• DOI:10.1111/J.1475-5661.2006.00225.X
• Corpus ID: 143568453

Building an idea: the material construction of an ideal childhood

@article{Kraftl2006BuildingAI,
  title={Building an idea: the material construction of an ideal childhood},
  author={Peter Kraftl},
  journal={Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers},
  year={2006},
  volume={31},
  pages={488-504}
}

• Peter Kraftl
• Published 1 December 2006
• Sociology
• Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers

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.