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Making America flesh: physicality and nationhood in early twentieth-century physical education reform

Making America flesh: physicality and nationhood in early twentieth-century physical education... At the turn of the twentieth century, urban reformers across the United States becamepreoccupied with providing recreation facilities for urban children. Municipal parkdepartments, boards of education and local philanthropic associations establishedsupervised playgrounds, recreation parks, and vacation schools, in order to energizeAmerica’s youth and transform its fledgling bodies into healthy futurecitizens. In addition to the daily schedule of physical exercise and games,playground groups also organized a series of exhibitions, field days and parades todemonstrate the positive effects of physical education on the nation’syoung bodies. Such demonstrations were overtly patriotic spectacles, incorporatingtransparently nationalistic rituals and symbols. Rather than focus on the symboliccurrency of these events, however, I argue that the scientific logic of physicaleducation renders a symbolic reading quite incongruent. Playgrounds drew from theemerging fields of child psychology and popular theories of psychosocial disorder.From these, a new field of play and physical education theory constructed thedevelopment of child consciousness as a mechanical and, more importantly, muscularprocess. Aspects of character, including national identity, were increasingly soughtdirectly through children’s physicality. The paper therefore rejects theseemingly symbolic function of public spectacles of fitness. Likewise, while recentinterventions by non-representational theory might appear to coincide with thepsychological rationale of playgrounds, they too must be treated with caution orrisk affirming the success of an explicitly nation-building project. Instead, thispaper seeks to do justice to the logic of playground reform as a real and potentstrategy to produce socially useful subjects without according that logic permanentand efficacious status. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Cultural Geographies SAGE

Making America flesh: physicality and nationhood in early twentieth-century physical education reform

Gagen, Elizabeth A.
Cultural Geographies , Volume 11 (4): 26 – Oct 1, 2004
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References (29)

Publisher
SAGE
Copyright
Copyright © by SAGE Publications
ISSN
1474-4740
eISSN
1477-0881
DOI
10.1191/1474474004eu321oa
Publisher site
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Abstract

At the turn of the twentieth century, urban reformers across the United States becamepreoccupied with providing recreation facilities for urban children. Municipal parkdepartments, boards of education and local philanthropic associations establishedsupervised playgrounds, recreation parks, and vacation schools, in order to energizeAmerica’s youth and transform its fledgling bodies into healthy futurecitizens. In addition to the daily schedule of physical exercise and games,playground groups also organized a series of exhibitions, field days and parades todemonstrate the positive effects of physical education on the nation’syoung bodies. Such demonstrations were overtly patriotic spectacles, incorporatingtransparently nationalistic rituals and symbols. Rather than focus on the symboliccurrency of these events, however, I argue that the scientific logic of physicaleducation renders a symbolic reading quite incongruent. Playgrounds drew from theemerging fields of child psychology and popular theories of psychosocial disorder.From these, a new field of play and physical education theory constructed thedevelopment of child consciousness as a mechanical and, more importantly, muscularprocess. Aspects of character, including national identity, were increasingly soughtdirectly through children’s physicality. The paper therefore rejects theseemingly symbolic function of public spectacles of fitness. Likewise, while recentinterventions by non-representational theory might appear to coincide with thepsychological rationale of playgrounds, they too must be treated with caution orrisk affirming the success of an explicitly nation-building project. Instead, thispaper seeks to do justice to the logic of playground reform as a real and potentstrategy to produce socially useful subjects without according that logic permanentand efficacious status.

Journal

Cultural Geographies – SAGE

Published: Oct 1, 2004

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