Convenor
Soheila Shahshahani
Shahid Beheshti University
Abstract
War-stricken Middle East reflects on its past when its children were en-culturated through the many games they played. These games differed according to region, subsistence, sex, and various realities about their environment, political, economic and social life were taught through games to children. We welcome papers on games from all over the world, games children play which shows distinctively the characteristics of their society, and how through these games the characteristics are engraved upon children. Feelings of joy, humility, togetherness, punishment, vengeance, separation … are used to teach without words what the society’s ethics and world views are. Ethnography of games should clearly show how they were played, by whom, when etc. and a knowledge of that society by the scholar should point to the connection between the games and the dominant social order in that society.
Games children play today can show a rupture with the past, a study of this could also be of great importance.