Abstract
As Daston (2004) highlights, things and objects offer a fascinating entry point to studying “up close” the everyday world, in a way that is not blurry and diffuse, but clear, sharp and in focus. As scholars from such diverse backgrounds as media and technology (Turkle 2007), science in the case of Daston, anthropology (Miller, 1998; Brown, 1998; 2004), and most recently Joshua Glenn and Carol Hayes (2007) in Taking Things Seriously, have highlighted, the analysis of material objects offers the possibility of theorizing abstract concepts in a grounded manner. While the idea of childhood objects, particularly those associated with play and consumption, has found its way into the study of children’s popular culture (see for example the work of Fleming, 1996), it has not figured as prominently in the study of material culture as one might expect, despite the obvious significance of children’s consumption of objects and things in their play. Concomitantly, the study of children’s playthings is often absent within visual studies.
Imagine a world without things. It would be not so much an empty world as a blurry, frictionless one: no sharp outlines would separate one part of the uniform plenum from another; there would be no resistance against which to stub a toe or test a theory or struggle stalwartly. Nor would there be anything to describe, or to explain, remark on, interpret, or complain about — just a kind of porridgy oneness. Without things, we would stop talking. (Daston, 2004: 9)
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Barthes, R. (1982) Camera Lucida. London: Vintage Classics.
Brown, B. (ed.) (2004) Things. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Brown, B. (1998) “How to do things with things”, Critical Inquiry. 24, 935–64.
Buchli, V. and G. Lucas (2000) “Children, gender and the material culture of domestic abandonment in the late 20th century”. In J. S Derevenski (ed.), Children’s Material Culture (pp. 131–8). London: Routledge.
Chalfen, R. (1991) Turning Leaves: The Photographic Collections of Two Japanese American Families. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.
Christian-Smith, L. (1990) Becoming a Woman Through Romance. New York: Routledge.
Citron, M. (1999). Home Movies and Other Necessary Fictions. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Crawford, J., S. Kippax, Onyx, J., Gault, U. and P. Benton, (1992) Emotion and Gender: Constructing Meaning from Memory. London: Sage.
Daston, L. (2004) Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science. New York: Zone Books.
Edwards, E. and J. Hart (eds) (2004) Photographs Objects Histories: On the Materiality of Images. London: Routledge.
Feld, S. and D. Brenneis (2004) “Doing anthropology in sound”. American Ethnologist, 31:4.
Friedman, A. and R. Haddad (1995) Maisons de reve, maisons jouets/Dream houses, toy homes. Montreal: Canadian Centre for Architecture.
Fleming, D. (1996) Powerplay: Toys as Popular Culture. New York: Manchester University Press.
Glenn, J. and C. Hayes (2007) Taking Things Seriously: 75 Objects with Unexpected Significance. Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press.
Hampl, P. (1996) ‘Memory and imagination’. In J. McConkey (ed.), The Anatomy of Memory: An Anthology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Haug, F., S. Andresen, A. Bunz-Elfferding, K. Hauser, U. Lang, M. Laudan, M. Ludemann and U. Meir (1987) Female Sexualization. A Collective Work of Memory. London: Verso.
Hodder, I. (2003) “The interpretation of documents and material culture”, in N. Denzin and Y. Lincoln (eds), Collecting and interpreting qualitative materials (pp. 155–75). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Huyssen, A. (2003) Present Pasts: Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Kirkham, P. (ed.) (1996) The Gendered Object. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Kuhn, A. (1995) Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination. London and New York: Verso.
Langford, M. (2001) Suspended Conversations. Montreal: McGill-Queens Press
Miller, D. (1998) Material Culture: Why Some Things Matter. London: UCL Press.
Mitchell, C. and J. Reid-Walsh (2005) “And I Want To Thank You Barbie: Barbie as a Site of Cultural Interrogation”. The Review of Education/Pedagogy/Cultural Studies, 17(2), pp. 143–56.
Mitchell, C. and J. Reid-Walsh (1998) “Mail-order memory work: Towards a methodolog of uncovering the experiences of covering over”, Review of Education/Pedagogy/Cultural Studies. 20(1), 57–75.
Mitchell, C. and Weber, S. (1999) Reinventing Ourselves as Teachers: Beyond Nostalgia. London and New York: Falmer.
Mitchell, C. and J. Reid-Walsh (2005) “Seven Going on Seventeen: Tween Studies in the Culture of Girlhood. New York: Peter Lang.
Mitchell, C. and J. Reid-Walsh (2007) Girl Culture: An Encyclopedia. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.
Mitchell, C. and J. Reid-Walsh (2002) Researching Children’s Popular Culture: Childhood as a Cultural Space. London and New York: Routledge/Taylor Francis.
Paley, N. (1995) Finding Art’s Place: Experiments in Contemporary Education and Culture. New York: Routledge.
Park, E., Mitchell, C. and N. De Lange (2007) “Working with digital archives: Photovoice and meta-analysis in the context of HIV & AIDS”. In N. De Lange, C. Mitchell and J. Stuart (eds), Putting People in the Picture: Visual Methodologies for Social Change. Amsterdam: Sense. (pp. 131–40).
Pink, S. (2004) Home Truths: Gender, Domestic Objects and Everyday Life. New York: Berg.
Pithouse, K. and C. Mitchell (2007) “Looking into change: Studying participant engagement in photovoice projects”. In N. De Lange, C. Mitchell, & J. Stuart (eds), Putting People in the Picture: Visual Methodologies for Social Change (pp. 25–48). Amsterdam: Sense.
Reid-Walsh, J. and Mitchell, C. (2004) “Girls’ web sites-a virtual ‘room of one’s own”. In A. Harris (ed.), All About the Girl: Culture, Power and Identity (pp. 173–82). New York and London: Routledge.
Reid-Walsh, J. and C. Mitchell (in press) “Doll-play: A study of Canadian girlhood”. In L. Learner (ed.), Depicting Canadian Childhood. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
Rice, T. (2003) “Soundselves: an accoustemology of sound and self in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary”. Anthropology Today 19(4), 4–9
Riggins, S. H. (1994) “Fieldwork in the living room: an autoethnographic essay” In The Socialness of Things: Essays on the Socio-semiotics of Objects. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyer.
Sofaer, J. (2002) “Disinter/est: Digging up our childhood. Performance research”. Vol. 1 Spring. www.joshuasofaer.com/texts/write_dduoc.html (retrieved 24 April 2009).
Sofaer, J. and J. Sofaer (2008) “Disinterest, digging up childhood, authenticity, ambiguity and failure in the autobiography of the infant self”. In D. Arnold and J. Sofaer (eds), Biographies and Space: Placing the Subject in Art and Architecture (pp 169–93). London: Routledge.
Spence, J. (1994) Cultural Sniping: The Art of Transgression. London: Routledge.
Stald, G. (2007) “Mobile identity: Youth, identity, and mobile communication media”. In D. Buckingham (ed.), Youth, Identity, and Digital Media (pp. 143–64). Cambridge: MIT Press.
Turkle, S. (ed.) (2007) Evocative Objects: Things We Think With. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Warner, M. (2004) Introduction. In Haworth-Booth, M. (ed.), Things: A Spectrum of Photography 1850–2001. London: Jonathan Cape in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Weber, S. and C. Mitchell (eds) (2004) Not Just Any Dress: Narratives of Memory, Body and Identity. New York: Peter Lang.
Weber, S and J. Weber (2007) “Technology in the everyday lives of ‘tweens’”. In S. Weber and S. Dixon (eds), Growing Up Online: Young People and Digital Technologies (pp. 49–66). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Weber, S. and C. Mitchell (2007) “Imaging, keyboarding, and posting identities: Young people and new media technologies”. In David Buckingham (ed.), Youth, Identity, and Digital Media (pp. 25–48). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2010 Claudia Mitchell
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Mitchell, C. (2010). Researching Things, Objects and Gendered Consumption in Childhood Studies. In: Buckingham, D., Tingstad, V. (eds) Childhood and Consumer Culture. Studies in Childhood and Youth. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230281844_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230281844_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-30978-8
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-28184-4
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social Sciences CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)