Learning to consume—consuming to learn: children at the interface between consumption and education

Abstract

The market as educator has become firmly lodged at the centre of popular and scholarly debate commenting on the nexus between children, consumption and education/learning. In this paper, I appreciate this scholarly debate from the point of view of the sociology of consumption. The latter has been relatively silent on children’s consumption and education, focusing instead on adult learning. Nevertheless, I here draw on that sociology to forward an argument that favours consideration of a broader range of social relationships and cultural and contextual influences. I outline two models on the network of relationships that inform children’s consumption, and illustrate, through a discussion of Chin’s Purchasing Power, how children’s consumption‐related learning may originate from outside the market. The paper finishes with a plea for more research that focuses on children and the domestic contexts of consumption.

Acknowledgements

Thanks go to Dr Dale Southerton and Professor Sue Scott for past and ongoing discussions on children’s consumption. An early version of this paper was presented at the ESRC seminar series ‘Reconfiguring the Sociology of Education’, held at the University of Bristol, 6 December 2003. The author would like to thank the organisers for their invitation and stimulating writing of this paper, and the participants for their perceptive questioning and commentary. The author would like to thank Professor Rosemary Deem in particular for kindly commenting on a developing version of this paper.

Notes

* School of Applied Social Sciences, University of Durham, 32 Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HN, UK. Email: [email protected]

1. See Warde (1994) for a critical appraisal of this literature.

2. For a developed criticism of what Featherstone (1991) has called the ‘production of consumption’ approach and how it pertains to children’s consumption, see Martens et al. (2004).

3. Clarkes is a UK shoe manufacturer and retailer known for its ‘quality’ children’s shoes.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lydia Martens*

* School of Applied Social Sciences, University of Durham, 32 Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HN, UK. Email: [email protected]