Imagined Childhoods: Narratives, Disputes, and Social Representations at the Beginning of the 20th Century in Uruguay

Silvana Espiga Dorado

Abstract

The book presents a deep analysis of the social representations of childhood that primary school reading textbooks offered to their readers in Uruguay between 1900 and 1930. This period is of great significance in the consolidation of the nation-state, its institutions, and its imaginaries. The school articulated discourses and social aspirations by modeling a childhood onto which the responsibility for the future of the country was projected. Themes such as childhood nature, morality, diseases, health, and gender roles produce and reproduce an idealized model of childhood, identified with the Eastern people, their history, and their projection into the future.