The Political Game: A Critical Sociology of the Political Sphere

This book was first published in English in 2019 by Routledge under the difficult-to-translate title “Actual Politics: A Critical Sociology of the Political Sphere,” where the word “actor” resonates with action and performance. My aim with this word was to describe the mechanisms of the contemporary political sphere and the activity taking place within it, starting from the title itself (actions, as well as performances, in the theatrical and dramatic sense of the term). Given the difficulty of translating the word while preserving its multiple meanings in English, I quickly abandoned this idea, searching for another image that embodies the same concept. The solution I arrived at was to title this book “The Political Game: A Critical Sociological Study of the Political Sphere,” precisely because the concept of play is not limited to the possibility of detachment from reality in different cultures (as Huizinga observed in his book “Man as a Player”), but extends to the pretense that the political world is a stage, before audiences who may not be paying attention to what is happening within it. In other words, if a political game exists within a differentiated space, it is because those who play it are representatives, through representations that are not only theatrical but also symbolic, of the interests of individuals and groups, which are represented through a conflict characterized by sharp debate and serious play.