Abstract
<p><em>The extensive empirical research inspired by Piaget and Vygotsky’s theories of make-believe play has been criticised for restricting data to western, urban, middle-class children. We seek to redress this bias by researching a traditional black South African Pedi children’s game </em>Masekitlana<em>. Our data relies on embodied memories enacted by Mapelo (one of the authors), and interviews of two other informants. The analytical framework draws upon ‘emergent methods’ in ethnography such as performance ethnography, autoethnography and memory elicitation through ‘bodynotes’ within a Vygotskyian orientation to play. The findings show that </em>Masekitlana<em> shares features common to all pretend play, but others unique to it including: i) extended monologue, ii) metacommunicative frames for realistic thinking, and iii) a complex relation between social and solitary play. These findings support Vygotsky. However, ‘the long childhood’ of Masekitlana suggests that the stages theory of Piaget, as well as Vygotskyian ideas that have come down to us via Cole &amp; Scribner and Valsiner, require revision in the light of Bruner’s two modes of cognition, and Veresov’s reinterpretation of the theatre movement, within which Vygotsky’s central ideas are embedded.</em></p>
Highlights
Though children in all societies play games, ‘make-believe play’ known as pretend play, role play, symbolic play, or socio-dramatic play (Ariel, 2002; Berk & Meyers, 2013; Bruner, Jolly & Sylva, 1985; Goldman, 1998; Pelligrini, 1982; Singer, 1973; Smilansky & Shefatya, 1990) is of special importance as one variety of play through which children recreate familiar situations by role playing characters, representing everyday scenes, miming actions and narrating a story
In keeping with performance ethnography and cultural historical activity theory, we examined the data for aspects of Masekitlana such as settings, age, rules, cultural and historical transmission, self-regulation and motives
Though this paper has focused upon theorising a monologic variety of the Pedi children’s fantasy play, one that may be played in other African ethnic groups, there are practical social benefits, for its use in psychotherapy as shown by Kekae-Moletsane and her team, and for community-initiated early childhood development in local contexts
Summary
Though children in all societies play games, ‘make-believe play’ known as pretend play, role play, symbolic play, or socio-dramatic play (Ariel, 2002; Berk & Meyers, 2013; Bruner, Jolly & Sylva, 1985; Goldman, 1998; Pelligrini, 1982; Singer, 1973; Smilansky & Shefatya, 1990) is of special importance as one variety of play through which children recreate familiar situations by role playing characters, representing everyday scenes, miming actions and narrating a story. In Africa, several scholars (especially since the 1960s, after independence from colonial rule), began to focus on African children’s play and found that the presumed ‘absence’ of pretend play in African societies was a deficit view arising from the imposition of play found in Western contexts (Grieve, 1992; Kekae-Moletsane, 2008; Modikwe, 2010; Odendaal, 2010; Reynolds ,1989; Reynolds, 2005) These Afrocentric studies suffer from some shortcomings in their attempt to redress the Eurocentric bias: they tend to homogenise play into European and non-European, and cluster the latter under the label ‘African children’s games’ without distinguishing between physical games, pretend play and games with rules. As this game is the central focus of our paper we will return to her description of it, and our own research, later in this paper
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