Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Children's consumer culture refers to the institutional, material, and symbolic arrangements which organize a young person's involvement in, and movement through, the early life course in terms of commercial interests and values. Children are both subject to and arise as subjects in consumer contexts. The meanings which adhere to commercial goods are at once imposed upon children, childhood, and their social worlds and are taken up by children as resources with which they create selves, identities, and relationships. Due to longstanding beliefs about childhood “innocence” ( Higonnet 1998 ) and related concerns about children's susceptibility to influence, their involvement in the economic sphere has never been unfettered or come without adult reservations. Moral tensions and considerations comprise the environment of children's consumption because they revolve around determining the kind of social being or “person” a child is. Many observers question the timing of and extent to which children become knowing, reflective beings who have the wherewithal to make informed choices. The evident malleability of children's desires, interests, and pleasures only strengthens the case that a child does not conform to the economist's notion of a rational economic actor. The fear that children's apparent susceptibility to influence invites exploitation on the part of marketers and advertisers ... log in or subscribe to read full text