Description:
Insurgent Play: Social worlds of urban disruption explores play as a transgressive expression that disrupts the modern city.
Review Quotes:
McDuie-Ra reveals play as a "world" of skills, tactics, materials, social codes, traditions, information systems, foresight and forbearance. Here, insurgency is about enacting movement, which requires amenable surfaces that generate a feeling beyond capture, even as it leaves traces everywhere. Through a series of accessible concepts skateboarding is rendered a world capable of being distributed across diverse geographies, even as it cannot be inhabited by all.' -- AbdouMaliq Simone, University of Sheffield, UK
'This remarkable book goes beyond the current literature by focusing on how insurgent play creates a more inclusive environment, how disruptions can act as repairs and how these contestations test the limits of urban spaces and their governance.' -- Jeffrey Hou, PhD, FASLA, Professor and Head, Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore
'McDuie-Ra introduces insurgent play both theoretically and ethnographically as a constellation of temporary, unplanned, unpredictable bodily appropriations of the city. Opposing surveillance and hostile design, insurgent play brings new life to existing places: sprouting from the middle of things, it enlivens urban interstices through irregular, fragmented, joyful precious moments.' -- Andrea Mubi Brighenti, Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento, Italy