‘Re-living’ in play: a cultural-historical study of the child’s repetitiveness through the concept of ‘perezhivanie’ as a unit of consciousness (La recreación infantil en el juego: un estudio histórico-cultural de la repetitividad infantil mediante el concepto ‘perezhivanie’ como unidad de conciencia)

Abstract

Theoretically and methodologically guided by the concept of perezhivanie as a unit of human consciousness, this study explores the changes of a child’s consciousness on something, with a focus on instances of repetitiveness found during everyday family play. Two families from mainland China with three-year-old children participated in this study. A total of 56 hours and 40 minutes of visual data were collected through digital video observations and parent interviews. Findings from one family were reported here to better analyse the differences in a child’s perezhivanie when he kept doing the same play. The child’s re-living in play indicated the changes in his dramatic imaginative actions (defined as a child’s perezhivanie and methodologically, which means the unit of the child’s consciousness in play) wherein how the child continually reorganized his imaginary formations could be refracted. We argue that the changes of a child’s perezhivanie around the same event are meaningful as foregrounding to better understand their refraction process. This contributes to further conceptualization and theorization of children’s development of consciousness.