Abstract

GARCES-HURTADO, Juan David. “The delinquent today, will be the worker of tomorrow”. Childhood policies and work: institutions, discourses, practices in Colombia (1920-1940). Hist. Soc. [online]. 2017, n.32, pp.285-315. ISSN 0121-8417.  https://doi.org/10.15446/hys.n32.55512.

This paper studies the configuration process of childhood as a focal point of knowledge, practices, theories and techniques that were permeated by the phenomenon of modernization at the beginning of the twentieth century in Colombia. The reality of the child, now seen as a human being endowed with his/her own specificity, fell under the logic of intervention devices intended to control, protect and guide the attitudes and sensibilities of the minor. Also, with the adaptation of different types of scientific knowledge in the Escolanovista educational system, the project of ideal childhood was sought to be consolidated, based on percepts of normality inspired by ideas of racial purity, innocence, incorruptibility and moral superiority. Thus activeness, especially manual labor, is presented as a factor that prevents social decay but, in turn, promotes the creation of a utopic citizen designed for the economic purposes of the nation.

Keywords : Biopolitics; childhood; abnormal; work; progress; modernity..

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )