The Material Child - David Buckingham - E-Book

The Material Child E-Book

David Buckingham

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Beschreibung

Children today are growing up in an increasingly commercialised world. But should we see them as victims of manipulative marketing, or as competent participants in consumer culture? The Material Child provides a comprehensive critical overview of debates about children's changing engagement with the commercial market. It moves from broad overviews of the theory and history of children's consumption to insightful case studies of key areas such as obesity, sexualisation, children's broadcasting and education. In the process, it challenges much of the received wisdom about the effects of advertising and marketing, arguing for a more balanced account that locates children's consumption within a broader analysis of social relationships, for example within the family and the peer group. While refuting the popular view of children as incompetent and vulnerable consumers that is adopted by many campaigners, it also rejects the easy celebration of consumption as an expression of children's power and autonomy. Written by one of the leading international scholars in the field, The Material Child will be of interest to students, researchers and policy-makers, as well as parents, teachers and others who work directly with children.

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Table of Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright page

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 Exploited or empowered?

Constructing the child consumer

The construction of social problems

The problem of the child consumer

Childhood at risk

Toxic childhood syndrome

Modern life is rubbish?

Kid power?

Conclusion

2 Understanding consumption

Theorizing consumption: the bad news

Two contemporary perspectives

The good news?

Beyond the binaries

Consumption as a social and cultural practice

Beyond consumption

Conclusion

3 The making of consumers

Theory and research on children’s consumption

Children as economic agents

Psychology and the child consumer: effects studies

Consumer socialization and its limits

Rethinking advertising literacy

Making space for children in theories of consumer culture

Towards a cultural sociology of the child consumer

The child consumer: a cultural studies approach

Conclusion

4 Histories of children’s consumption

The development of modern consumerism

The emergence of the child consumer

Parental ambivalence, toys and play

The ‘empowerment’ of the child consumer

Segmenting the market: age and gender

Consumption across cultures

A narrative of decline?

5 The contemporary children’s market

Empowered consumers?

Media and cultural industries: the bigger picture

From tie-ins to programme-length commercials to integrated marketing

The case of Pokémon

Children’s play . . . and children’s work

New tactics, new issues

Conclusion

6 The fear of fat

Obesity, food and consumption

The making of the ‘obesity epidemic’

Advertising, obesity and the problem of evidence

As research has (not) shown . . . 

Advertising in context

Understanding children’s food cultures

The food system

The late modern diet

The regulation of bodies

7 Too much, too soon?

Marketing, media and the sexualization of girls

A history of concern

A problem area

Campaigners’ concerns

Feminist perspectives

Parents’ views

Media effects research

Children’s perspectives

Conclusion

8 Rethinking ‘pester power’

Children, parents and consumption

The family in crisis?

Inside the home: time and space

Empowered children?

Investigating ‘pester power’: effects research

‘Pester power’: alternative approaches

Inequality and the contradictions of care

Conclusion

9 Beyond ‘peer pressure’

Consumption and identity in the peer group

Consumption, social identity and childhood

Media talk and the negotiation of identity

Participatory media and branded identities

Clothing: brands and markets

Clothing, identity and inequality

Consumption, mental health and ‘materialism’

Conclusion

10 Screening the market

The case of children’s television

Children’s television: public service and the market

Children in the marketplace: the US case

Childhood and public service: the UK case

Children’s television in the noughties

Children’s television in crisis?

Conclusion

11 Consuming to learn – learning to consume

Education goes to market

A history of ambivalence

Commercialization: marketing in schools

Marketing and advertising in UK schools

Privatization: the rise of the education services industry

Marketization: schools as businesses

Implications for children

Learning outside school

Leisure and play

Consumer education and media literacy

Conclusion

12 Conclusion: living in a material world

References

Index

Copyright © David Buckingham 2011

The right of David Buckingham to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2011 by Polity Press

Polity Press

65 Bridge Street

Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

350 Main Street

Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-4770-8

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-4771-5(pb)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-3745-7(Single-user ebook)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-3744-0(Multi-user ebook)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.politybooks.com

Acknowledgements

In April 2008, I was invited by two UK government departments (the Department of Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to lead an independent assessment of ‘the impact of the commercial world on children’s wellbeing’. The assessment report was finally (and belatedly) published in December 2009, in the dying days of Gordon Brown’s Labour government; and at the time of writing, it can still be accessed (along with a range of supplementary reports and materials) on the Department for Education website. This book has partly emerged from the work of the assessment, and it incorporates some material first written for the report. I would like to thank the extremely distinguished group of academic colleagues who worked on the assessment with me: Paddy Barwise, Hugh Cunningham, Mary Jane Kehily, Sonia Livingstone, Mary MacLeod, Lydia Martens, Ginny Morrow, Agnes Nairn and Brian Young. I am absolutely certain that they would not endorse every word I have written here; but I am nevertheless very grateful to them for their expert and often challenging input. I am also grateful to the colleagues from the University of Loughborough, the Open University, Stirling University and the Social Issues Research Centre who produced the literature reviews on which I have continued to rely here. Perhaps my greatest debt, however, is to Jane Geraghty of the DCSF, who managed to keep me reasonably sane throughout the process, and helped me to learn a good deal about the workings of government along the way. Responsibility for the arguments presented here remains my own.

I would also like to thank my colleagues in various institutions with whom I have worked on these issues over the past several years: Rebekah Willett and Shakuntala Banaji at the Institute of Education; Vebjørg Tingstad, Tora Korsvold and Ingunn Hagen at the Norwegian Centre for Child Research; and Sara Bragg at the Open University. I am also grateful to various institutions and organizations for offering me opportunities to speak on these topics over the past couple of years, and for their feedback, especially: OMEP in Athens (Litsa Kourti); the Open University (Mary Jane Kehily, Rachel Thomson and Liz McFall); Syracuse University (Sari Biklen); Sheffield University (Allison James); Goldsmiths College (Angela McRobbie); the School of Oriental and African Studies (Annabelle Sreberny and Mark Hobart); the ‘Onscenity’ research network (Feona Attwood); the Copenhagen Business School (Birgitte Tufte); the University of Ghent (Daniel Biltereyst); and the ‘Colloque Enfance et Cultures’ in Paris (Regine Sirota and Sylvie Octobre). I would also like to thank Vebjørg Tingstad, Martyn Richmond and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on the manuscript; and the staff at Polity, especially Andrea Drugan and Lauren Mulholland, for their support.

Introduction

Over the past decade, the figure of the child consumer has been the focus of increasing attention and debate. On the one hand, children have become more and more important (and indeed lucrative) both as a market in their own right and as a means to reach adult markets. Companies are using a much wider range of marketing techniques, which go well beyond conventional advertising; and they are targeting children directly at an ever-younger age. Marketers often claim that children are becoming ‘empowered’ in this new commercial environment: the market is seen to be responding to needs and desires on the part of children that have hitherto been largely ignored or marginalized, not least because of the social dominance of adults.

Yet, on the other hand, there is a growing number of popular publications bemoaning the apparent ‘commercialization’ of childhood. This argument seems to presume that children used to live in an essentially non-commercial world; and that their entry into the marketplace over the past several decades has had a wide range of negative consequences for their wellbeing. Commercialization is seen to cause harm to many aspects of children’s physical and mental health, as well as generating concerns about issues such as ‘sexualization’ and ‘materialism’. Such campaigning publications typically regard children not as empowered, but rather as powerless victims of commercial manipulation and exploitation.

Furthermore, as we shall see, many critics claim that a ‘consumerist’ orientation now pervades all aspects of the social world in capitalist societies, and that users of non-commercial services such as health and education are increasingly positioned (and have come to see themselves) as consumers. Yet children are also likely to be surrounded by messages about the dangers of consumerism and materialism and by exhortations to recycle or to enjoy what is ‘free’ in life, such as friendship or nature – often paradoxically purveyed by commercial media themselves.

This book seeks to refute the popular view of children as incompetent and vulnerable consumers that is espoused by many of the campaigners; but it also rejects the celebratory account of consumption as an expression of children’s power and autonomy. Rather, it aims to challenge the terms in which the social issue of children’s consumption is typically framed and understood; and in the process, to question how human agency and identity are experienced in late modern ‘consumer societies’. To see children’s role in the consumer market simply in terms of a dyadic relationship between children and marketers – whether we see that relationship as one of manipulation or of empowerment – is to oversimplify the issue.

Instead, I propose a view of children’s consumption as inextricably embedded within wider networks of social relationships; and I argue that, in modern industrial (and ‘post industrial’) societies, consumption is a domain both of constraint and control, and of choice and creativity. This approach, I suggest, takes us beyond the moralistic and sentimental views about children’s consumption that tend to dominate the public debate. It also helps us to recognize some of the ironies and complexities of contemporary consumer culture, and particularly of the more ‘interactive’ or ‘participatory’ forms that are currently emerging.

I understand ‘consumption’ in broad terms. Consumption is not just about the purchasing of goods, but also about the ways in which they are used, appropriated and adapted, both individually and collectively. It is not just about goods, but also about services – not just about what you possess, but also about what you are able to do. Studying children’s consumption means looking not only at advertising and marketing, but also at the many other ways in which commercial forces and market relations affect children’s environment and their social and cultural experiences. It is not only about toys or clothes or food, but also about media, about leisure and about education. Ultimately, it is not just about objects or commodities, but also about social meanings and pleasures.

It is for these reasons that I talk about consumer culture, and not just about consumption. The term ‘culture’ is, of course, a complex and loaded one; but for me it implies a fundamental interest in how meanings are created within a given social context, and in consumption as a means of communicating or signifying meaning. As Don Slater (1997: 8) puts it, ‘consumer culture denotes a social arrangement in which the relation between lived culture and social resources, between meaningful ways of life and the symbolic and material resources on which they depend, is mediated through markets’. From this perspective, we would need to resist the simple opposition between commerce and culture on which a great deal of discussion of this issue is premised. This is particularly true of children: as Dan Cook (2004) has argued, the relation between children and the market is frequently seen in terms of the relation between the sacred and the profane – an opposition which makes the discussion of ‘children’s consumer culture’ appear almost sacrilegious.

This emphasis on meaning and communication is not, of course, to imply that consumers are autonomous or all-powerful, or that they can make any meanings they choose: commercial producers and marketers obviously set constraints and parameters, and provide and shape the resources that make consumption possible. Social relationships construct and mediate consumer culture, yet consumer culture in turn shapes the nature and meaning of social relationships. As we shall see, this is a complex dynamic, whose consequences are often unpredictable and hard to pin down.

Even so, this is not a book about the commercialization of childhood. Commercial influences do not impinge upon or invade childhood as if from outside; nor are they an inexorable force that entirely determines children’s experiences. Rather, contemporary childhood takes place in and through market relations – as indeed it has done for centuries. Ultimately, consumption is part of the lived experience of capitalism; and children do not stand outside that, in some pure or unsullied space, even if that is what some commentators appear to imagine or wish.

The first three chapters provide the theoretical grounding for the book as a whole. Chapter 1 reviews the popular debate about children’s consumption, contrasting the rhetoric of the campaigners with that of the new wave of children’s marketers. Chapter 2 introduces theories of consumption as they have been developed largely in relation to adults, while chapter 3 looks at the various ways in which children’s consumption has been addressed in theory and research. Collectively, these chapters argue for a broader socio-cultural approach to children’s consumption that moves beyond the simple polarization introduced above.

Chapters 4 and 5 look, respectively, at the history of children’s consumption, and at the contemporary children’s market. These chapters point to some considerable continuities here, both in the strategies adopted by marketers and in the ambivalence with which they are viewed by parents and children. However, they also point to some significant shifts in the children’s market, not least with the emergence of digital marketing, and discuss some of the ethical problems they raise.

Chapters 6 and 7 provide a critical analysis of two key concerns in the recent debate about children’s consumption, namely obesity and ‘sexualization’. These chapters challenge the terms in which these issues have been framed both within the public debate and within psychological research, and counterpose some of the rhetoric with evidence from empirical studies with children themselves.

Chapters 8 and 9 explore two aspects of the social relationships in which children’s consumption occurs: namely, relationships with parents and with peers. Here again, I seek to challenge some of the terms in which these issues are understood – for example in popular labels like ‘pester power’ and ‘peer pressure’. I also seek to provide an alternative to views of children’s consumption that see it as a simple matter of cause-and-effect.

In chapters 10 and 11, the attention shifts away from consumption itself to focus on the ways in which market relations shape children’s experiences more broadly. These chapters focus on two areas – children’s television and education – that in recent years have increasingly come to be led by commercial interests and commercial models. As I suggest, these developments have had some significant, albeit ambivalent, consequences for children in particular.

Chapter 12 is a brief conclusion, which picks up a theme that serves as a running thread throughout the book, and particularly through the latter chapters: this is the issue of inequality. I argue that a consumer society tends to exacerbate some of the negative consequences of inequality; but that simply regulating the activities of marketers is unlikely to make a significant difference to the broader structures that create inequality in the first place.

This book is intended to provide an overview of a complex and diverse field; but it is also a book with a definite standpoint. It draws on a wide range of research, some of which is necessarily dealt with in a very summary form. I hope that it will stimulate further work in this area, and contribute to a more informed and productive public debate about one of the most pressing and controversial issues of our times.

1

Exploited or empowered?

Constructing the child consumer

From the moment they are born, children today are already consumers. Contemporary childhoods are lived out in a world of commercial goods and services. Marketing to children is by no means new, but children now play an increasingly important role, both as consumers in their own right and as influences on parents. They are exposed to a growing number and range of commercial messages, which extend far beyond traditional media advertising. They are surrounded by invitations and inducements to buy and to consume; and commercial forces also increasingly impact on their experiences in areas such as public broadcasting, education and play.

Consumer culture offers children a wide range of opportunities and experiences that they would not have enjoyed in earlier times. Yet, far from being welcomed or celebrated, children’s consumption has often been perceived as an urgent social problem. Politicians, religious leaders, child welfare campaigners and consumer rights groups – not to mention armies of newspaper columnists and media pundits – routinely express concern and outrage at the harmful influence of advertising and marketing on children. Such concern is not confined to a single moral or political perspective: traditional conservatives and anti-capitalist activists, feminists and religious fundamentalists, all join forces in a chorus of condemnation. Children, they argue, should be kept away from harmful commercial influences: advertising and marketing to children should be banned, and parents should seek to raise their children in a ‘commercial-free’ environment. In these debates, consumerism is often tied up with a series of other social problems. Advertising and marketing are blamed for causing obesity and eating disorders, for encouraging premature sexualization, for promoting materialistic values, and for inciting conflict within the family and the peer group. Consumerism, it would seem, is destroying the fundamental values of childhood – and, in the process, it is making children’s and parents’ lives a misery.

And yet the focus of the objections here is often far from clearly defined. ‘Junk food’ advertising, sexy underage fashion models and deceptive marketing online are all precise enough as targets. But the criticisms of consumerism and the commercial world often range much more broadly: indeed, the debate often seems to be about the wholesale destruction of childhood itself. So are we only talking about advertising and marketing here, or about the economic system as a whole? Is ‘consumption’ just about buying stuff, or about using it too? Where does ‘the commercial world’ begin and end – and where might we find a ‘non-commercial world’? Does the act of consumption inevitably involve sets of values or ideologies, such as ‘consumerism’ or ‘materialism’ – and how are these to be identified? Why are certain kinds of consumption implicitly seen to be acceptable – buying books or classical music CDs, or paying for your children to attend ballet classes – while others are not? Is the problem one of consumption, or of people having money to spend – and, if so, who defines what counts as ‘too much’?

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