Abstract

CARVALHO, Levindo Diniz  and  SILVA, Rogério Correia da. Childhood in the countryside: toys, games and culture. child.philo [online]. 2018, vol.14, n.29, pp.189-212. ISSN 1984-5987.  https://doi.org/10.12957/childphilo.2018.30364.

in this article, with an essay-like character, the authors seek to discuss children's games as cultural practices, regarding their presence in childhoods lived in rural contexts or in the so-called traditional communities in Brazil. Through a dialogue with "Childhood Studies", we intend to analyze the images we construct about who these children are as well as what their games tell us about their lives and forms of sociability. We will analyze a small repertoire of toys as being cultural artifacts produced by children, problematizing children's cultures and their forms of symbolic production. We seek here, in relation to our experiences of research and teaching training, an appreciation of the cultural meaning of games as lying between the universality of forms and the expressions of the diversity of playfullness, as a product of the sociocultural universe where they are located. In addition to this, we will try to interpret the meanings these experiences can have for children. We will also engage in a brief dialogue with the researches that focus on the childhoods in the countryside, analyzing their contributions to an understanding of playing as a cultural practice. Finally, the dimension of the territory for playing is pointed out as a central element in the processes of apprehension of the world, of creation and participation of the child in the social scene. Some challenges regarding research are aroused by the discussion undertaken here. We will argue that these challenges can instigate new writing exercises on this subject.

Keywords : children; childhoods in the countryside; traditional communities; play games.

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