The Brazilian child and childhood in images and representations between years 1880 and 1940

The aim of this study is to observe the circumstances and spaces of the representations concerning child and childhood in Brazil between 1880 and 1940 years and from this observation, we intend to analyze the central position of the children in the Brazilian social field. The iconography produced by the transition from 19th century to 20th century is important to place childhood in a fundamental historical period for the formation of the Brazilian nation, in which there is a strong inter-relation between race, identity and State-nation. The choice of this period and the work with iconography are the sources in which we seek to understand the plurality of the social construction of the contemporary childhood. The fieldwork in museums and school collections in some Brazilian States especially emphasizes the images that present black children, assuming as reference the debate in the field of the sociology of childhood. Under several aspects, we understand as difference the variability that constitute the experience of the early children as social categories of analysis, such as gender, race, ethnicity and sexuality, considering specificities of the historical process and of the Brazilian social field. Such discussion associates themselves to the debate concerning the contingent construction of the childhood whose notions of differences mark, in the time and space, the forms of living, representing and defining the childhood, consisting itself, therefore, as a plural category. The work is articulated with the social studies of childhood in a socio-anthropological analysis, observing the reference points of the Sociology of childhood’s field.