Reinventing traditional games: A new materialist account towards performative understanding of children’s games

Abstract

This study explores traditional games in the current context of education for young children in Indonesia. Applying new concepts from new materialist perspective, traditional games are explained through a performative understanding. Discussions of this study bring to the fore performative agencies of space, bodies, movements and things in the games. A pocung model is introduced to bring together the key findings and to illustrate traditional games as a complex learning process. It uniquely connects a Javanese philosophy of laku and the notion of intra-active pedagogy as a reinvention of traditional games that informs educational practices for young children.