The material culture of schooling: reflections around a historiographic turn

The article presents an analysis of some of the main theoretical and methodological tenets of the material turn in the history of education. It discusses whether this approach is new or continues older takes on the materiality and spatiality of schooling; what appears as original are (a) the inscription of objects in trajectories that sets them in movement in networks of human and non-humans, and (b) considering not only meaning-production but also the effects of the co-presence and co-mingling of researcher and objects on a visible and sensible level. The text introduces some reflections about the use of photographs as historical sources considered from the point of view of the material turn, taking as a thread the author's research on school uniforms. Finally, in the concluding remarks, two short texts on materials and objects from Walter Benjamin and Michel Foucault are included, and their relevance for the rethinking of objects and spaces is underscored, along with their fertility to pose new questions to the history of education.