Designing Modern Childhoods
384 pages, 6 x 9
86 black & white illustrations
Paperback
Release Date:22 Jan 2008
ISBN:9780813541969
Designing Modern Childhoods
History, Space, and the Material Culture of Children
Edited by Marta Gutman and Ning de Coninck-Smith; Foreword by Paula S. Fass; Epilogue by John R Gillis
Rutgers University Press
With the advent of urbanization in the early modern period, the material worlds of children were vastly altered. In industrialized democracies, a broad consensus developed that children should not work, but rather learn and play in settings designed and built with these specific purposes in mind. Unregulated public spaces for children were no longer acceptable; and the cultural landscapes of children's private lives were changed, with modifications in architecture and the objects of daily life.
In Designing Modern Childhoods, architectural historians, social historians, social scientists, and architects examine the history and design of places and objects such as schools, hospitals, playgrounds, houses, cell phones, snowboards, and even the McDonald's Happy Meal. Special attention is given to how children use and interpret the spaces, buildings, and objects that are part of their lives, becoming themselves creators and carriers of culture. The authors extract common threads in children's understandings of their material worlds, but they also show how the experience of modernity varies for young people across time, through space, and according to age, gender, social class, race, and culture.
In Designing Modern Childhoods, architectural historians, social historians, social scientists, and architects examine the history and design of places and objects such as schools, hospitals, playgrounds, houses, cell phones, snowboards, and even the McDonald's Happy Meal. Special attention is given to how children use and interpret the spaces, buildings, and objects that are part of their lives, becoming themselves creators and carriers of culture. The authors extract common threads in children's understandings of their material worlds, but they also show how the experience of modernity varies for young people across time, through space, and according to age, gender, social class, race, and culture.
This imaginative and original collection will play an important role in enhancing a growing interest in the history and sociology of childhood.
The essays in this interesting and informative volume look at modern childhood's space and material culture from an interdisciplinary and global perspective. Highly recommended.
MARTA GUTMAN is an associate professor in the School of Architecture, Urban Design, and Landscape Architecture at the City College of New York/CUNY.
NING DE CONINK-SMITH is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Sociology at the Danish University of Education.
NING DE CONINK-SMITH is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Sociology at the Danish University of Education.
Foreword by Paula S. Fass
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Good to Think With: History, Space, and Modern Childhood
MARTA GUTMAN AND NING DE CONINCK-SMITH
PART ONE: Child Saving and the Design of Modern Childhoods
1 Connecting with the Landscape: Campfires and Youth Culture at American Summer Camps, 1890–1950
ABIGAIL A. VAN SLYCK
2 A (Better) Home Away from Home: The Emergence of Children’s Hospitals in an Age of Women’s Reform
DAVID C. SLOANE
3 Sick Children and the Thresholds of Domesticity: The Dawson-Harrington Families at Home
ANNMARIE ADAMS AND PETER GOSSAGE
4 The “Myers Park Experiment” in Auckland, New Zealand, 1913–1916
ANÉNE CUSINS-LEWER AND JULIA GATLEY
PART TWO: The Choreography of Education and Play
5 A Breath of Fresh Air: Open-Air Schools in Europe
ANNE-MARIE CHÂTELET
6 Molding the Republican Generation: The Landscapes of Learning in Early Republican Turkey
ZEYNEP KEZER
7 Nomadic Schools in Senegal: Manifestations of Integration or Ritual Performance?
KRISTINE JUUL
8 Adventure Playgrounds and Postwar Reconstruction
ROY KOZLOVSKY
PART THREE: Space, Power, and Inequality in
Modern Childhoods
9 The View from the Back Step: White Children Learn about Race in Johannesburg’s Suburban Homes
REBECCA GINSBURG
10 Children and the Rosenwald Schools of the American South
MARY S. HOFFSCHWELLE
11 The Geographies and Identities of Street Girls in Indonesia
HARRIOT BEAZLEY
PART FOUR: Consumption, Commodification, and the Media: Material Culture and Contemporary Childhoods
12 Coming of Age in Suburbia: Gifting the Consumer Child
ALISON J. CLARKE
13 Inscribing Nordic Childhoodsat McDonald’s
HELENE BREMBECK
14 “Board with the World”: Youthful Approaches to Landscapes and Mediascapes
OLAV CHRISTENSEN
15 Migrating Media: Anime Media Mixes and the Childhood Imagination
MIZUKO ITO
Epilogue: The Islanding of Children: Reshaping the Mythical Landscapes of Childhood
JOHN R. GILLIS
Notes on Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Good to Think With: History, Space, and Modern Childhood
MARTA GUTMAN AND NING DE CONINCK-SMITH
PART ONE: Child Saving and the Design of Modern Childhoods
1 Connecting with the Landscape: Campfires and Youth Culture at American Summer Camps, 1890–1950
ABIGAIL A. VAN SLYCK
2 A (Better) Home Away from Home: The Emergence of Children’s Hospitals in an Age of Women’s Reform
DAVID C. SLOANE
3 Sick Children and the Thresholds of Domesticity: The Dawson-Harrington Families at Home
ANNMARIE ADAMS AND PETER GOSSAGE
4 The “Myers Park Experiment” in Auckland, New Zealand, 1913–1916
ANÉNE CUSINS-LEWER AND JULIA GATLEY
PART TWO: The Choreography of Education and Play
5 A Breath of Fresh Air: Open-Air Schools in Europe
ANNE-MARIE CHÂTELET
6 Molding the Republican Generation: The Landscapes of Learning in Early Republican Turkey
ZEYNEP KEZER
7 Nomadic Schools in Senegal: Manifestations of Integration or Ritual Performance?
KRISTINE JUUL
8 Adventure Playgrounds and Postwar Reconstruction
ROY KOZLOVSKY
PART THREE: Space, Power, and Inequality in
Modern Childhoods
9 The View from the Back Step: White Children Learn about Race in Johannesburg’s Suburban Homes
REBECCA GINSBURG
10 Children and the Rosenwald Schools of the American South
MARY S. HOFFSCHWELLE
11 The Geographies and Identities of Street Girls in Indonesia
HARRIOT BEAZLEY
PART FOUR: Consumption, Commodification, and the Media: Material Culture and Contemporary Childhoods
12 Coming of Age in Suburbia: Gifting the Consumer Child
ALISON J. CLARKE
13 Inscribing Nordic Childhoodsat McDonald’s
HELENE BREMBECK
14 “Board with the World”: Youthful Approaches to Landscapes and Mediascapes
OLAV CHRISTENSEN
15 Migrating Media: Anime Media Mixes and the Childhood Imagination
MIZUKO ITO
Epilogue: The Islanding of Children: Reshaping the Mythical Landscapes of Childhood
JOHN R. GILLIS
Notes on Contributors
Index
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