Abstract
The article problematizes the native category of anti-game, limited in principle to the sportive domains, although it is known that one is faced with one of those metaphors that easily escape from the original field to become a general notion of the symbolism. Anti-game as misconduct, commonly typified as individual action, is correlated with the idea of normative stability that supports sports relations and practices, but can also refer to the domain of sociability in broader contexts where it appears to imply mocking and counterfeiting. In this article, I try to critically review the notion of anti-game not only as a supposed antithesis of what it has established itself as the substrate of sports, that is, games and pastimes, taking football as an example, but thinking as a methodological strategy: the regime of difference and not necessarily that of identity as the basis of the conceptualizations that support some definitions of game and, by simple antagonistic, those of anti-game.
Keywords:
anti-game; imitation; game; anthropology of sports practices