Cowman, Krista (2018) “The Atmosphere is Permissive and Free”: The Gendering of Activism in the British Adventure Playgrounds Movement, c.1948-1970. Journal of Social History, 53 (1). pp. 218-241. ISSN 0022-4529
Full content URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shy066
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Gendering of Adventure Playgrounds FINALMK1 KC2.pdf - Whole Document Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives. 276kB |
Item Type: | Article |
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Item Status: | Live Archive |
Abstract
This article explores how gender shaped activities on British adventure playgrounds, designated abandoned spaces where children engaged in free play with urban materials under loose adult supervision. It argues that as these bold experiments emerged in post-war Britain in a period when women’s traditional roles were beginning to be scrutinized and questioned they might have been expected to develop into spaces where traditional gendered norms were challenged, girls and boys offered different forms of play, and mothers drawn into wider community activism. This potential was limited through the emergence of the figure of the heroic playleader, a charismatic man capable of taming potentially delinquent urban youth through extreme displays of masculinity. Consequently t was not until the late 1970s, a decade after the establishment of an autonomous Women’s Liberation Movement, that adventure playgrounds began to challenge gendered play behaviors.
Keywords: | adventure playgrounds, British, children |
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Subjects: | V Historical and Philosophical studies > V140 Modern History |
Divisions: | College of Arts |
ID Code: | 32253 |
Deposited On: | 04 Jun 2018 10:55 |
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