12/28/2023 0 Comments Boring college class bingoThe biggest prize, given for the person who first covered their whole bingo card, was a pack of tissues. This was partly explained by the insignificant prizes the retirement community offered. Though in bingo play some residents won while others lost, residents would often say that the outcome of bingo did not matter. But bingo at the retirement community complicated this sharp divide between game and ritual. Levi Strauss (1966) argued that the difference between games and ritual was that games divide people by creating inequality between winners and losers, while ritual coheres people by creating equality between its participants. Bingo’s local importance to this Los Angeles retirement community, I think, helps shed light on why bingo is gaining popularity in communities globally during this pandemic. ![]() This was a remarkable feat in an institutional setting that could at times demoralize people and divide them by class, ability, gender, and ethnicity. Though popular ideas depict bingo as a silly game, which creates idle, disengaged older adults, I found the contrary bingo had the power to enliven residents and to form among them feelings of connection and community. During this time, I played over four hundred games of bingo with residents. As a social and medical anthropologist researching aging and care, I spent two years living and working in a retirement community in Los Angeles. I am not surprised by the surge in bingo play during this pandemic. As more videos of bingo games emerge from India to Spain, the game’s global popularity in this pandemic becomes increasingly clear. And Matthew McConaughey announced bingo by Zoom for residents quarantining at The Enclave, an assisted-living community in Round Rock, Texas. Young housemates in Amsterdam called bingo through a megaphone to the retirement community across the road, where older adults eagerly played from balconies. ![]() Neighbourhoods across England have joined together to play bingo in the streets, with many offering cleaning supplies and toilet paper as pandemic-coveted prizes. Stories of bingo play during the pandemic abound online. As lockdowns impose physical distancing, communities are imagining new ways to connect, and there is one surprising, shared tactic communities across the world are using to bolster social ties: bingo.
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