The game and popular culture: reflections for Occupational Therapy

Abstract

Considering playing as a human activity, this article
discusses the relationships between playing, traditional games, popular culture and occupational therapy, in an attempt to broaden perspectives in therapeutic practice and in the social participation
of children and young people. It is based on the assumption that playing is a creative activity, and that popular culture has as its founding proposal the relationship between this activity and the cultural ancestry of historically oppressed and subalternized people, who seek in their expression to combat the culture of silence imposed by dominant classes. The Occupational Therapy approach to playing proposed here considers social, environmental and value aspects of the ludic universe in the development of the practice, seeking to contribute to therapeutic processes that explore with children their relationship with the world and the connections in subjective spheres that are moving, flowing, articulating with values that confront the hegemonic processes of consumption, homogenization and subalternization.