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Governing through nature: camps and youth movements in interwar Germany and the United States
[journal article]
Abstract Focusing on youth camp development in Germany and the United States during the interwar period, this article argues not only that such camps played a crucial role in the ways in which national societies dealt with their youth, but also that their history forces us to rethink relations between place-... view more
Focusing on youth camp development in Germany and the United States during the interwar period, this article argues not only that such camps played a crucial role in the ways in which national societies dealt with their youth, but also that their history forces us to rethink relations between place-making, nationhood, and modern governing. First, the article addresses the historiography of youth movements in relation to current debates about spatiality, nationalism, and governmentality. The main part of the article examines organized camps, in particular by the German Bünde, the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth), and the American Boy Scouts, focusing on their transition from relatively spontaneous activities of particular social movements, to objects of professional design, national-scale planning and intricate management in the interwar period. This development demonstrates how in the seemingly trivial activity of camping, nationalism is interwoven with the project of conducting youth through contact with nature. Despite divergent contexts and political ideologies, youth camp development in this period constituted a set of practices in which the natural environment was deployed to improve the nation's youth, and to eventually reproduce them as governable subjects.... view less
Free Keywords
camps; governmentality; interwar Germany; interwar United States; youth movements;
Document language
English
Publication Year
2008
Page/Pages
p. 173-205
Journal
Cultural Geographies, 15 (2008) 2
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474007087498
Status
Postprint; peer reviewed
Licence
PEER Licence Agreement (applicable only to documents from PEER project)