ABSTRACT
The chapter maps different approaches of play studies towards the question of democracy. It enumerates the reasons why researchers explore the role and importance of play in social behaviour, social cohesion, conflict management, cultural dialogue, or policymaking and democratic life. It shows that the context of current societal and political challenges urges the community of play researchers to revisit the relationship between play and politics, or the contribution of play to imagining and creating more viable alternatives for the lives of communities. The authors introduce the term democracy as well as play as polysemic and ambiguous. The chapter argues that since these notions disrupt security, clarity and certitude of academic discourse, they also activate vigilance, a knowledge of how to work with open concepts, an academic practice of democracy as openness. The chapter further identifies four domains where the intertwining of democracy and play seems in particular philosophically inspiring: The philosophy of play and democracy in relationship to normativity, playful activism and democracy embodied in urban spaces, art and its power to resist political and normative dominance, and paradoxes of play and democracy in education.
