Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2006, Page 74

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CONSTRUCTING IDENTITIES IN CHILDREN’S CULTURE OF CONSUMPTION
speaking these can be categorised into two
types of discourses: on one hand children
are viewed as power/w/, fickle and savvy
consumers and on the other hand as power-
less victims who are manipulated and mis-
led. However, such evasions fail to recog-
nize that life today, for adults and children
alike, is always already inextricably em-
bedded in consumption. Therefore, although
consumption may not wholly define children
it powerfully frames their everyday lives
(Humphrey, 1998) and consequently, to ig-
nore this ubiquitous aspect of childhood
presents significant gaps in our understand-
ing of children as consumers.
This paper argues that such inconsisten-
cies in academic knowledge, public debates
and general opinion are mainly centred on
one explanation: research and academic dis-
course in this field is grounded in funda-
mentally adult-centric ideas of what it
means to be a child consumer. Adult-cen-
trism means that children and childhood
have been researched and interpreted
through adult frameworks applying adult
concerns without attempting to gain ade-
quate insight into the meanings that children
themselves attribute to consumption.
Consumption and everyday life of
children
Prior to defining children’s cultures of con-
sumption it is worth briefly examining the
key concepts of this paper. The term culture
is endlessly complex, however, for the pur-
pose of this paper it refers to micro culture
i.e. child to child/adult relations. Drawing
on a range of definitions culture is here un-
derstood to be the values, activities, habits
and concerns through which people inter-
pret and construct their worlds. Consump-
tion as another key concept includes the
processes through which consumer goods
and services are created, produced, pur-
chascd and used (McCracken, 1988). Thus
consumption is seen as a wide-ranging prac-
tice reaching beyond the actual use of a
product. In this sense social processes are
present in consumption and vice versa
(Solomon, 1983); consequently, culture and
consumption are inextricably linked. On the
basis of these key concepts, children’s cul-
tures of consumption are defined as: The
processes hy which the values, behaviour,
concerns and attitudes, that children pro-
duce and share with others, are constructed
through consumption.
Nevertheless, children’s cultures of con-
sumption are not understood as something
which exist independently of adult culture.
Rather cultures are non-static, non-fíxed dy-
namic entities which overlap and are inter-
linked. Yet, there is something particularly
interesting about what goes on in children’s
peer groups - as we shall see throughout this
paper. However, at the same time it is clear
that children’s lives are firmly embedded in
social structures. Therefore, the question is
not only what role consumption plays in
children’s everyday interactions with others
but also how children negotiate meanings
within the given structures that are a reality
of their own lives.
To date, most research with children has
been grounded in the scicntific consumer so-
cialization framework. Scientifíc consumer
socialization is the process by which chil-
dren lcarn, develop and acquire consumcr