This Little Kiddy Went to Market: The Corporate Capture of Childhood - Hardcover

Beder, Sharon; Varney, Wendy; Gosden, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0745329160 ISBN 13: 9780745329161

Publisher: Pluto Press, 2009

Synopsis

This book investigates the way that corporations are strategically shaping children to be under-aged hyperconsumers as well as the submissive employees and uncritical citizens of the future.

Sharon Beder shows how marketers and advertisers are targeting ever younger children in a relentless campaign, transforming children's play into a commercial opportunity and taking advantage of childish anxieties. 

Beder investigates the corporate relations and ideals that infiltrate every aspect of our lives. She presents an alarming picture of how a child's social development -- through education, health care and nutrition -- has become an ordered conveyor belt of consumerist conditioning. Focusing on education in particular, Beder explains how businesses are taking control of more and more aspects of schooling, not only for profit but to erode state schooling and promote business values. Similarly, she shows how 'difficult' children are taught from an early age that pharmaceuticals can be used to discipline them or to make them 'happy'.

About this title

About the Author

Sharon Beder is a visiting professor in the School of Social Sciences, Media and Communication at the University of Wollongong. She is considered a leading authority on corporate and environmental issues, for which she has won a number of awards. She is the author of nine other books, including Free Market Missionaries: The Corporate Manipulation of Community Values (2006), Power Play: The Fight for Control of the World's Electricity (2003), Selling the Work Ethic: From Puritan Pulpit to Corporate PR (2000) and Global Spin: The Corporate Assault on Environmentalism (1997; 2nd ed. 2002).

Dr Wendy Varney is an honorary fellow at the University of New South Wales.

Dr Richard Gosden is a full time writer and researcher based in Australia. He is the author of Punishing the Patient: How Psychiatrists Misunderstand and Mistreat Schizophrenia (2001)

Review

'Beder's analysis is comprehensive, steely and clinical' - Harold Pinter 'Outstanding ... This is such an important book that I would put it on every school curriculum' - John Pilger 'A chilling assessment of modern commercial culture and how it distorts childhood, corrupts civic institutions, and endangers the planet' - Alex Molnar, Arizona State University

About this edition

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0745329160
• ISBN 13: 9780745329161
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320