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.