Posted by Jay Livingston
Denis Colombi, who blogs at Une Heure de Peine (the phrase is an allusion to Bourdieu), was browsing the toys for kids and noticed that Playmobil has a new variation. In France at least, the Playmobil cops and robber set has been transformed into cop and rioter (émeutier).
I checked the Playmobil site for the US and could round up only the usual suspects – no masked, tattooed threats to the social order.
(Click on the picture for a larger view.)Remembering the toys of his youth (Lego not Playmobil, but sans rioters nevertheless), Denis concludes with a bleg (the flawed translation is mine),
Evidently, this is not a response to “demand” on the part of children; it’s a creation by the adults who think up and manufacture the games for the parents. It would be interesting to reconstruct the evolution of bad-guy toy figures. If you have any sources or photos, please send them – I’d really like to publish some of them.
Update, August 19. I shouldn’t have stopped following the orgtheory blog. Three weeks ago, Fabio posted that he had noticed the cop-and-anarchist Playmobil pair at a toy store store in Ann Arbor. See his post here.
Thanks !
ReplyDelete"Une heure de peine" is genuinely a quote from Durkheim, but Bourdieu use the same expression. And some others sociologists too.
(J'espère que vous excuserez mon anglais...)