作为“文化指标”的儿童游戏——玛格丽特·米德的儿童游戏研究

Children’s play as a cultural indicator:Margaret Mead’s research on children’s play

著名人类学家玛格丽特·米德以其文化与人格方面的大量经典研究闻名于世,但其对儿童游戏的关注与思考并未引起学界的足够重视。梳理散见于米德最为经典的《来自南海》三部曲及部分论文中的儿童游戏研究,从文化模式、养育方式、人格特征、文化变迁与儿童游戏之间的关系等角度进行分析,可以发现,这些碎片化的研究,从理论背景上鲜明呈现出文化与人格学派所持的文化决定论色彩,在研究取向上则显示为将(儿童)游戏风格作为研究具体文化模式之指标,亦即在游戏本体之外更强调游戏折射出的社会、文化内涵的“语境”取向,而在视角方法上则以多点民族志、跨文化比较法及历时性视野而极大推动了当时的游戏研究。

The renowned anthropologist,Margaret Mead,is famous for her extensive classical research on culture and personality,but her attention and thinking on children’s play have not attracted enough attention.Following the review of Mead’s research on children’s play in some papers and her most classic trilogy,From the South Seas,from the perspectives of cultural pattern,parenting style,personality characteristics and the relationship between cultural changes and children’s play,the author proposes that these researches clearly demonstrate both the idea of cultural determinism held by the school of culture and personality,and the perspective of viewing children’s play style as the concrete index of cultural patterns which means the emphasis on the cultural connotation of play’s“context”orientation instead of their texts.In addition,with the method of multi-point ethnography,intercultural comparison and diachronic perspective,these researches greatly promoted the study of the game.