Abstract
David Buckingham is a very prolific and skilled author and one might well assume that, by now, he would have exhausted his special area of children and media . This is not so, for he continues to produce important and insightful work, which provides a significant balance in a public discourse which is dominated by simplistic thinking, unjustified moral alarms and self-interest. Along with other European and Southern Hemisphere scholars, he also represents a strong counter-voice to debates which tend to be dominated by North American academics and their unswerving faith in the ‘effects’ model of media interaction.
In such debates, the researched behaviour of American children is used as a template for children in all other parts of the world, with an attendant lack of attention to cultural differences and social determinants. The assumption is that what American children do with media – or what effects-based research claims they do – must be the same for children in Peru, Samoa, Nigeria or New Zealand.
Buckingham’s latest book does include detailed information on children and their media use, as in Chapter 10: ‘Screening the market: The case of children’s television’, but it is set in a much broader context than many similar books, in terms of content, the diversity of research and theoretical frameworks. It has its origins in policy research for the Gordon Brown-led Labour government which has now been overtaken by events but this has meant not so much a cutting of losses (delivering research to a new and largely disinterested Conservative Coalition) as an extension of the research brief, in that he has been able to incorporate such research into a book with much wider potential readership.
Nevertheless, this book is not likely to please those who already have entrenched views regarding children and consumption in contemporary society for it takes both dominant camps to task: those who portray children as incompetent and vulnerable (the ‘innocence of childhood’ camp), and those who celebrate child empowerment and independence (the ‘media-savvy child’ camp). The author steers a middle ground between these extremes, finding fault and revealing the flaws in both arguments, especially where exaggerated or unjustified claims prevail (such as a blind belief in a free market economy, or over-sentimental versions of childhood). In a most readable fashion, it reveals the yawning gaps between symptom and cause, and correlation and causality.
But this involves considerable work in moving the reader past superficially appealing either/or choices, and means that strong and convincing counter-arguments need to be developed and sustained through the whole book. Buckingham has achieved this, as well as writing a book with a definite standpoint, informed by a social constructionist theoretical framework. He acknowledges the impossibility of living in a world where consumption does not exist, and where we all inhabit a market economy which is dependent upon our continuing consumption. We are all implicated in this but it is too easy to assign blame to a single cause – such as to greedy marketers or lax parents or demanding children or the media themselves.
Instead, we need to move beyond such dichotomous thinking, to embrace complexity in respect of our children’s consumption and our own consumption. What is particularly valuable about this book is that it addresses the various anxieties and misunderstandings which plague parents (middle-class parents, in particular) about issues concerning consumption. As Buckingham comments, ‘adults seem increasingly uncertain about what they want to protect children from’ (p. 74). Anxieties arise for parents when daughters first discover Barbie or when sons yearn after the latest film-spinoff toy. Those who have been through the process can nod sagely (my son was able to rattle off all the names of the 150 plus Pokemon characters) for we have already experienced the accommodations and compromises which are needed to keep the peace, but new parents need reassurance.
Yet Buckingham is not necessarily on the side of the market for he provides incisive analysis of the intrusion of commercialization into other areas of children’s lives – into formal education and other spheres which receive much less attention or criticism because they fit more easily with free market ideology. So, this is an important book and one which should be widely read – not just by academics but by educators, policy-makers, politicians and parents. It could be the beginnings of a move beyond a stale and stalled debate, where discussion is dominated by the twin trajectories of the vulnerable vs the autonomous child.
In the few weeks I have been reading this book I received notices for an Australian conference on ‘The Corporate Takeover of Childhood: Who’s Paying the Price?’ and a UK conference on ‘Childhood and the Media: Images, Rights and Responsibilities’. For all the talk which will happen at such events and declarations which might evolve, I think that reading Buckingham’s book might be a better way forward. I have only one minor quibble in that I would have liked a little more discussion about the environmental costs of excessive consumption (all those billions of abandoned Happy Meal toys littering the planet) but this book is a very satisfying read, and highly recommended.
As might be expected, given his long involvement in education, Buckingham points to media education as possibly the most effective strategy for understanding the complexity of consumption, in that it enables children to become critical consumers without discounting ‘the non-rational, expressive and symbolic aspects of consumption’ in the lives of young people