Despite the overwhelming cultural output aimed at child consumers and the lasting impact of our early cultural experiences, children's popular culture is largely overlooked as a subject of serious study. Researching Children's Popular Culture: The Cultural Spaces of Childhood argues for the importance of studying children's culture.
Claudia Mitchell and Jacqueline Reid-Walsh explore a range of ethnographic and textual approaches to researching children, childhood and popular culture. Examining a variety of texts from films and television programs to dolls, toys and books, the authors address key issues including the place of children's popular culture in adult memory, the child as visual ethnographer, the child's bedroom as cultural text, children's websites, and the role of Barbie in contemporary girls' popular culture. Researching Children's Popular Culture challenges the conventions of research involving children and offers a ranger of new approaches.
Chapter 1 Political Spaces: Contexts for Researching Children's Popular Culture
Chapter 2 Memory Spaces: Exploring the Afterlife of Children's Popular Culture
Chapter 3 Visual Spaces: The Gaze of the Child
Chapter 4 Physical Spaces: Children's Bedrooms as Culture Texts
Chapter 5 Visual Spaces: Children on the Cyber Frontier
Chapter 6 Historical Spaces: Barbie Looks Back