ABSTRACT
This chapter takes a few liberties with history. It does this in order to explore the childhood as a social construct and possible implications of the playwork practice. This game transports us back to the European Enlightenment and particularly Jean Jacques Rousseau’s conjuring of an imagined ideal child/adult relationship in his 1762 tract ‘Emile’. This chapter suggests that the present is always haunted by cultural practices and discourses from the past. By recognising the effects of these communal hauntings on playwork, and other social practices in the context of childhood, we can better understand and respond to the themes of human rights and social justice in playwork settings.
