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FUN & GAMES
& HIGHER EDUCATION ranges from Wayne's
World to hot-rodding, from "automobility" and
football to the popular phenomenon known as the
tailgate party, from German sociologist Georg
Simmel to Canadian media guru Marshall McLuhan-all
in the interests of exploring the North American
obsession with "play"-and particularly the
intersection between education, work, and leisure.
The backdrop for this
sociological effort is the cultural studies of U.S.
sociologist Reuel Denney, a collaborator, with
David Riesman and Nathan Glazer, in the writing of
The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing
American Character (1950)-a book that has "sold
more than any book of sociology, before or since."
Written in a vividly personal and engaging
style-Nelsen writes about his own trip to a
tailgate party and his experiences as a student of
Denney's in 1960s America-Fun & Games &
Higher Education tracks down a way of living-a
way of being in the world-that offers youths, as
students, a rather untroubled, if not seamless,
transition from party conformity to the world of
work.
Randle W.
Nelsen is a professor in the Department of
Sociology, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ont.
He is the author of numerous books, many of them on
issues of education and popular culture-and
co-editor of one of btl's earliest publications,
Reading, Writing, and Riches: Education and the
Socio-Economic Order in North America
(1978).
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