Psychomotricity as a social practice

In a thought-provoking way the author analyzes the psychomotor practices applied in Curitiba's kindergartens between 1986 and 1994 taking them under the assumption of social practice. With this concern to treat body practices as social practice it is possible to problematize the conceptions of the body and psychomotricity present in Early Childhood Education highlighting their foundations in distinct and antagonistic conceptions of man and his bodily relationship: the idealistic and dualistic conception which deals with the body in a naturalistic way and the mechanistic conception as opposed to the materialistic one which seeks in historical and social determinations the production of man as an intellectual/bodily totality. As a result it contextualizes capitalist society as a historical totality in which the physical human body is subjected to the determinations of space time and rhythm with the aim of saving movement as required by the exploitation of the workforce for the production of merchandise under the social relationship of capital and wage labour.