Managing Play Frames and Conflicts among Baka Children in Southeastern Cameroon

Abstract (English)

This paper examines how Baka children in southeastern Cameroon negotiate and sustain the frame of play during peer interactions that involve conflict or tension. Based on video-recorded ethnographic fieldwork in a forest camp, the study analyzes episodes of mixed-age play—including play-fighting, musical play, and water play—recorded while adults were absent. Following Bateson’s (1955) conceptualization of play as a framed activity requiring ongoing metacommunication, the analysis focuses on how children regulate attention, manage emotional escalation, and maintain mutual understanding through moment-by-moment interaction.
In each case, scenes of emerging conflict challenge the stability of the play frame. Play-fighting tests the limits between playfulness and real aggression; musical play involves moments of disruption and misalignment; and water play introduces unpredictable shifts in coordination. Across these varied activities, children actively engage in subtle adjustments, frame negotiation, and conflict repair without adult intervention.
By tracing how participants manage shifts in attention, rising tensions, and the re-establishment of shared meaning, the study highlights children's capacities for pragmatic negotiation and collective coordination in peer contexts. Through these everyday practices, children learn to navigate uncertainty, sustain social relations, and maintain cooperative engagement through embodied and interactional practices grounded in their lived environment.
This study contributes to an anthropological understanding of children's autonomous social organization and the relational dynamics of managing intensity and participation through play.