ABSTRACT
The moral dimension of marketing to children is a hotly debated subject as witnessed by a recent flurry of best-selling titles such as Toxic Childhood (Palmer 2006), The Commercialisation of Childhood (Compass 2006) and Born to Buy (Schor 2004). In line with a rich academic literature on the consumer socialisation of children (see Roedder John 1999 for a 25-year review), the “moral” focus of such work tends to be on the ethical implications of engaging with children as a specific market segment. In contrast, this article explores the more subtle and complex roles that consumption culture may play in the moral development of children themselves, an area that has received far less attention. We take as our point of departure Cook’s (2004: 148) observation that the “conceptual and analytical import” of children’s consumer culture has tended to be overshadowed by (the quite justifiable) moral solicitude focused on fighting against aggressive marketing to children. We build specifically on his view that “children’s involvement with the materials, media, images and meanings that arise from, refer to and are entangled with the world of commerce figures centrally in the making of persons and of moral positions in contemporary life” (Cook 2004: 149).
