Exchange Value as Pedagogy in Children's Leisure: Moral Panics in Children's Culture at Century's End

Abstract

This article examines the relatively recent emergence of a new ethos of acquisition for acquisition's sake in the practices of collecting and trading cards and plush toys purportedly manufactured for children. I analyze public debates surrounding three fads in children's popular culture in the late 1990s: sports "chase" cards, Beanie Baby plush toys and Pokemon trading cards. These crazes take the form of moral panics whereby sacred values are said to be threatened by the trading of these goods because of what they teach. That is, "appropriate" play and use of these goods constitutes an exercise in particular modes of seeing and relating to and in the world.

Data Mining the Kids: Surveillance and Market Research Strategies in Children’s Online Games

“…Cases were selected based on rankings measuring the online destinations most frequented by "children" (aged 2-12 years) and the more general category of "youth" (users under 18 years), as reported by Internet audience-research firms Nielsen/Netratings (2002) and Hitwise (Greenspan, 2003). Not surprisingly, the case-study findings support previous work by Kapur (1999), Montgomery (2000), and Cook (2001), among others, who identify the Internet as the site of an increasing amalgamation between children's culture and marketing initiatives. Almost all of the children's sites analyzed incorporated advertisements and market-research strategies into child-oriented games and entertainmentdriven content.…”

“…Popular children's websites increasingly are characterized by the substantive role played by marketing research in the development and maintenance of online activities and communities that are directed toward gathering user information and transmitting advertising messages. As barriers to accessibility and participation dissolve, distinctions between private and public space conventionally used to define and delineate childhood have also disintegrated (Cook, 2001). New media and other digital technologies-together with the forces of global capitalism-have made childhood not only "inseparable from media use," but also intimately tied to emerging forms of media and audience surveillance (Cook, 2001, p.82).…”

Social networking and digital gaming media convergence: Classification and its consequences for appropriation

“…Moreover, both classes of these technologies have into the lives of people in their homes and society. As Cook (2001) suggests, people cannot be insulated and protected from 'the outside'. They probably never could have been.…”

“…Even more dramatically, a 14 year old boy ran over his school mate on his bike and stole 150 of his cards (Cook 2001). Some saw this situation as unethical and filed lawsuits against the manufacturers; others lauded the 'real world' lessons learned from it.…”

“…Childhood leisure activities have long been known to be fraught with fighting and other such pursuits deemed harmful (Avedon and Sutton-Smith 1971;Fine 1987 assault, bamboozlement, gambling addiction and greed surrounding these goods were rife throughout the media during this period (Cook 2001). This was fuelled by the production of limited quantities of particular cards or Beanie Babies (some Beanie Babies were also 'retired').…”