Transformation of Play in Pastoralist Maasai Society in Kenya

In recent years, increased attention has been paid to traditional sports and games as useful phenomenon to understand cultural identities in African countries. With this re-evaluation, national and international institutions began to develop educational programs for the transmission and conservation of traditional games. However, due to limited empirical investigation of play activities in different subsistence groups in Africa, understanding of play as cultural phenomena still pays little attention to children and their roles in cultural generations. This limitation may lead to misunderstanding or misinterpretation of play and its transmission in different sociocultural contexts. Till now, anthropological studies focused on children and their development in non-western contexts highlighted the active roles children take in cultural generations through their participation in social activities. These studies emphasized the importance of understanding the diverse forms of children,s cultural learning in different sociocultural contexts, and this focus could also be applied to the study of play and its transmission in time and space. This study investigates the daily play of children and its transformations across generations within a pastoralist Maasai society in Southern Kenya. Focal observation of the daily activities of 13 children (2 to 11 years old) has been conducted, and children,s daily play was documented considering their contents, locations and participants. In addition, 80 adults (40 females, 40 males) in the same area were interviewed about their playing experiences during childhood. Findings of this study show, first, various play activities were continuously practiced by Maasai across generations during childhood. Second, children,s participation in play activities are usually only undertaken with peers, and without instructions or guidance from adults. Third, through daily play children continuously develop their intimate relationship with livestock and natural elements such as plants, insects and wild animals. Results from this study highlight that culturally significant play activities are still continuously practiced by young generations in societies where children continue their social activities whilst performing other roles. In these societies, instead of taking traditional sports and games as practices of the past, and incorporating them into the school curriculum, it is necessary to document the transformations of different local play activities in concurrent sociocultural contexts considering children,s social participation, their roles in culture generation, adult generations, play experience during childhood, and the features of learning in the targeted society. For doing so, further investigation of daily childhood experiences using ethnographic documentation is recommended.