Huizinga's children: Play and technology in twentieth century Dutch cultural criticism (from the 1930s to the 1960s)

This article traces the development of critical thought about the socio-political impact of technology in the Netherlands between the 1920s and the 1960s, from the perspective of thinkers and movements that developed theories about play and put these into practice. The historian Johan Huizinga, the painter Constant Nieuwenhuys and the Provo youth movement shared the conviction that play was a crucial element in society. In the late 1930s, Huizinga argued that play, which he believed was at the basis of all culture, was gradually suppressed in modern societies, as a consequence of the ascendanc... Mehr ...