Подходы к пониманию игрушки как социального феномена

Abstract

The study presents main approaches to understand-ing a toy as a social phenomenon. A toy can be in-terpreted as a means of children’s socialization, ed-ucation and development, and in this case its pur-pose is to develop necessary traits of character in a child. This approach allows to pay attention to the direction in which education of an individual takes place (or should take place), what personal skills are in demand for a particular society. A toy can be understood as a symbol that conveys cultural values and the state of culture as a whole. Here a toy is both a tool for learning about human culture as well as an indicator of certain trends in the devel-opment of the culture itself. Moreover, a toy can be considered as a product, and this is why the follow-ing issues become important: factors influencing the purchase of toys, toy’s attractiveness to con-sumers, trends in the toy market, etc. A toy can turn into an important element of social interaction envi-ronment, as it is closely connected with a society and determines the situation of a game, as well as represents an embodiment of social meanings. Dur-ing a game various qualities of a subject of commu-nication can be attributed to toys. It is emphasized that is is necessary to conduct a comprehensive study of a toy as a social phenomenon.