ABSTRACT
In this chapter I will be drawing on ideas and concepts drawn from deconstruction and poststructuralist theory to interrogate some of the meanings and investments of contemporary childhood. The analysis will be focused on a particular corpus of texts, namely images of children in charity appeals, as expressing key aspects of the contemporary cultural-political organisation of childhood. The theoretical and methodological approach I use here is a form of discourse analysis, where key categories are treated as indices or symptoms of particular histories and relationships (Burman and Parker 1993; Parker 1992). I use the term ‘text’ here to include both images and the written commentary accompanying them, and treat these as a window into the tissue of meanings they reflect and mobilise. As Goffman (1979) pointed out, material produced for advertising, albeit in this case charitable advertising, provides a rich source of culturally available meanings precisely by virtue of its elliptical and idealised nature.
