In this article data are presented on children's appraisal of clothing retailers and brands, and how this interacts with their identity and social contexts. In exploration of some of the meanings and processes surrounding children's consumption of branded or labelled clothing, two case studies of child consumers are profiled: one who actively…

This study measures attitudes towards children's vulnerability or empowerment within consumer culture, based on data from a representative population survey (N = 1475) conducted in Estonia in 2005. The study use indices comprised of assessments of consumption practices and assertions pertaining to the "endangered vs empowered child"…

This study explores two aspects of the privatization of childhood in contemporary urban China: the emergent discourse on children's privacy and children's growing seclusion within the home. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the author describes urban caregivers' engagement with the issue of children's privacy, and argues that we are now…

Child-centred research methods present a range of opportunities for the researcher to gather rich and detailed data on many aspects of the lives of children. This article examines the experience of using such methods in the context of a study of children as consumers of clothing and fashion. Its principal concern is with the application of an…

This article locates George Herbert Meads account of self-formation in the context of global consumer capitalism, in which the "generalized other" is constructed as a desiring consumer. It argues for a sociology of consumer childhood that, via Mead, takes children's agency as a given and explores the implications of their interaction with the…

Scholars interested in the lives of children and in the social contours of childhood have remained largely inattentive to the consumer popular culture in which these lives are embedded and out of which particular versions of childhood have arisen. Consumption, and its kindred areas of media and popular culture, are arenas of social action and…

Changing schools at the age of 12 also represents a change in social age identity. Children prepare for this change of age identity in different ways, and their strategies vary across sociocultural contexts as well as between individuals. In this article, some of these strategies are explored through ethnographic observation and interviews with…

The analysis presented here focuses on the relationship between femininity, transition and consumer culture. It explores the relationship between gender and consumer culture in the context of a discussion of the transition from childhood to teenage status for a group of young girls, and seeks to make a critical contribution to contemporary debates…

Like many parents in the US, teen mothers regularly have professional portraits taken of their children. This article, based on an ethnographic study of a diverse group of teen mothers in urban California, analyzes these baby pictures as representations of childhood, motherhood and family, and as material objects used in the construction of kin…

Analyzes the cause of the massacre at Colorado's Columbine high school by other students. Considers the incident systemic of opposing tendencies, values, and motives surrounding childhood and the weakening of the power to affect one's surroundings due to the dominance of commercial culture. (JPB)