Folktales, Reality, and Childhood in Ethiopia: How Children Construct Social Values through Performance of Folktales

Abstract

This article examines how Oromo-speaking children in Ethiopia construct social values in multiple ways through their participation in storytelling and the subsequent meaning-making discussions. By presenting children as actors in the re-contextualization of folktales, the article argues that participation in a folkloric performance is not a mere play practice for children, but is a social and artistic forum through which they acquire survival skills and grow connected to values of their society. This indicates that in the processes of storytelling and meaning-making, children draw an analogical relationship between imagined situations in folklore and living realities in their local environment. The article is based on data generated through ten months of ethnographic fieldwork with children among an Oromo-speaking society in Ethiopia.

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