The Games Children Play
NOTES
GAMES CHILDREN PLAY: AN EXERCISE ILLUSTRATING AGENTS OF SOCIALIZATION*
DAVITA SILFEN GLASBERG
University of Connecticut
FLORENCE MAATITA University of Connecticut
BARBARA NANGLE University of Connecticut
TRACY SCHAUER
University of Connecticut
A SOCIOLOGICAL UNDERSTANDING of the devel- opment of our identities is predicated on the notion that such development is a learning process. Most introductory sociology text- books identify the main socialization agents of this process as family, peers, schools, media, work, and religion. What is far less often acknowledged is the contribution that children's toys and games play in represent- ing and reinforcing dominant conceptions of "appropriate" social identities found in so- cial discourse and in institutional arrange- ments. In a classroom setting, we invited students to play a variety of board games in order to experience the subtleties of race, class, gender, and political socialization that are embedded in play and to explore how players may challenge and subvert these images and messages. We believe that this approach to investigating and understanding the development of social identities fosters greater student sensitivity and consciousness of role development. This exercise invites students to play a variety of these games (many of which they may have played as children) in order to experience the "hidden agenda" conveyed to children while they are presumably just having fun.
•Authors' names are listed alphabetically. All concerned have contributed equally to the cre- ation and implementation of this exercise. Please address correspondence to Davita Silfen Glas- berg at the Department of Sociology, Box U-68, University of Connecticut, Stoors, CT 06269- 2068; e-mail: glasberg@uconnvm.uconn.edu
Editor's note: The reviewers were Janet Cos- bey, Susan Harris, and Craig Eckert.
GAMES, PLAY, AND CHILDREN'S IDENTITY FORMATION PROCESSES
The existing literature on the role of games in the socialization process predominantly focuses on gendering rather than race or class processes (Beal 1994; Thome 1995). The little amount of research that does relate to issues of race socialization and children's play primarily focuses on toys, especially dolls (Clark and Clark 1947; Gopaul- McNicol 1988; Powell-Hopson and Hopson 1988; Vaughan 1986). Moreover, literature devoted to analyses concerning children's games commonly conceptualizes games as sports, outdoor games, and group games (Corsaro and Eder 1990; Ignico and Mead 1990; King, Miles, and Kniska 1991; Lever 1978; Moore and Boldero 1991; Peters 1994), or as role playing (Evershed 1994). While the literature has not specifically ex- plored the role of popular board games in socialization processes, taken together, it is suggestive of the role such games may play in reinforcing and repeating the dominant themes of race, class, gender, and political identities found in other socialization agents and institutional arrangements. As Renzetti and Curran (1992) point out, "Toys not only entertain children, but they also teach them particular skills and encourage them to ex- plore through play a variety of roles they may one day occupy as adults" (p. 66). We suggest that board games invite and encour- age children to play a variety of roles they may take as adults, with more overtly speci- fied rules for playing out those roles.
Notably, some research suggests that chil-
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dren do, in fact, act as agents in the social- ization processes occurring in play; they are not necessarily passive recipients of unchal- lenged, oppressive socialization demands dictated from the dominants in society. For example, Peters (1994) found that children altered the rules in games, often based on practical issues such as the avoidance of puddles or rocks, and they commonly "shape and reconstruct their own subjectivi- ties, often in conflict with hegemonic pre- scriptions" (p. 143). This suggests that in addition to looking at ways that board games may act to reinforce dominant socialization messages found elsewhere, we should also examine ways that game players might act as agents in challenging or altering the games as they participate in the socialization pro- cess. As such, we may understand the gen- dering, racial, class, and political metaphors found in board games as expressions of dominant definitions of such identities and explore how children might create and recreate these as they play the games.
We are not suggesting that games act as socialization agents so as to cause outcomes in which children unquestioningly comply with conventional definitions of acceptable gender, race, class, and political behaviors. We are, however, emphasizing that the games children play become part of the total socialization environment in which consis- tent themes and metaphors occur: "It seems reasonable to expect that, if girls and boys play with different types of toys, these dif- ferent experiences will, in conjunction with the rest of the socialization experience, con- tribute to the development of different cog- nitive and social skills" (Miller 1987:474; emphasis ours). We might quibble with the more definitive causal assertion that such differential experiences "will" lead to differ- ent identities, but we note the role such experiences may play in the overall social- ization experience. We further suggest that the same could be said relative to race, class, and political socialization processes as well as gendering processes.
BACKGROUND OF THE EXERCISE
Many of our introductory sociology sections are very large lecture classes. Such classes require the regular use of visual aids to stimulate student interest, particularly when discussing abstractions like socialization. We began discussing toys and games as agents of socialization that transmit informa- tion guiding the development of gender, race, and class identities by showing a series of advertisements for toys (found in holiday sale circulars for major national toy and department store chains). We directed stu- dents' attention first to the specific toys being sold and then to the genders of the children using them in the advertisements. We asked students to look at who played with the toys as well as who was watching them play or who was being "served" or "attended to" by the user. We compared advertisements showing girls playing with dolls, using kitchen sets, serving boys meals, using toy irons and vacuum cleaners, and playing with tea sets to advertisements showing boys playing with erector sets, toy power tools, chemistry sets, basketball hoops, and cars and trucks. We invited students to consider the contribution such advertisements made to the overall social discourse on gendered roles and how this might relate to processes of anticipatory socialization: What future gendered roles and identities do these advertisements pre- sent to children? We also compared adver- tisements where both white and African American girls (but never boys of any race) played with white dolls, but only African American girls played with black dolls. We again asked the class to consider the place of such advertisements in the social discourse on racial social roles: What future racial roles and identities do these pictures present to girls? One student suggested that the advertisements conveyed to African Ameri- can girls a future social identity as a narmy or servant for white families and a reinforce- ment for white girls of the appropriateness of such racially based social constructions of
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roles. This student noted the paucity of such advertisements depicting white girls as care- takers of black dolls.
Finally, students were invited to consider the advertisements' contributions to class identity formation: What class-based images might one fmd in these advertisements as well? Some students noted that the cost of toys like chemistry sets, erector sets, build- ing block sets, and computer software might reinforce class inequality, as affluent chil- dren are likely to gain access to such play experiences that teach them professional and technical skills, while poor and working- class children may not have this opportunity. While manufactured kitchen sets, doll cribs, and other toys targeted for girls are certainly quite expensive, cheaper alternatives pro- vide the same effect; one could construct a makeshift kitchen set or doll crib from cardboard boxes, or use household items like brooms in play. However, there are no such cheaper and readily available alterna- tives for chemistry sets, erector sets, and computers, which are commonly targeted for boys.
Despite our success with the advertise- ments, we had less success showing the class similar issues in the games children play by displaying overhead pictures of the board games themselves. In part, this is because the advertisements are consumed as visual images we casually encounter as we read newspapers and magazines. As such, adver- tisements shown on an overhead are con- fronted as they normally are in a routine situation outside of a classroom discussion. Games, on the other hand, are consumed as activities; attempts to simply show the boards as pictures on an overhead destroys the experiential nature of the games and therefore robs the students of the full impact of their power to socialize. We decided instead to engage students in an activity that requires them to actually use the games and observe what occurs.
PROCEDURE
We divided the lecture class of 120 students
into six 20-student discussion sections lasting 50 minutes. Each section leader was given four games and told to break the class into four groups of five students and to give each group one of the games. We used Chutes and Ladders, Candyland, Careers for Girls, Life, Monopoly, Go to the Head of the Class, Girl Talk, and Stratego (we had multiple copies of some of these games). Other games that might also be useful are Careers, Risk, Truth or Dare, a variety of hand-held video games (especially any of the militaristic or war-themed games like Mis- sile Command or Rambo), and Class Strug- gle. All of these games (with the possible exception of Class Struggle) are classic, popular games that are commonly available at most major toy and department stores. The games also represent a range of age- targeted marketing. Games like Candyland and Chutes and Ladders are suggested for young children (4 to 8 years old), while the others are marketed toward preadolescents, teenagers, and adults (ages 8 to adult). They thus represent an opportunity to examine any changes or consistencies in the identity metaphors contained in the games, even as the rules and images themselves may in- crease in sophistication and complexity.
We instructed section leaders to give the class a half-hour to assimilate the rules of the games they were assigned (if they had never played the games before) and to play at least one round of the game. Students were told to first examine the box containing the game. What images are on the box? What are the race and gender of the people on the box? What are the people doing on the box cover? They were then instructed to examine the board and the playing pieces for the game in the same manner. This parallels the way in which advertisements for toys were treated in the larger lecture class. Students had to play the games as the in- structions on the box indicated.
After the half-hour, the section leaders stopped the games to debrief the class. The students had to specify the goal of the game their group played. What values, norms, and roles did the game reinforce? Did the game
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operate on the principle of competition or cooperation? What strategies did students use to win? What race, class, and gender socialization messages did the game convey in the objectives of the game? What political norms and values were represented in the objectives and rules of the game? What race, class, gender, and political identities did the images on the box and the board convey? Did the game reinforce or invite challenges of dominant definitions in social discourse of "appropriate" behaviors in our political and economic institutions (political socializa- tion), and of gender, race, and class identi- ties? How did the game do this? What did the students do in playing these games to disrupt, challenge, or subvert the dominant messages?
INTERPRETATION
Students responded enthusiastically to this exercise. They liked the hands-on experi- ence rather than the more abstract lecture, and they noted how much more alive the concepts of socialization, anticipatory social- ization, and identity formation became for them. Discussions facilitated by the section leaders invited students to draw their own conclusions regarding the role of the games as socialization agents.
Students initially noted that the games taught the general norms of social engage- ment: taking turns, following the rules, and fair play. Probing questions by the section leaders helped students to notice further that, beyond these basic norms of interaction, the games also served as metaphors for pro- cesses of political socialization. Since the rules were preordained by someone else (typically unknown to the players), the play- ers were unable to debate or negotiate the development of these rules. The players could negotiate the rules of the games played in this exercise during the game (as many people often do), but the basic outline of the rules were preset in order for the game to work. This is similar to the political process in which the rules of the electoral and policy-making processes exist prior to most
citizens' participation. Political socialization also involves norms
of deference to authority. In Go to the Head of the Class, for example, one wins the game by simply answering the "teacher's" questions by rote; players do not receive rewards for creative or critical answers, and they certainly do not receive rewards for challenging the very question itself. The only correct answers are those contained in the "teacher's" handbook. No matter how many other resources one could marshall to challenge the handbook, it alone was the final arbiter in determining right and wrong answers. One succeeded by adhering to those rules and regurgitating the "right" answers. Indeed, we found evidence of the norm of rule compliance in many of the games: one section leader reported hearing many players telling other players such things as, "You're not doing it right," or "Those aren't the rules." She reported that such reactions were not specific to any particular game, but instead were widespread comments.
In addition, most of the games were based on competition rather than cooperation, un- derscoring the ideologies of competitive in- dividualism and luck. This insight led some students to note how this might reinforce ideologies like the culture of poverty (Lewis 1959, 1961, 1966), cult of competitive indi- vidualism (Cummings and Del Taebel 1978), and the role of individual effort in achieving upward mobility. That is, these games represented the ideology that society is composed of winners and losers, and that individual effort (and sometimes pure luck) determines whether one is wealthy or poor, successful or unsuccessful, a social winner or a social loser—we are all ultimately responsible for our own fate. Indeed, games like Monopoly and Risk rewarded cutthroat competition and Machiavellian behavior that underscores social Darwinism. One wins by playing ferociously, regardless of how one's friends or fellow players might feel. The games also represent elements of corporate culture; the game is about winners and losers, and only those willing to compete
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vigorously will win. All others will be losers, especially those whose altruistic ten- dencies might interfere with winning. Stu- dents also noted that in Go to the Head of the Class, as in all the games used in this exercise, only one winner could exist, en- couraging competition rather than coopera- tion. That insight led some students to con- sider different learning environments such as competition and isolated learning and study- ing efforts as opposed to more cooperative social settings of peer tutors. They discussed what this might mean in terms of their broader political insights about the nature of individual efforts and achievement, upward or downward mobility, and such ideologies as the culture of poverty and the cult of competitive individualism.
Students in our classes recognized both the competitive individualism and the random- ness of luck, such as the role of the dice or the spin of the arrow. Some students quickly pointed out, however, that the games' em- phasis on winning and interpretions of win- ning as a result of individual strategy (rolling the dice in a certain marmer, such as rolling versus letting them fall) often over- rode the understanding of luck, probabili- ties, and random outcomes that commonly determine whether a person wins or loses. Other students were able to extend this insight into an imderstanding of how we culturally may understand race, class, and gender to be a matter of "luck" or the random roll of the genetic dice, but that we are taught to believe that we may adopt strategies as individuals to alter that luck. We engaged the students in a discussion again of the notion of competitive individu- alism as a political ideology that denies the power of structured systems of inequality based on race, class, and gender in mitigat- ing the efficacy of individual strategies.
Instructors might also point out that games like Risk, Monopoly, Stratego, and the many video games emphasizing war-like themes may function much like competitive team sports. Such activities contribute to our po- litical socialization by channeling any violent and aggressive impulses we might experi-
ence into an organized and controlled setting governed by rules of engagement (Durming 1993; Elias and Dunning 1986; Wilson 1992). Such activities may be part of the "civilizing process" in which aggressive ten- dencies may be played out without inflicting actual bodily harm on real, flesh-and-blood human beings. In addition, the playing pieces in Stratego depicted only well- dressed, white European gentlemen from the Napoleonic era as participants in war. The effect is twofold—it romanticizes war and defines war as a specifically male activity.
Some students quickly noticed, however, that just because one plays these games does not necessarily ensure adoption of corporate culture, especially if the game is simply one of many that the individual plays, and the other games provide other messages. More- over, some students argued that how they alter the games' rules alters the message as well. One student described a cooperative version of Monopoly where players may be partners, or deals may be struck to help out a bankrupt player, and so on. These com- ments indicated a recognition of the role of resistance and agency in socialization pro- cesses, including those concerning political socialization.
Other games, like Life, represented domi- nant discourses and political ideologies of upward mobility defined by monetary accu- mulation and choosing the "right" career (defined in terms of monetary remuneration as opposed to social or altruistic rewards). Moreover, the games emphasized values defining the desirability of specific lifestyles, predominantly middle- to upper- class materialism, heterosexuality, and pro- creation in a nuclear family (values that students noticed almost immediately). For example, the objective is to amass as much wealth as possible through a lucrative career and the purchase of stocks and bonds, to marry a life partner, and to have children (occasions that are rewarded by monetary gifts from the other players). Divorce was punished by a substantial monetary loss.
Many students noticed some of the subtle and not-so-subtle images and rules of the
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games that reinforced dominant notions of race, class, and gender identity commonly offered by other socialization agents and institutional arrangements. For example, some students noticed that on the Monopoly board, the jail is situated in the poor (i.e., low-rent) neighborhood, the free parking in the middle-class neighborhood, and the po- lice presence in the wealthy (high-rent) neighborhood. They also noted that the char- acter most frequently portrayed (on the di- rections inside the box and on the "Chance" and "Community Chest" cards) is an elderly white man who always wears a suit and frequently a tophat. The students referred to him as "the banker," indicating their recog- nition of him as someone in a position of affluence and power.
Students also noted playing pieces and board constructions that reinforced gendered stereotypes. For example, some noticed that the student depicted as the class leader on the box of Go to the Head of the Class was a white male. They also noted that the playing pieces depicted the boys as dressed for activity: they wore comfortable jeans, t-shirts, and sneakers; the girls, on the other hand, all wore Mary Jane shoes and prim hair bows, and two out of three of them wore dresses.
The contemporary version of Candyland personified the territories on the board that were once depicted as ice cream floats, gum drops, lollipops, and so on. These have now been replaced with human (or anthropomor- phized) images that create stereotypes of women as cold, naive, vacuous, or nurtur- ing, while men are evil, mischievous, or powerful: Queen Frostine (the Ice Queen?), Princess Lolly (the naive, spoiled, senseless little girl), Mr. Mint (depicted as a malevolent-looking Candyman), Grandma Nut (the nurturing, treat-dispensing maternal grandparent—no Grandpa Nut?), King Candy as the ultimate (male) ruler, and so forth. Students noticed that although the boy and girl on the box are similarly dressed for action, the boy leads the girl into Candy- land.
Careers for Girls hidicated "appropriate"
career aspirations for females as those in- volving caring for others (Supermom, ele- mentary school teacher, veterinarian of small animals) and beauty (fashion de- signer). Gone were the career options evi- dent in the earlier version of the game. Careers, in which career was understood to be the domain of boys and the options included astronaut, doctor, and lawyer, but no option for Superdad. The instructions within the spaces on Careers for Girls em- phasized attachment to males as desirable and helpful in increasing status (some spaces, for example, referred to "hus- bands," or to colleagues/mentors as "he"). The career of Supermom combined college education and a liberal arts degree with the role of homemaker. One student questioned whether this implied that women go to col- lege to find a suitable husband rather than to seek intellectual challenges and a rewarding career for herself.
Students noted that Chutes and Ladders generally teaches players about conse- quences. That is, bad behavior has bad consequences and good behavior is rewarded (one moves forward in life, as one student pointed out), thereby suggesting to players that their own behavior determines what happens to them. Students were stnick by the gender-linked defmitions of "good" and "bad" behaviors on the game board: Good behaviors for girls that are rewarded by a ladder to skip spaces toward the goal include planting flowers, baking a cake, nursing an injured dog, and sweeping the floor; bad behaviors for girls that are punished by a slide backward away from the goal include eating too many chocolates (thereby jeopar- dizing an attractive figure) and breaking dishes by trying to carry too many at once (suggesting that girls are not strong enough to carry more than a couple of plates at a time). Good behaviors that are rewarded for boys include mowing the lawn, rescuing a cat caught high up in a tree, and locating Mom's purse; bad behaviors for boys in- clude breaking a window with a poorly hit baseball and reading a comic book instead of a history book (thereby jeopardizing his
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future, which a boy must take seriously). Some students also noted that when the girl on the board drops the plates she cries; boys who fell down or were hurt simply looked dazed, but they did not cry.
In the game Life, the pieces depicting the players, their partners, and the children are pink and blue. When played in class, one man purposefully picked a pink car as his playing piece to go against conventional norms of gendered color coding. In fact, this particular student made a point of deliber- ately selecting an obviously "gender- inappropriate" playing piece. He held up his pink car for the entire class to see, proclaim- ing, "I picked the pink car because I can. I'm going to go against gender norms." His selection again sparked a discussion of how strong the gendered socialization messages may be, such that we know what they are "supposed" to be. His proclamation also illustrated the everyday challenges we may make in the socialization process. That dis- cussion, as did the discussion concerning political correctness described below, raised the notion that socialization processes are not unidirectional, inexorable, or over- whelming beyond the capacity of individuals to reinterpret or challenge.
Some of the games were quite blatant about the gendered stereotypes they rein- forced. In particular. Girl Talk, a "truth or dare" game marketed to girls, uses pbk cards to instruct the players in either what truth they should tell or what act they should carry out. Failure to perform such acts results in the player applying bright orange "zits" or acne pimples to her or his face. Students noted that the game reinforces the ways in which girls are frequently taught to act so as to please those around them. Students also thought the "zits" reflected the notion that image and appearance should concern a young girl. Several students posed the challenge that they did not notice any games targeted at boys that similarly empha- sized appearance norms. This game was so extreme that in one class a group of men refused to play the game because they found it offensive and "politically incorrect." One
man said he felt that he would not be "PC" if he played the game because, as a male, he felt obligated to pretend to be a girl in order to play this game, and his pretense might be offensive to others. Their reaction sparked a discussion of the power of gendering to affect our preferences for activities, the meaning of political correctness and its sig- nificance in challenging the reproduction of race, class, and gender identities, and the pervasiveness of heterosexuality as an im- portant aspect of genderhig.
We then invited students to consider what was not apparent on the boxes, the boards, or the rules of the games. For example, conspicuous in their absence were images of race: Students noticed almost no references or depictions of African Americans (there was one image of an African American child in Go to the Head of the Class and a few in Chutes and Ladders, but none in any of the other games), and there were virtually no images of Latinos, Asians, or Native Ameri- cans in any of the games. When asked to consider the socialization implications of this, some students noted the suggestion that only whites are significant actors in our society, and that racial minorities are tokens at best. Moreover, they understood the im- plication of race in the United States as a bifurcated matter of black and white, ren- dering all others invisible and therefore in- consequential. Still others suggested that the bifurcation was even more insidious: whites as the dominant race and "black" as a catch-all group of all "others" or "nonwhites," implying the insignificance of African Americans, Latinos, Asian Ameri- cans, and Native Americans alike (see Winant 1994).
We asked students to consider whether or not the games could have switched any of the gendered depictions and still preserved the basic objectives of the game. It was clear that these images were not necessary to the game; that they existed at all (and that there was such strong consistency to such images across different games) suggested the ability of children's games to reinforce conven- tional gender identities. On the other hand.
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games such as Risk, Stratego, and Monopoly were not quite so amenable to altering the political socialization messages they con- tained without significantly altering the game itself (although it is certainly possible to move the location of the jail, free park- ing, and police on the Monopoly board). One interesting exercise asks students to consider how' they would alter the game Life to include and reward unconventional lifestyles, like gay and lesbian couples, childless couples, single parents, and so forth. One might ask the class to consider how to alter the game to reward social justice and social service jobs that do not necessarily pay high salaries but have other intrinsic rewards. Or one might ask them how they would change the career options offered in Careers for Girls or the card categories offered in Girl Talk. This is the point at which one might also return to the literature on games and play in children's identity formation and discuss how the exer- cise might be consistent with the findings in that literature and how it might challenge or contradict those fmdings.
EVALUATION
How well does this exercise operate to help students understand the role of games in the socialization processes shaping our race, class, gender, and political identities? One measure is the level of students' enthusiasm and their sophistication in connecting socio- logical concepts and perspectives to the games in the discussions following the exer- cise. Students in all classes were eager to participate in this exercise, and discussions following the exercise were spirited and animated. Students were able to make con- nections between the seemingly innocuous childhood games they frequently played and sociological concepts regarding socialization processes and agents, the translation of their collective individual socialization experi- ences into societal systems of structured inequality and the ideologies that underscore these, as well as the notion of resistance. We interpreted their ability to grasp these con-
nections as solid indicators of the efficacy of this exercise to develop students' apprecia- tion of the sociological analysis of the pro- cess by which their social identities are formed.
However, we should point out that al- though most students were quite enthusiastic about this exercise, we did encounter some resistance and hostility. When this occurs we suggest acknowledging the resistance and incorporating it into the discussion (as we did, for example, when one man did not want to play Girl Talk). Some students may complain that the exercise looks too deeply into simple, meaningless games and is an example of "political correctness" that has gone too far. We suggest it may be useful to use that complaint as a vehicle to explore the consistency of the images and rules across the games and ask the class what might account for these patterns. Such a probative discussion takes the antagonistic response seriously. It also invites an analysis of the pervasiveness of ideological underpinnings of gender, race, and class, and how the need to socialize us to those social identities in and of itself is evidence of the social con- struction of those statuses. This analysis challenges explanations that assert such identities occur biologically, genetically, or naturally.
Inviting students to actually play the games and apply a sociological imagination to the packaging, rules of the games, and symbols represented in all the game pieces paves the way for a more abstract discussion of socialization agents. This is because the exercise helps students identify the common themes of race, class, gender, and political identity norms provided by many if not all socialization agents. We found it useful to conclude the exercise by reminding students that toys, games, and recreational activities do not so much cause or result in our unquestioning intemalization of conventional gender, race, class, and political identities. Rather, toys and games are one of several agents that together reinforce conventional or dominant norms and values concerning those social identities. We emphasize to
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students that although these agents teach us the dominant norms defining "appropriate" and "inappropriate" behaviors associated with these social identities, we are not pas- sive recipients of such information in the socialization process, such that we become transformed into clones of one another. Instead, how we interpret the rules of the games, and how well we notice the dominant images in the construction of the game pieces facilitates resistance and reinterpreta- tion of our social identities. In that way, then, socialization is not a unidirectional processes whereby the socialization agents are all-powerful in molding and shaping the individual as a passive recipient. It is instead a dialectical process in which agents trans- mit dominant information in the ongoing process of defining our social identities, and we, as members of society, conform to or resist the process and the agents as we engage in critical analyses of the messages. This process can occur even when we think we are simply having fun and playing games.
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Davita Silfen Glasberg is a professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut-Storrs. She is the coau- thor (with Kenneth J. Neubeck) of Sociology: A Critical Approach, an introductory sociology text weaving race, class, gender, sexual orientation, age, and disability throughout the curriculum. Her research interests focus on political economy and the relationship between the state, finance capital accumulation interests, and
nonelites in the production of policy in the welfare state.
Florence Maatita is a sociology graduate student at the University of Connecticut-Storrs. Her research in- terests focus on identity formation among Chicana feminists.
Barbara Nangle is a sociology graduate student at the University of Connecticut-Storrs. Her research in- terests focus on poverty and social welfare policy in the United States.
Tracy Schauer is a sociology graduate student at the University of Connecticut-Storrs. Her Master's thesis examined competing sociological explanations for changes in high-risk behaviors in an AIDS prevention project.