Et opgør med den kronologiserede leg: To teser om leg og ”ældreliv”

This chapter asserts that there is a need to reintegrate play into life as a whole instead of regarding it mainly as a fixture of childhood. Play is particularly absent from discourses related to later life, not the least within research where play is rarely discussed in relation to older adults, unless it is envisioned as a way to make physical or mental training more attractive. It is argued that the paradigm of chronologisation with its insistence on fixed life phases, each defined by their own central tasks and challenges, has played a major role in coupling play closely with childhood and, in effect, severing it from the rest of life. On the basis of a broad conception of play as aesthetic process and mood practice, the chapter discusses the ways in which the reincorporation of play into later life may be fruitful for the individual older adult as well as for society at large.