How Do You Communicate Your Cultural Identity??
When I first began working in before and after school care I instantly noticed that children from the age of 5 and up were sporting the newest Nike shoes around. My first reaction was how ridiculous are the parents, do they realise how quickly kids feet grow!?
Then I became aware that I now lived in the Eastern suburbs and these kids are attending a Catholic school, and obviously this is just the norm.. (not that I think this is normal at all). But really how desperately do these parents want their children to 'fit in' to some sort of culturally accepted group.
One day, a mother even picked her daughter up and (for no reason what so ever, no birthday nothing) informed her daughter she had bought her a Louis Vuitton handbag.. I don't even have one of these! What is going on?
But wait, I just found an article that shocks me more. In this study, children as young as 3 have become "brand-conscious" and are able to recognise what a popular brand is and what the consequences of owning or not owing, eating or not eating this brand are (Bryner, 2012). In a study children answered several questions about the brands to determine whether they actually "got" the brand and the concept of what the brand means. An example of a kids response when asked about Lego goes as follows "It's really fun and I have to have it. If I have it everyone wants to come to my house to play. If you don't have it they maybe don't like you." (Bryner, 2012).
In September The Sydney Morning Herald printed an article titled Kids these days... What childhood is like around the world. This is actually a really interesting article, very basic, just a few facts and figures comparing the children from all over the world. It compares their cultures, education systems and life expectancies.
However, what this article did conclude is that "British children are among the most brand-conscious in the world" (2013). There are apparently 7.3 BILLION pounds worth of goods in these children's bedrooms and toys have become symbols for their status in society (The Sydney Morning Herald, 2013).
So how does this "brand-conscious" culture that I have raved on about relate to education?
It's pretty simple, the pressure to conform to some sort of acceptable look/behaviour/culture is embedded in our lives and definitely the lives of children at school. Wadham, Pudsey and Boyd reiterate these social pressures. "The value of these items is largely symbolic...the item is representative of cultural authority, of social value" (2007, 8).
These brands become more than just a comfortable pair of Nike shoes (that perhaps maybe were the most appropriate fitting for the child etc etc), they're "symbolic currency" that is exchanged in the schoolyard for social status and personal identity (2007, 9). These items are often what determine the 'groups' or 'clicks' that can be found in a typical playground.
I believe the concept of "consumer culture" (Wadham, Pudsey, Boyd, 2007, 8) sums up this blog adequately, the idea that we apparently have the freedom to buy, wear, eat whatever we choose, but realistically our choices have consequences on our cultural appearance and identity.
Refernces
(Author not stated), Kids these days... What childhood is like around the world, September 24 2013, The Sydney Morning Herald
Jeanna Bryner, Even a 3-Year-Old Understands the Power of Advertising, March 9 2010, LiveScience
Wadham, B. Pudsey, J. & Boyd, R. 2007, Culture and Education, Sydney: Pearson Education, Chapter 1 What is culture?
I think the rise of consumer culture and the cultivation of identity through possessions is a really interesting and undeniably prevalent topic, and one that you've definitely observed in full-swing. The Wadham, Pudsey and Boyd reading discusses “self-creation” and the consequential need of finances to keep up with the latest items and “life-choices” (2007:3).
ReplyDeleteWhen I was little, it was all about glitter jelly shoes and these alien things that you bought in eggs. What were we, even as kids, communicating about their identity through these avenues? One answer is the amount of money our parents were willing to spend on gimmick toys like the alien egg. I can recall, similarly to the lego in the Bryner (2010) article that you mentioned, a friend with double digits worth of alien eggs, and a friend whose parents refused to buy any. The first child proudly brought them to school and showed them off, whilst the latter child was left feeling excluded – he had nothing to contribute when we were all playing with our aliens. This is one of the most common reason parents buy the Louis Vuitton bag and the Nike shoes – so that their kids are included. The second example is the glitter jelly shoes, and these suggest what the individual wants their identity to be. I can remember a friend having heeled jellies that she wore on a non-school-uniform-day. Not only were her parents willing to let her own high heeled shoes (we would have been only in year 5 or 6) – but she was allowed to wear them to school, a place of boring uniforms and Hush Puppy lace-ups, showing that she was cooler, that she looked older, and that she was more fashionable than the rest of us in our flat jelly sandals. This could be applied to the Nike shoes and the Louis Vuitton bag in the same way exercise 1.1 from Wadham, Pudsey and Boyd gets people to list an item, why it was bought and how it shapes them – using the example of a mobile phone (2007:3).
It's also said that “Consumer culture says you have the freedom to be whoever you want to be but you must choose and you must choose by buying things” (Wadham, Pudsey & Boyd, 2007:4). How is this skewed when it is not the individual child buying things, but the parents on their behalf? Whose identity is represented when this happens?
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REFERENCES
Bryner, J. (2010) Even a 3-Year-Old Understands the Power of Advertising, Retrieved from
http://www.livescience.com/6181-3-year-understands-power-advertising.html
Wadham, B. Pudsey, J. & Boyd, R. 2007, Culture and Education, Sydney: Pearson Education, Chapter 1 What is culture?