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ArticleMancala

Games of Strategy: A New Look at Correlates and Cross-Cultural Methods

Philip Townshend, in The Anthropological Study of Play, ed. D. F. Lancy and B. A. Tindall, 1977

Description

Townshend's cross-cultural analysis of Mancala as a "game of strategy" embedded in social and agricultural contexts. Argues that the game's distribution correlates with specific modes of subsistence and social organisation, connecting play to the deeper structures of the cultures that practise it.

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The Academy · May 27, 2026

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What does this material reveal? Where else does it lead?