Toys as tools of connection and disconnection: ethnographic perspectives on children’s consumption, inequality, and contemporary cultures of care

Abstract

Allison's Pugh's, Longing and Belonging, and Anne Allison's, Millennial Monsters, are excellent contributions to a recently growing literature on children or youth, parents, and consumption (e.g., Anagnost 2004; Chin 2001; Clarke 2007; Cook 2004, 2008, 2009; Paugh and Izquierdo 2009; Zelizer 1994; see also Allison 1991). They sound a few important notes in concert as they unpack the driving forces and sociopolitical consequences of consumption for young people in the United States and beyond, and both ethnographies provide convincing evidence against the popular assumption that consumerism is a frivolous, self-indulgent activity devoid of social import or moral value. Yet they also offer distinct perspectives on just what kinds of sociality are at stake when children and parents purchase, display, or play with sought-after commodities like Gameboys and Pokemon trading cards. For this reason, the two monographs?each of them highly compelling in its own way?are even more productive and thought provoking when read as a pair, for the contrasting and complementary scopes of their ethnographic visions help illuminate the vast terrain of social contexts that ideally are engaged by critical scholarship on consumption and the cultures of childhood. Pugh's study is based in Oakland, California, "a fairly unequal city in a nation of unequal cities" (29). The research took place at three schools: a mostly African