quality of playfight accountability is sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit. In the above excerpt, no one talks about masculinity or points out Dardan’s or the others’ gender, so my argument is based on two steps: (1) at other times playfights are defined as troublesome-masculine, and (2) when trying to transform playfights to care or learning, such a definition can be taken for granted. When staff members try to moderate a playfight invitation and resort to a caring or pedagogical frame instead, they are often simultaneously aiming at a “street guy” image, implicitly defined as (mostly) masculine and full of concealed emotions. Sometimes, the posture also gets ridiculed. One pupil once aimed a kick against a teacher at the end of a lesson and got the answer, “Now watch out so you don’t hurt yourself,” followed by a smile.
In these and similar ways, masculine poses embedded in playfights are debunked and softened. Another, presumably more “real” motive is imputed and another frame suggested, and this is done by staff in the beginning of the playfight interaction order. Instead of responding to youth and their invitations in playful manners, staff resort to more formal behavior and motives; they try to reform the boys’ conduct, and when doing so they define them as troublesome.
Interestingly, I have seen no examples of such transformations ending up in a similar relaxed atmosphere as the playfight example with Hugo and Ted, shown above. Staff members’ efforts to soften masculinity shows seem more addressed to other staff members, as if internally reassuring playfight bans and skepticism towards violent street culture and displaying a firm dissociation from indications of bullying. Staff now present themselves as caring and pedagogical but do not seem to end up in any “we are buddies for the moment” situation (the happy, breathless coda).
So to soften masculinity shows is a matter of manifesting and defending “correct” institutional moral. To engage in playfights oneself, as a staff member (as in the case of Mia and Ahmed above), is more a matter of manifesting personal relations (and simultaneously rather doing than softening a version of masculinity). The latter is done in a “between you and me” atmosphere.
Associations between doing gender, playfights, and troublesome escalations are sometimes narrated in the interview data. Few youngsters seem to argue that playful aggression would be exclusive masculine, although it is said to be more common among boys. Robin, 17, for instance, talks about being someone “who likes to punch people” when I ask how come he playfights now and then (which I have witnessed). He finds it problematic, he says, when he interacts with someone who “wants to show that he can do more.” Then Robin also tries to “do more,” and it ends up with “somebody really making a mess,” that is to say a far from playful fight. “That’s not good since you can get hurt, you know.” Later on, I ask whether girls do the same or if it is just boys, and Robin replies “I don’t know. . . . What do you want me to say? Don’t girls do the same as boys? Fuck, do you think they’re angels?” Robin says that even though boys more commonly wrestle and punch, there are girls doing the same. He also says that at this institution, staff know that they “don’t need to stop it” because these pupils’ playfights will not turn into real fights.
Conclusions
In this article, I have analyzed some ethnographic pictures of those “brief switchings into playfulness” that Goffman (1974, 49) argues are found everywhere in society. When grabbing and punching one another for fun, members of youth care institutions can accomplish attractive pockets of personalized interactions. I argue that playfulness and playfighting belong to the features of these institutional settings and consequently are something that their members have to deal with, even if they only materialize now and then.
Playfights constitute a momentary respite or time-out from institutionally expected behavior; they make physical contact accountable so that role dichotomy can be suspended (or played with) and so that institutional order is bracketed. When bodies are used as instruments, targets, objects, or gestural resources within a play frame, interactants may demarcate or establish social proximity in acceptable or almost-acceptable ways. Youth and staff may account for playfights in terms of having fun, getting to know people, and “opening up a bit,” and they may cultivate them. But playfights are sometimes also treated as troublesome, especially when it comes to perceptions of asymmetrical relations in play (close to bullying), the associated image of street masculinity, and the fear of escalation and transformation into real violence. Playfights are typically built on a temporary institutional vacuum or downgrade (a break, a situation in between scheduled activities, some kind of privacy between staff and youth, etc.), but they also provoke institutional order and demonstrate controversial masculine ideals: action, violence, and corporeal domination. When staff members respond to playfight invitations with caring gestures, they rely on the assumption that hugs are superior to punches, but because some males (presumably) hide their hugs in punches, they must be “softened.”
To fight for fun in a treatment institution demands (1) establishments of play frames, (2) mimicking of violence as fights (cf. Jackson-Jacobs 2013), and (3) sustainment of playfulness despite “inappropriate” gender accomplishments or other institutional limits or bans, and these conditions do not crystallize effortlessly. There is a recognizable interaction order, from institutional business-as-usual to an institutional vacuum or downgrade, continuing with physical contact (or the use of bodies) within a play frame, and ending with a coda and a resuming of institutional order. But absence of playfulness also demands activities. Even when bans on playfulness are present, observers must distinguish how and when these bans are invoked and actualized in interaction. If not, institutions may be portrayed as too monolithic.
Members of total institutions accommodate play into their setting by, for instance, inserting it at suitable times and places, keeping it short and fairly secluded, and accounting for its purpose and meaning. But play simultaneously “sticks out” and betrays the ideal of an institution, especially when mimicking aggression, hostility, harm, and adventure. It gives members opportunities to temporarily identify themselves as informally interacting persons, as well as to manifest distance to an institutional regime. A practical implication of my research may be that playfulness is a crucial resource for staff who want to accomplish a more personal contact with youth within welfare institutions, especially when the institutional regime is supposed to be quite firm.
It might be easy to argue that youth in treatment are especially inclined to search for personal relations with conventional adults, given their background of criminality, broken families, stigmatizations, and other problems. What should be more solid here, though, is the argument that total institutions as such tend to stimulate members doing this. Play functions as a resource youth may draw on to accomplish an identity of an animated, fun-seeking, “edgeworking” teenager (cf. Bengtsson 2012), an opposite to the “perfect” inmate or adult and a relief from routines. But it also serves as an interactional path for staff to accomplish care and closeness, that is to say therapeutic values that can account for play. Attending to multiple frames should most likely in itself be seen as institutional work for these members (cf. Gordon 2008, 340), and as a crucial concern inherent in the social life in treatment settings. Young people in institutions could probably also be viewed as using playfights to show for the adults that they are rehabilitating; they substitute hard violence with soft culture at the same time as they claim respect for what they are presumably good at.
When people are placed in institutions, a prior conception of self is typically defiled in a range of symbolic attacks on the inmate’s person (Goffman 1990, 35; Persson 2013, 168). As Persson (2013, 234) points out, Goffman tried to show that the institution forces its members to choose alternative courses: “Our sense of personal identity often resides in the cracks” (Goffman 1990, 320). I think playfulness, with its sometimes inserted fictive violence, belongs to the dynamics within these Goffmanian cracks.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful for the extensive comments from four anonymous reviewers, from Professor Annette Hill at Lund University, Sweden, at an early stage of my writing and from participants in conference sessions in the research network on qualitative methods within ESA.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Grants from the Swedish Scientific Council and the National Board of Institutional Care in Sweden.