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The Children's Culture Reader
Examines children as creative and critical thinkers who shape society even as it shapes them
Every major political and social dispute of the twentieth century has been fought on the backs of our children, from the economic reforms of the progressive era through the social readjustments of civil rights era and on to the current explosion of anxieties about everything from the national debt to the digital revolution. Far from noncombatants whom we seek to protect from the contamination posed by adult knowledge, children form the very basis on which we fight over the nature and values of our society, and over our hopes and fears for the future.
Unfortunately, our understanding of childhood and children has not kept pace with their crucial and rapidly changing roles in our culture. Pulling together a range of different thinkers who have rethought the myths of childhood innocence, The Children's Culture Reader develops a profile of children as creative and critical thinkers who shape society even as it shapes them. Representing a range of thinking from history, psychology, anthropology, sociology, economics, women's studies, literature, and media studies, The Children's Culture Reader focuses on issues of parent-child relations, child labor, education, play, and especially the relationship of children to mass media and consumer culture. The contributors include Martha Wolfenstein, Philippe Aries, Jacqueline Rose, James Kincaid, Lynn Spigel, Valerie Walkerdine, Ellen Seiter, Annette Kuhn, Eve Sedgwick, Henry Giroux, and Nancy Scheper-Hughes.
Including a groundbreaking introduction by the editor and a sourcebook section which excerpts a range of material from popular magazines to child rearing guides from the past 75 years, The Children's Culture Reader will propel our understanding of children and childhood into the next century.
Every major political and social dispute of the twentieth century has been fought on the backs of our children, from the economic reforms of the progressive era through the social readjustments of civil rights era and on to the current explosion of anxieties about everything from the national debt to the digital revolution. Far from noncombatants whom we seek to protect from the contamination posed by adult knowledge, children form the very basis on which we fight over the nature and values of our society, and over our hopes and fears for the future.
Unfortunately, our understanding of childhood and children has not kept pace with their crucial and rapidly changing roles in our culture. Pulling together a range of different thinkers who have rethought the myths of childhood innocence, The Children's Culture Reader develops a profile of children as creative and critical thinkers who shape society even as it shapes them. Representing a range of thinking from history, psychology, anthropology, sociology, economics, women's studies, literature, and media studies, The Children's Culture Reader focuses on issues of parent-child relations, child labor, education, play, and especially the relationship of children to mass media and consumer culture. The contributors include Martha Wolfenstein, Philippe Aries, Jacqueline Rose, James Kincaid, Lynn Spigel, Valerie Walkerdine, Ellen Seiter, Annette Kuhn, Eve Sedgwick, Henry Giroux, and Nancy Scheper-Hughes.
Including a groundbreaking introduction by the editor and a sourcebook section which excerpts a range of material from popular magazines to child rearing guides from the past 75 years, The Children's Culture Reader will propel our understanding of children and childhood into the next century.
532 pages, Paperback
First published August 31, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 7, 2019
Main
HQ 767.9 C4557 1998
Intro - background lecture
Ch 1 - Aries excerpt (section on innocence)
Ch 3 - Karin Calvert, kids 1600-1900 (see whole book? chapter can suffice for historical overview)
Ch 4 - making of children's culture; industrialization and commercialization
Ch 6 - childhood and tv in postwar America; image of child constructed by TV and debates about tv & kids
ch 7 - race, media, and the classroom
Ch 9 - Nancy Scheper-Hughes, psycho-historical analysis of child maltreatment
Ch 10 - changes in child-training literature; from dangerous impulses at the turn of the 20th century, to harmless exploration by the mid 20th c., esp wrt autoerotic behavior; from discipline and modification to fun, play, exploration & a push not to "inhibit."
Ch 11 - changes in conceptions of childhood sensuality and bodily pleasure from pre- to post-war child-rearing literature; from regulating the body to exploring the body.
Ch 14 - pop culture and the eroticization of little girls
Ch 15 - Henry Giroux on child beauty pageants
Ch 16 - social contexts of consumption = see if this is from her book titled Sold Separately (pair with E. Chin's Purchasing Power?)
Ch 18 - excerpt from Barrie's Gender Play
Ch 19 - Boy culture
Ch 20 - politics of dollhood in 19th c.
Ch 25 to 41 - excerpts from 20th century child-rearing texts
HQ 767.9 C4557 1998
Intro - background lecture
Ch 1 - Aries excerpt (section on innocence)
Ch 3 - Karin Calvert, kids 1600-1900 (see whole book? chapter can suffice for historical overview)
Ch 4 - making of children's culture; industrialization and commercialization
Ch 6 - childhood and tv in postwar America; image of child constructed by TV and debates about tv & kids
ch 7 - race, media, and the classroom
Ch 9 - Nancy Scheper-Hughes, psycho-historical analysis of child maltreatment
Ch 10 - changes in child-training literature; from dangerous impulses at the turn of the 20th century, to harmless exploration by the mid 20th c., esp wrt autoerotic behavior; from discipline and modification to fun, play, exploration & a push not to "inhibit."
Ch 11 - changes in conceptions of childhood sensuality and bodily pleasure from pre- to post-war child-rearing literature; from regulating the body to exploring the body.
Ch 14 - pop culture and the eroticization of little girls
Ch 15 - Henry Giroux on child beauty pageants
Ch 16 - social contexts of consumption = see if this is from her book titled Sold Separately (pair with E. Chin's Purchasing Power?)
Ch 18 - excerpt from Barrie's Gender Play
Ch 19 - Boy culture
Ch 20 - politics of dollhood in 19th c.
Ch 25 to 41 - excerpts from 20th century child-rearing texts
April 10, 2016
Don't have many theoretical books on my page here, but through this last school year we worked through this for my Children's Culture and Literature course and it was honestly extremely interesting to read. That's not to say I agreed 100% with every essay I read in it, but even the ones I disagreed with gave me plenty to think about with this I hadn't even bothered to consider when thinking about childhood, which I'd given little thought to in the first place.
July 9, 2008
Suffers the same fate as many anthologies - there are some great essays, and some that are completely forgettable. I would have preferred to see fewer historical documents and more contemporary research.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews