Despite being one of the few human-specific types of play that humans of various ages engage in, games are understudied in cross-cultural research. Games are not distributed randomly across cultures and vary with some socio-ecological aspects of human cultures. Previous observational studies suggest that the cooperativeness and egalitarianism of cultural groups is reflected in the games that are played across cultures, but this has yet to be studied using a breadth of method- ological approaches. In this dissertation, I investigate the relationship the cooperativeness of games may have with the cooperativeness of cultural groups and offer one potential avenue as to how and why games are distributed across cultures.
This dissertation consists of two main parts. The first part (chapters 2 - 3) focuses on gathering and analyzing descriptions of historical games and cultural levels of cooperation from ethnolinguistic groups on the Austronesian language phylogeny. The second part (chapters 4 - 6) focuses on gathering games, cultural levels of cooperation, and investigating the relationship between games and cultural levels of cooperation by three modern-day cultural groups.
In chapter two, I describe the making of the Austronesian Game Taxonomy, an open-access database of game descriptions as gathered from historical, ethnographic, and other sources. I also describe my goal structure coding scheme and apply it to the 907 games in the Austronesian Game Taxonomy.
In chapter three, I test the relationship between the goal structure of games from the Austronesian Game Taxonomy and several proxies for cultural levels of cooperation in 25 ethnolin- guistic groups. I find that the cooperativeness of games is negatively related to cultural levels of intra-group conflict and positively related with inter-cultural conflict. The goal structure of games is not associated with the social structure of cultures, nor reliably correlate with measures of interdependence in subsistence.
Chapter four provides a detailed description of the three cultures that are the focus of Part two of this dissertation: Hai||om and Ovambo in Namibia, and Germans in Leipzig, Germany. I use three semi-structured interviews to obtain information about the levels of social stratification, intra-group conflict, and inter-cultural conflict experienced by these three groups.
Chapter five documents the games played by Hai||om and Ovambo children and adults during my research visit to Namibia. I describe a handful of games with variety of goal structures. I provide the interview used to gather this information for future cross-cultural game collection.
In chapter six, I examine the relationship between the preference for games that are cooperative or competitive, and cultural levels of cooperation in three modern-day cultures. I also interview caretakers on their attitudes toward children’s play and games. I find cross-cultural variation in children’s game preferences, but adult game preferences do not vary across cultures. Game preferences do not systematically vary with predicted cultural levels of cooperation.
In the general discussion, I discuss my research findings in terms of the relationship between games and cultural levels of cooperation and suggest further improvements for the field of cross-cultural game research. This dissertation provides some evidence that games relate with types of conflict, but not with levels of social stratification nor interdependence in subsistence.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:80283 |
| Date | 02 August 2022 |
| Creators | Leisterer-Peoples, Sarah M. |
| Contributors | Universität Leipzig |
| Source Sets | Hochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion, doc-type:doctoralThesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis, doc-type:Text |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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