This is another lecture from my awesome summer course on Pokemon--that is, global cultural flows, using Japanese popular culture as our case study.

1. Children’s
Consumption
ATH 390Z Pokemon: Local
& Global Cultures
Mark Allen Peterson, PhD

2. 1
Childhood
as cultural
category
Children’s Consumption

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 2
Consumption
as cultural
practice
Children’s Consumption

9. 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

10. 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.

11. What kind of consumer goods
are “children’s goods”?
And why?
Photo: Dan Dickinson creative commons

12. What kind of children’s goods
are for girls?
Or boys?
Photo: Courtney Lynch creative commons

13. What kind of goods are right
for what ages?
And backgrounds?
Photo: Bizmac creative commons

14. Who is supposed to give what
kind of gifts?
In what circumstances?
Photo: Gwen Harlow creative commons

15. What kinds of play are
appropriate?
When, and for whom?
Photo: HeathBarcreative commons

16. 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

17. 3
Theories of
Childhood
Consumption
Children’s Consumption

18. Imagining Childhood
TIME
SPACE

19. Every society has theories about what children
are and how they should be treated in order to
become healthy members of their society

20. Theories of Child Consumption
The
Corrupted
Child
The
Empowered
Child

21. The Corrupted Child

22. 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.

23. The Empowered Child

24. 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.

25. 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.

26. 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.

27. 4
Analyzing
Childhood
Consumption
Children’s Consumption

29. 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?

30. 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?

31. 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?

32. 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?

33. 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?

34. 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.