Caught in Play: How Entertainment Works on You

Most of us have become so immersed in a book or game or movie that the activity temporarily assumed a profound significance and the outside world began to fade. Although we are likely to enjoy these experiences in the realm of entertainment, we rarely think about what effect they might be having on us. Precisely because it is so pervasive, entertainment is difficult to understand and even to talk about.

To understand the social role of entertainment, Caught in Play looks closely at how we engage entertainment and at the ideas and practices it creates and sustains. Though entertainment is for fun, it does not follow that it is trivial in its effect on our lives. As this work reveals, entertainment generates commitments to values we are not always willing to acknowledge: values of pleasure, self-indulgence, and consumption.

For more information, please visit www.caughtinplay.com.

Author: Peter G. Stromberg
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 05/28/2009
Pages: 232
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.75lbs
Size: 8.80h x 5.90w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780804761116

Review Citation(s):
Publisher's Weekly Annex 07/13/2009
Reference and Research Bk News 08/01/2009 pg. 82

About the Author
Peter G. Stromberg is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Tulsa. He is the author of Language and Self-Transformation: A Study of the Christian Conversion Narrative (1993) and Symbols of Community: The Cultural Systems of a Swedish Church (1986).