Exploring the Transformative Power of Play in African Children's Games
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2659072 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kennedy C Chinyowa (Tshwane University of Technology, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 84 |
| Pages | 167-182 |
| Publication date | 2021-12-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Folklore Electronic Journal of Folklore (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1406-0957 • E-ISSN: 1406-0949 |
| Publisher | Estonian Literary Museum Scholarly Press (PUBLISHER • EE) |
| DOI | 10.7592/fejf2021.84.chinyowa |
| OpenAlex | W3215473535 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 9 |
The transformative power of indigenous African children's games can be demonstrated by how they were framed by the aesthetics of play such as imitation, imagination, make-believe, repetition, spontaneity, and improvisation. Such games could be regarded as 'rites of passage' for children's initiation into adulthood as they occupied a crucial phase in the process of growing up. Using the illustrative paradigm of indigenous children's games from the Shona-speaking peoples of Zimbabwe, this paper explores the transformative power of play as a means by which children engaged with reality. The paper proceeds to argue that the advent of modern agents of social change such as Christianity, formal education, urbanization, industrialization, scientific technology, and the cash economy not only created a fragmentation of African people's cultural past but also threatened the survival of African cultural performance traditions. Although indigenous African children's games were disrupted by modernity, they have managed to survive in a modified form
Aesthetics · Environmental ethics · Improvisation · Indigenous · Industrialisation · Modernity · Pedagogy · Political science · Sociology · Transformative learning · Child Development and Digital Technology · Gender Roles and Identity Studies · Gender Studies · Law
| Highly cited | No |
|---|