Building an idea

The material construction of an ideal childhood

Bibliographic Data

ID8964347
AuthorsP Kraftl (0000-0002-7915-4808, University of Northampton, corresponding author)
Year2006
Volume31
Issue4
Pages488-504
Publication date2006-09-29
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTransactions of the Institute of British Geographers (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-2754 • E-ISSN: 1475-5661
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1475-5661.2006.00225.x
OpenAlexW2005537414
LanguageEN
Citations received61
References cited41

This paper explores how ideas and ideals are constructed. More specifically, it follows how ideas and ideals of ‘childhood’ are constructed. Still more specifically, it attends to the ways in which idea(l)s of childhood are literally and materially constructed, in, through and as part of practices such as the building and maintenance of architectural forms. I argue that most studies of childhood largely ignore the importance of local, banal, ephemeral, mundane, material practices – often involved in the very constitution and performance of spaces – which are hugely significant to the construction of idea(l)s like childhood. By adopting a ‘critical geographical’ approach to the daily life of an alternative school in Pembrokeshire, in the United Kingdom, I demonstrate how particular arrays of usually un‐noticed practices are involved in the construction, constitution and evocation of idea(l)s like childhood

Aesthetics · Constitution · Developmental psychology · Early childhood · Ephemeral key · Epistemology · Evocation · Ideal (ethics · Political science · Sociology · Anthropology · Children's Rights and Participation · Computer Science · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Spatial and Cultural Studies

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