Consumer Rights Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

"""" Objectives 1. To show how child consumerism has changed over the last two generations to the extent that modern childhoods have become commercialised. 2. To show how the commercialisation of childhood has influenced play patterns... more

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Objectives
1. To show how child consumerism has changed over the last two generations to the extent that modern childhoods have become commercialised.
2. To show how the commercialisation of childhood has influenced play patterns
3. To Discuss the implications of this from the perspective of creative development

Method
THE METHODOLOGY UPON WHICH THIS PAPER IS FOUNDED IS LIFE HISTORY RESEARCH.

The study is based on four life histories of Irish Parents who together span the last fifty years of living in Ireland. The age breakdown is as follows; Mother aged 26, Mother aged 36, Mother aged 42, Father aged 52.
Life history research involves the story of a person’s life. It can be set in a particular context and can be analysed in conjunction with other documents that relate to the time period or experience in question. Bloor & Wood (2006) define Life history research as the collection and analysis of past events from eyewitness participants for the purposes of historical reconstruction. The main method of data collection was depth interviews with participants concerning their lives supported with information from documents such as letters and diaries. Other documents were also used to stimulate memory or discourse (Plummer 2001). Examples include photographs, videos, toys and newspapers.
I believe that life history research offers an in depth and detailed method of including socially contextualised qualitative living experiences within a study.

This view of the importance of including living experiences within any study of human situations is underpinned by venerable and highly respected and established social research concepts such as Phenomenology, Ethnography, Hermeneutic Sociology (Dilthey 1998) and Interpretivism (Gubrium & Holstein 1997). It also echoes Weber’s sociologically foundational material on Verstehen or Understanding.

Life history research is a powerful medium of recording a person’s experiences and thereby enriching social understanding of our collective systems. As a process, it sets the person and their story at the centre of the research and as such is a participant empowering methodology. Collecting data on how cultures, systems and policies impact on the lives of people is a very important pillar of social research. It has also proved to be a fascinating journey of discovery, opening up lived experiences in a unique and fascinating way. The insight it affords into the human experience of such cultures, systems and policies is both important and truly rewarding research.

Results
The focus of the original life history research was creative development through the Irish Education System from 1950’s Ireland to the present day. All participant’s however, spoke richly about their childhood play experiences and how they differ from that of their children’s. The common theme was that the growing influence of consumerism and marketing has impacted massively on children’s play patterns. These stories formed the basis of a thematic analysis on changing play patterns influenced by the increase of direct marketing to young children through a variety of mediums including television, cinema, branding, toys, songs and product lines.

Discussion
The commercialisation of Childhood has now become an internationally recognised phrase (Calvert, 2008). It refers to how the modern child is exposed to pressure from an early age to see themselves as consumers. It is the result of the evolution of childhood into a marketing opportunity. Children are now directly targeted not merely though advertising but also through television programmes such as Fireman Sam, Peppa Pig and Bob the Builder. These shows carry product lines that include not only normative merchandising such as cups, plates, cutlery, bedding, clothing, lunchboxes and so on but also play based merchandising such as dress up clothes, soft toys, character toys, imaginary play equipment and more. A phenomenon that started with Barbie has become increasingly pervasive to the extent that the television story lines are now being recreated during early childhood play sessions where children of previous generations created their own story lines for imaginary play. Where once they played the things they experienced such as house, doctors, school, problem solving and conflict resolution, they are now more likely to play ‘Bella Lasagne’s cat got stuck up a tree’ – A popular Fireman Sam storyline. The issue for creative development is clear. In traditional or real play, a child is using a recreation of a popular story or regular life experience to create a new learning, a new outcome, to problem solve or resolve an emotional or social issue. When recreating a marketed story the learning is inevitably more controlled. The pictures in their head are not their own. The ending of the story is strongly imprinted upon them through the visual nature of its consumption and their freedom to ‘play’ with it to achieve their own innate learning goals is compromised. This is no accident; the ‘story’ as presented is designed to sell to the infant viewer. Its patterns of emotional attachment between the child and the character are a key component in convincing the child that it ‘needs’ the associated product lines. When viewed from the perspective of the real role of play as a learning and processing vehicle for children, the commercialisation of modern play is of grave concern. The right of children to play is enshrined in the Article 44 of the UN Convention on the rights of the child. It is recognised as a learning vehicle for children; a space where they are empowered to work through the problems in their life and creatively solve those problems. Piaget highlighted the centrality of emotional processing within children’s play. Vygotsky laid emphasis on the importance of the child’s imagination in early play where they possess the ability to make a sheet a cape or a stick a doll simply by saying it is so. This intrinsic and important capacity to imagine is a central platform of creative development. It does not, however, suit toy manufacturers. How can one make money from such a concept? Educational Philosophers and play pedagogics may have united in their view of the centrality of the imagination within childhood play but the concept that a good toy is 90% child and 10% toy is the antithesis of toy manufacturing and marketing. Television, electronic games, music videos, social networking sites, the internet, magazines and mobile phones have all provided child marketing companies with the means to infiltrate children’s play. Their motivation is to maximise their opportunities to create consumers with an emotional product attachment. Their real achievement, however, could well be the alteration of thousands of years of human developmental processing with unknown results for adult capacities within creativity and related skills such as problem solving, conflict resolution, emotional processing and interpersonal capacity.
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