Saharan and North African toy and play cultures: Children's dolls and doll play

This book presents the reader a detailed analysis of the dolls and the doll play of Saharan and North African children. To begin with, the male dolls are described, then the female dolls and finally the child dolls. Each of the three subdivisions starts with a summary putting forward the main characteristics of the group of dolls concerned. In the chapter Conclusion, a synthesis is proposed, together with a discussion of some environmental, economic and socio-cultural aspects of the dolls and doll play, followed by a final chapter in which I try to offer suggestions for the practical use of this toy and play culture. In appendix 1 a detailed and systematic description, in French, of the Saharan and North African dolls of the collection of the Musée de l'Homme can be consulted. Appendix 2 gives a scheme for a detailed description of play activities and toys. In appendix 3 the interested reader can find some autobiographical notes. In North Africa and the Sahara one finds male dolls as well as female dolls and child dolls. However, the female dolls are largely predominant. With the exception of Morocco, I have only noted the existence of male dolls among the children of families living in the Sahara. These male dolls and female dolls are adults, often bridegrooms and brides. The child dolls represent girls or boys of some age. Baby dolls seem to be seldom. Most of the time Saharan and North African children make their dolls themselves. However it happens that an adult woman of the family, a female or male artisan make them. So these dolls have, with very few exceptions, been locally made. As more or less all over the world it is the girls who play most with dolls and to a much lesser extent the boys, and then they almost always play with male dolls. Although the bibliographical documents too rarely talk about this, the dolls described in this book have no meaning except within the children's doll play. Most often this is a doll play for which children of the same family and/or neighborhood come together. In this collective doll play the children use a lot of other toys or objects. Moreover, they may sing, dance, tell riddles or stories and engage in linguistic games during their doll play. 10 Following all the information I have at my disposal, the children enact in their doll play the life of the adults. In the sphere of the masculine world, the doll becomes a dromedarist, a horseman, a mule driver, a herdsman, a warrior or a nobleman. In the sphere of the female world, doll play mostly refers to playing household, to enacting festivities, especially weddings, and other important reunions, to representing pregnancy, childbirth or a burial. With the exception of the imitation of weddings, in which the female and male worlds mix, the distinction between female and male activities remains strong in doll play. In the creation of the dolls a great variety of natural and waste materials are used. Almost always these materials are of local or domestic origin: mineral material such as stones or clay; animal material such as dried dung, bones, hair, leather and wool; vegetal material such as leaves, reed, branches, dates and ear of maize (Indian Corncob); textile material such as rags and threads; metallic material such as wires and sheets; plastic material such as flasks, threads and ornaments. The part of the material of non-environmental or non-domestic origin is insignificant. The children of each population seem to have held to one or sometimes a few clearly defined types of dolls. As within each community the children play with the same kind of dolls, their similarity facilitates the elaboration and communication of shared signification. This elaboration and communication of shared signification being strengthened by the fact that most of the children make themselves their dolls. This way, the dolls and doll play can be viewed as an efficient communicative tool for keeping up the socio-cultural system. If one takes into account the whole geographic area an interesting variety can be detected in the form, height, face, hair and garments of the dolls. With few exceptions, the dolls are figurative and realistic representations at least in the global appearance and the clothing aspect. Except among the upper classes, the ideal female model is a decently dressed well-fed or even corpulent young woman as symbolized in the female dolls of these regions. Among many North African and Saharan populations the facial traits are not indicated on local dolls or possibly in a fanciful manner. I only found facial features among the female dolls of Belbala, Mozabite, Moroccan and Tunisian girls, as well as the Ghrib girls where it is a 11 recent evolution influenced by the school, an evolution that also comes to the foreground in certain Moroccan communities.