Turning language socialization ontological: Material things and the semiotics of scaling time in Peruvian Aymara boyhood

• The study of material things extends the strengths of the language socialization paradigm.
• I analyze the role of the marbles playing field in the play of indigenous Peruvian boys.
• The marbles playing field acts as a parasite-laden network or set of channels.
• The identities “human” and “masculine” emerge relative to the marbles playing field.
• Studying non-human agents in socialization reveals the contingent, semiotically mediated character of “human-ness.”

This article develops an approach to semiotically mediated processes of socialization that can make sense of the agency that non-humans – especially material things – wield in socialization. The empirical focus is the densely material game of marbles, as played among indigenous Southern Peruvian boys. I show how an account of the identities at stake in marbles – i.e., human-ness and masculinity – requires an analysis of the “disordering” or “parasitical” (Serres, 1982) agency of the marbles playing field. Doing so reveals a graduated series of qualitative changes – i.e., a trajectory of identification (Wortham, 2005) – across which boys appear more fully human and masculine.