Current societal and sociocultural changes

The question is raised as to the societal framework in which a repositioning of children as cultural players is taking place. In current debates, contem-porary culture is sometimes defined as consumer culture (compare, among others, Featherstone, 1991; Slater, 1997). The concept of consumer culture is bound up, above all, with the assumption that characteristic social prac-tices and cultural values, ideas, strivings and identities relate more to con-sumption than to the world of work. There are different ways of reading the genesis and establishment of consumer culture. I will confine myself to a few general remarks on the latest changes, whereby I would like to relate these to the social theory debate on societal transformations. That debate shows agreement among a number of sociologists that a new society is in the making. Manuel Castells, who has produced the most detailed analysis of this new process to date, has specified a set of conditions that must be met before it can make sense to speak of a new society. According to his line of argument, a new society comes into being when a structural transforma-tion can be identified beyond doubt in respect of productransforma-tion, power and Complex Interconnections 27 1403_939330_03_cha02.qxd 6/30/2005 8:20 AM Page 27

experience (Castells, 1998, p. 34). He dates the origins of the new societal formation that he diagnoses and calls the ‘network society’ to the period between the late 1960s and the mid-1970s.

The term ‘post-Fordism’ is often used to characterize the economically rel-evant change during the current period. Broadly speaking, post-Fordism stands for a transition from the mass, conveyer-belt production (of the Fordist era) to a flexible and decentralized organization of work that enabled further technological development. The characteristic features of post-Fordist relations include greater emphasis on ‘choice’, product differentia-tion, marketing and design, as well as the construction of consumer groups based on taste and lifestyle criteria. Post-Fordism is also bound up with important changes in international economies. Particularly relevant in this connection are the growth of transnational corporations, the international-ization of labour and financial markets, and the large-scale use of new infor-mation and communications technologies.

The post-Fordist paradigm is a controversial one. It is accused, in partic-ular, of economic reductionism, which representatives of the cultural studies school refute with the argument that post-Fordism can equally be used to describe both cultural and economic change. Their interpretation of change implies culturalization, an upward revaluation of the cultural. They no longer view culture as mere superstructure, as a a reflection of other – eco-nomic and political – processes, but as something that is just as constitutive for the social world as economic and political factors. They place special emphasis on the cultural loading of production processes and the world of commodities (compare, among others, Slater, 1997). Under post-Fordist con-ditions, ‘cultural technologies’ (computers and periphery devices, tele-phones and so on), ‘cultural goods’ (games, toys, audiovisual media, sports equipment and so on) and many services are increasingly acquiring a barter value.

Growing dependence on consumption is a push factor driving the efforts of capital to expand existing markets and to create and develop new markets.

This means the exportation of consumer capitalism to many third world regions, the commercialization of body, soul and identity by markets for sport, cosmetics and fashion, and the construction of a children’s market of enormous scope and volume. In many (cultural) sociological writings, as a result of these trends, consumption is being seen as a factor that shapes lifestyles in the western world to a decisive extent. Continuing from Raymond Williams’s definition of culture as a ‘way of life’, sociologist Steven Miles speaks of consumerism (although without explicit reference to Williams) as a contemporary ‘way of life’ (Miles, 1998). Difficulties in adapt-ing to these new circumstances are partly due to the fact that the ‘con-sumerism as a way of life’ diagnosis means the abandonment of any notion of a consumer sphere that can be clearly demarcated from other phenom-ena and processes. In particular, the trend cannot be comprehended in terms 28 Studies in Modern Childhood

1403_939330_03_cha02.qxd 6/30/2005 8:20 AM Page 28

of zero-sum games. It is rather the case that increase in market value is accompanied by, or runs parallel to the culturalization of products on offer.

Consumerism, in the sense used by Miles, is a thoroughly cultural phe-nomenon. This makes it all the more difficult to identify the consumer.

Using a typology generated by Gabriel and Lang, the consumer is identifi-able in everyday discourses – those of academics and those of consumer organizations – as a voter, a communicator, a researcher, an identity-seeker, a hedonist or artist, as a victim, rebel and citizen (Gabriel and Lang, 1995).

There is no reason why children, as contemporary consumers, should not be conceived of in equally diversified forms. Consumption has become second nature to children in today’s world. The list of buzzwords in support of that proposition extends from computers, fast food, bank accounts and mobile phones, to odd jobs, consumer boycotts, branded clothes, media, merchandising, fashion, separation of waste, surfing on the web, package holidays, shopping, toys, sports gear and equipment, from pocket money to consumer protection centres and advertising. Children of the present are buyers, multipliers, (sometimes) shareholders, very often savers and some-times debtors. Beyond those roles, they are also addressees of many services – including those of banks and insurance companies. They are involved in a broad diversity of discourses pertaining to these objects, activities and memberships. And they appear more and more often on very different social stages. Their actions can no longer be allocated straightforwardly to the pro-duction and consumption side. Today, children’s careers as consumers begin as early as babyhood, through contact with parts of an expanded range of media products.

For a couple of decades, the research activities and market strategies of the major corporations have primarily been aimed at making children (as con-sumers) increasingly independent of their parents and other adults. The dominant two-pronged strategy involves deliberately addressing children as non-adults, while at the same time labelling products and services as belong-ing outside childhood norms and structures, relatbelong-ing neither to school nor to education (see Hengst, 1996 and 2001). In other words, the media and consumer goods industries pitch their advertising at a non-hierarchical dif-ference between children and adults. This is a decisive aspect of the cultural release of children, which can be observed around the world today.

In the image of childhood entertained by the increasingly reflective indus-tries, the not-yet-adults are replaced by cultural actors whose games, enjoy-ments and wishes are taken seriously. Through what they stage for young people, the industries in question explore and mobilize the cultural and social capital with which children operate in the less educationally-focused zones of their everyday lives. Of decisive importance in this respect is the dissolution of traditional boundaries. Major proportions of these globalized cultural offerings are appropriated transversely to conventional genre dis-tinctions, and in contexts that are not aligned with the systems of order in Complex Interconnections 29 1403_939330_03_cha02.qxd 6/30/2005 8:20 AM Page 29

the industrial ‘labour society’ (Hengst, 2001). Another aspect that becomes evident – precisely here – is how little dualistic concepts can help one to understand what is actually going on (given the complex connectivity at work).

What can be observed, as far as the activities of those who engineer the market is concerned, is a dual strategy of adaptation to globalization and individualization processes. That strategy is aimed at segmentation and micromarketing, while also focusing on constant factors and on new com-monalities when marketing to target groups. This leads to children’s and youth culture(s) being increasingly dissociated from national and socio-economic structures, to a differentiation of tastes, preferences and practices within a society which at the same time spreads across national and cultural boundaries.

Since the early 1990s, terms such as ‘global generation’, ‘global teenager’

and ‘global child’ have provided a clear indication of the framework within which these shared, common features are being increasingly thought and constructed. The target group of all efforts on the part of those who make the market is a doubly extended peer group. One extension relates to the age span (including its reinterpretation as a youth lifestyle or indeed as youth’s attitudes and opinions), the other to the distribution of that peer group over the entire planet.

Globalization and (re)localization – three examples

In the second part of my chapter, I should like to discuss, with three ex-amples, how children interact with globalization processes. I use the term globalization in the sense applied in recent research approaches that always include attempts at relocalization as well. These are dimensioned in very dif-ferent ways. I would like to give at least some consideration to the latter aspects. It should go without saying nowadays that interactions with cul-tural options are always acts of hermeneutic appropriation. In the context of globalization, that (also) implies resisting the temptations of a totalizing critique of capitalism, and that caution must be exercised when dealing with ideas such as convergence, standardization and cultural imperialism.