Families at Play by Sinem Siyahhan

Author:Sinem Siyahhan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Play2Connect; intergenerational communication; intergenerational play; family games; educational games;
Publisher: The MIT Press

Playing Out Ethnic and Cultural Identity

At any given time, we take on multiple roles and identities such as professor, woman, daughter, spouse, and so on. One aspect of our identity pertains to our understanding of and relationship to our cultural and ethnic background, which we develop through talk and interactions with others. Children are first socialized into cultural practices and ways of knowing the world in the home. Parents communicate messages to their children about their cultural heritage by engaging them in customs and traditions, talking about cultural history and events, and encouraging children to use their family’s native language.15 Positive ethnic and cultural identity promotes a sense of belonging and pride, and thus plays an important role in children’s socioemotional development.16 Furthermore, children who have a positive sense of cultural and ethnic identity have stronger family ties and cohesion.17 A shared cultural background reinforces group membership, which people draw upon to understand their own sense of identity and place in society.18

One common way parents reinforce ethnic and cultural identity is through the use of cultural artifacts with their children. Traditionally, songs and stories were the primary means of sustaining customs, values, beliefs, and behaviors across generations. In modern times, books, radio, and television shows have been added to the artifacts used to reproduce social values and cultural traditions. More recently, video games have emerged as another cultural artifact that provides opportunities for making connections to one’s cultural heritage. A good example is Oregon Trail, the first educational game designed for schoolchildren, which teaches players about the settlers who traveled westward in the nineteenth century. The goal of the game is for players to move from Missouri to Oregon and make decisions about food, supplies, and relationships along the way to survive the journey. This game, first published in 1974, reinforces American cultural values such as overcoming barriers, resilience, hard work, and patriotism. At the same time, the game also introduces cultural biases with respect to westward expansion and the concept of manifest destiny by portraying the relationship between the settlers and the Native Americans as amicable and excluding the experiences of African Americans and women on the trail.19

Of course, not all video games address cultural heritage, history, and values while introducing implicit or explicit biases against other cultures or social groups. Since Oregon Trail, there have been many video games designed around historical places and periods and the societies therein, allowing players to take on different roles as the protagonist in the story and experience culturally different ways of thinking and doing. One of these games is the turn-based strategy game series Civilization, first released in 1991, in which players represent the leader of a nation or ethnic group and must guide its growth over the course of thousands of years through diplomacy, advancing technology, strengthening the economy, and other means. Gabe and his son Luca (age thirteen), whom we discussed in chapter 3, played this game at one of our family gaming events. Below is the interaction we

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