ERIC Number: ED433992
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 1998
Pages: 294
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: ISBN-0-300-08064-6
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Inuit Morality Play: The Emotional Education of a Three-Year-Old.
Briggs, Jean L.
This book examines dramatic interactions between a 3-year-old Inuit girl and the adults in her world. In these playful yet emotionally charged dramas, Inuit adults enact with children the plots that drive Inuit social life; they test, act out problems, entertain themselves, and create children who think and feel like an Inuit. The child, Chubby Maata, lived with her family in a seminomadic Inuit community on Baffin Island (Northwest Territories, Canada). Chapters analyze dramatic adult-child interactions, sometimes extended, in which Chubby Maata had to face one or several emotionally powerful issues and find ways to deal with them. The chapters are ordered in a logical chronology of development, each issue laying the conceptual groundwork for others, and focus on "babyness" (celebrating it while gradually dislodging the child from her baby stance); issues of belonging, possession, and attachment; whom one likes and how the liking should be expressed; the dilemma of interpersonal fear and attraction, and how one manages such ambivalence; and practicing persuasion. The conclusion discusses the processes through which culture may be organized and created in the minds of its participants. Appendices present additional dramatic episodes, a chronology, and an Inuktitut glossary. (Contains 87 references and extensive notes.) (SV)
Descriptors: Adult Child Relationship, Canada Natives, Child Development, Child Rearing, Dramatic Play, Emotional Development, Emotional Experience, Eskimos, Ethnography, Foreign Countries, Nonformal Education, Psychological Patterns, Social Development, Social Values, Socialization, Toddlers
Yale University Press, Order Dept., P.O. Box 209040, New Haven, CT 06520 (cloth: ISBN-0-300-07237-6; $35.00; paper: ISBN-0-300-08064-6, $17.00). Tel: 800-987-7323 (Toll Free); Web site: .
Publication Type: Books; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: Memorial Univ., St. John's (Newfoundland).
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Canada
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A