Children’s

Consumption ATH 390Z Pokemon: Local

& Global Cultures

Mark Allen Peterson, PhD

1 Childhood

as cultural

category

Children’s Consumption

Childhood is a

Life Stage Cultural Category

Identified point in

the biological,

psychological and

social maturation

of an individual

A set of discourses

that seeks both to

define childhood

and to articulate

the behaviors,

activities and values

associated with it.

Through play,

family relations,

peer socialization,

work, media and

education, children

and their parents

must negotiate not

only who the

children are, but

who they are going

to become.

Social Futures

The web of social roles,

identities and activities

children, their parents,

educators, public

officials and others

imagine for children as

they make the

transition to adulthood

Social Futures

The web of social roles,

identities and activities

children, their parents,

educators, public

officials and others

imagine for children as

they make the

transition to adulthood

He’ll grow up

to be a doctor

Social Futures

The web of social roles,

identities and activities

children, their parents,

educators, public

officials and others

imagine for children as

they make the

transition to adulthood

He’ll grow up

to be a doctor

I’ll grow up to be

a billionaire

industrialist

superhero

2 Consumption

as cultural

practice

Children’s Consumption

The child market stands apart from others because childhood is a generative cultural site unlike any other. Childhood generates bodies as well as meanings which grow, interact, and transform to the point of creating new childhoods, new meanings, and quite often new markets, and in the process effectively ensuring the movement and transformation of exchange value beyond any one cohort or generation.

Daniel Cook 2004

Consumption

Economic Dimension

Use—and using up—of goods

and services

Cultural Dimension

A cultural practice through which people map their experiences to socially learned codes.

What kind of consumer goods

are “children’s goods”?

And why? Photo: Dan Dickinson creative commons

What kind of children’s goods

are for girls?

Or boys? Photo: Courtney Lynch creative commons

What kind of goods are right

for what ages?

And backgrounds? Photo: Bizmac creative commons

Who is supposed to give what

kind of gifts?

In what circumstances? Photo: Gwen Harlow creative commons

What kinds of play are

appropriate?

When, and for whom? Photo: HeathBarcreative commons

Children’s

consumption 1. Expresses fundamental

cultural understandings about how the social world is constituted

2. Reveals assumptions about what childhood is, and its place in the wider social world

3. Allows children to construct identities within their social fields

4. Reproduce the social world—but also sometimes change it—the developing and indulging in particular kinds of tastes

3 Theories of

Childhood

Consumption

Children’s Consumption

Imagining Childhood T

IME

SPACE

Every society has theories about what children

are and how they should be treated in order to

become healthy members of their society

Theories of Child Consumption

The Corrupted

Child

The Empowered

Child

The Corrupted Child

The Corrupted Child

Children are incomplete

social agents who can be

exploited by the culture

industries, and whose

essential innocence, joy

and creativity can be

harmed by uncensored

access to media, the

desires provoked by

advertising, and the

practices suggested by new

types of consumer goods.

The Empowered Child

The Empowered Child

The child is an

active, knowing

and creative being

who makes her or

his own meaning

out of the media,

goods and practices

to which he or she

is exposed.

Men make their own

history, but they do

not make it as they

please; they do not

make it under self-

selected circumstances,

but under

circumstances existing

already, given and

transmitted from the

past.

Men make their own

history, but they do

not make it as they

please; they do not

make it under self-

selected circumstances,

but under

circumstances existing

already, given and

transmitted from the

past.

Children create their own

social lives, but they do

not make it as they

please; they do not make

it under circumstances

they control, but under

circumstances shaped by

family, school, culture

industries and other

institutions charged with

their care and

upbringing.

4 Analyzing

Childhood

Consumption

Children’s Consumption

Media

1. What content are children consuming?

2. In what media?

3. With what kinds of associated

commodities?

4. What kinds of activities do kids engage

in with media and/or their associated

commodities?

Home

1. What kinds of commodities and media are

allowed/approved in the home?

2. What kinds of commodities and media are

disapproved/not allowed in the home?

3. What attitudes toward particular media

and commodities are displayed in the

home?

4. What rules govern play and media

consumption in the home?

School

1. What kinds of commodities and media are allowed in school?

2. What kinds of commodities and media are not allowed in the school?

3. What attitudes toward particular media and commodities are displayed in the school?

4. Are rules set by individual teachers for their classrooms, or by an administration?

5. What rules govern play and media consumption in classrooms?

Peer Group

1. With whom do children play?

2. What kinds of play do they engage in together? How is play structured?

3. How and when do they talk about media, toys and play activities?

4. To what extent does play, and talk about play and consumption, create opportunities for sociality?

5. Do play and consumption mark in-group/out-group distinctions?

Other Social Fields

1. How does the physical setting/infrastructure affect consumption and play?

2. What kinds of commodities and media are allowed?

3. What kinds of commodities and media are not allowed?

4. What attitudes toward particular media and commodities are displayed?

5. What rules govern play and media consumption?

References

Aries, Philip. 1965. Centuries of Childhood. Vintage.

Cook, Daniel Thomas. 2004. The Commodification of Childhood. Duke

University Press.

Cook, Daniel Thomas. 2005. The dichotomous child in and of

commercial culture. Childhood 12(2): 155-160.

DeLouche, Judy and Alma Gottlieb. 2000. A World of Babies.

Cambridge University Press.

Peterson, Mark Allen. 2005. The jinn and the computer: consumption

and identity in Arabic children’s magazines. Childhood 12(2): 177-200.