Fabricating the Developing Child in Institutions of Education. A Historical Approach to Documentation. (May 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Esser, Florian
• Is Part Of: Children & society. Volume 29:Number 3(2015:May)
• Page Start: 174
• Page End: 183
• Publication Date: 2015-05
• Subjects: Children -- Care and hygiene -- Periodicals; Child welfare -- Periodicals; Child welfare -- Great Britain -- Periodicals; Children -- Social conditions -- Periodicals; Child development -- Periodicals; 362.70941
• DOI: 10.1111/chso.12113
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0951-0605

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="main" id="chso12113-abs-0001"> <title> <x xml:space="preserve">Abstract</x> </title> <p>Using a historical perspective, this article describes how specific forms of documentation turned institutions of childhood into laboratories of child development. Drawing upon 'laboratisation' as an analytical concept derived from Science and Technology Studies, an arch will be traced from diaries kept by bourgeois fathers at the end of the 19th century to the scholarisation of childhood some one hundred years later, and on to ECE facilities at the start of the 21st century. This shows how institutions left their mark on individual children and, as laboratories of childhood, spread their institutional logic into broader areas of society by deploying practices and instruments of documentation.</p> </abstract>