D T Cook
Biographic Data
| ID | 7837 |
|---|---|
| NAME | D T Cook |
| GIVEN NAMES | D T |
| FAMILY NAME | Cook |
| SIGNATURE | COOK D T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7479-1712 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 196 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 35 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Image aforethought: In pursuit of a liquid, ambient photography in the subjunctive mood
Vernacular Faith: Community, Heritage, Transition
This photographic essay sets out to represent a sense of place-making in several North Philadelphia neighborhoods, predominately inhabited by African Americans, focusing on the built environment of small houses of worship. In brick and mortar, sheetrock and aluminum, wood and plaster, generations of residents have forged living chambers of significance out of inanimate materials by repurposing storefronts and homes. These edifices give a grounded…
The wages of constructivism
The mire of its own construction? Childhood studies and the “crisis” at the Mexico-U.S. border
Children's market researchers as moral brokers
Drawing on interviews with children’s market researchers, brand managers and other market actors in North America, the UK and Europe, this study analyzes and positions children’s market professionals as knowledge brokers and moral interlocutors who transact between and among clients, colleagues and, at times, parents. The transactions – as understood by practitioners – extend beyond simply seeking to elicit ‘preferences’ for this or that product …
This ‘kind of thing: Twenty-five years of Childhood and counting
Past, present and futures of childhood studies: A conversation with former editors of Childhood
Knowledge of childhood: Materiality, text, and the history of science – an interdisciplinary round table discussion
This round table discussion takes the diversity of discourse and practice shaping modern knowledge about childhood as an opportunity to engage with recent historiographical approaches in the history of science. It draws attention to symmetries and references among scientific, material, literary and artistic cultures and their respective forms of knowledge. The five participating scholars come from various fields in the humanities and social scien…
Consumer Culture, Children's
Children's consumer culture refers to the institutional, material, and symbolic arrangements which organize a young person's involvement in, and movement through, the early life course in terms of commercial interests and values. Children are both subject to and arise as subjects in consumer contexts. The meanings which adhere to commercial goods are at once imposed on children, childhood, and children's social worlds and are taken up by children…
Consumption, Urban/City as Consumerspace
The term “urban consumption” describes how the meanings of goods and commercially oriented experiences intermingle with space, place, and social identity in ways that have been made possible by metropolitan life and are thereby specific to it. Urban consumption refers not just to purchases that occur within the confines of a city, as opposed to a suburb, town, or rural area. Rather, there is a character peculiar to the contexts of consumption tha…
Childhood as a moral project
Disrupting play: A cautionary note
Children as Consumers
A politics of becoming: When 'child' is not enough
Introduction: Specifying mothers/motherhoods
The place of mothers and motherhoods in commercial life represents one of the great under-told stories of consumer culture. At once revered and despised as leisure shoppers, women nevertheless have borne the brunt of the labor of consumption for the household and thus have garnered the attention of advertisers and marketers since at least the early decades of the 20th century. During these formative years, the ‘mother’, as conceptual persona, can…
Taking exception with the child consumer
Children's Consumption in History
The academic study of children as consumers took root in the 1960s and did not begin in earnest until the 1970s, when the paradigm of ‘consumer socialization’ took hold among psychologically oriented business scholars. In the 1980s, some discussion of the history of children's consumption and popular culture began to appear in edited volumes and journal articles, with full treatments of some aspects of that history coming into view in the 1990s. …
The promise of an unanswered question: Multi-/cross-disciplinary struggles
The promise of an unanswered question: multi-/cross-disciplinary struggles." Children's Geographies, 8(2), pp. 221–222
Semantic Provisioning of Children's Food: Commerce, care and maternal practice
Drawing upon in-depth interviews with mothers in the US about feeding their young children, this article examines how consumer culture - broadly construed - constitutes part of the indispensable context of mothering practices. The argument put forward is that mothers not only provide food and sustenance for their children, but necessarily encounter, engage with and make use of commercial meanings of foodstuffs as part and parcel of the caring wor…
The Missing Child in Consumption Theory
Children are essentially invisible in theories of consumer society and culture, despite their presence and centrality in everyday life. In this article, I argue that children and childhood, and thus mothers and motherhood, must be acknowledged and investigated as constitutive of - rather than derivative of or exceptional to - commercial, consumer culture generally. The focus here is not on how to better accommodate children and childhood (and mot…
Consumer Culture, Children's
Children's consumer culture refers to the institutional, material, and symbolic arrangements which organize a young person's involvement in, and movement through, the early life course in terms of commercial interests and values. Children are both subject to and arise as subjects in consumer contexts. The meanings which adhere to commercial goods are at once imposed upon children, childhood, and their social worlds and are taken up by children as…
The Dichotomous Child in and of Commercial Culture
The Commodification of Childhood: The Children’s Clothing Industry and the Rise of the Child Consumer
Betwixt and be Tween: Age Ambiguity and the Sexualization of the Female Consuming Subject
In this article, we argue that what is now known as the ‘tween’ cannot be understood apart from its inception in, and articulation with, the market exigencies of childhood - specifically girlhood - as they have emerged since the Second World War. Drawing upon trade discourses from the children’s clothing industry since the 1940s, interviews with children and views expressed by children’s market observers, we demonstrate how ‘the tween’ (or subtee…
Beyond Either/Or
The Missing Child in Consumption Theory
Children are essentially invisible in theories of consumer society and culture, despite their presence and centrality in everyday life. In this article, I argue that children and childhood, and thus mothers and motherhood, must be acknowledged and investigated as constitutive of - rather than derivative of or exceptional to - commercial, consumer culture generally. The focus here is not on how to better accommodate children and childhood (and mot…
Betwixt and be Tween: Age Ambiguity and the Sexualization of the Female Consuming Subject
In this article, we argue that what is now known as the ‘tween’ cannot be understood apart from its inception in, and articulation with, the market exigencies of childhood - specifically girlhood - as they have emerged since the Second World War. Drawing upon trade discourses from the children’s clothing industry since the 1940s, interviews with children and views expressed by children’s market observers, we demonstrate how ‘the tween’ (or subtee…
Semantic Provisioning of Children's Food: Commerce, care and maternal practice
Drawing upon in-depth interviews with mothers in the US about feeding their young children, this article examines how consumer culture - broadly construed - constitutes part of the indispensable context of mothering practices. The argument put forward is that mothers not only provide food and sustenance for their children, but necessarily encounter, engage with and make use of commercial meanings of foodstuffs as part and parcel of the caring wor…
Beyond Either/Or
Spatial Biographies of Children's Consumption: Market Places and Spaces of Childhood in the 1930s and Beyond
Drawing upon historical research, contemporary academic treatments of children's geographies and some preliminary observations of a few `children's' retail settings in the USA, this article concentrates on building an analytic of commercialized children's spaces. An account of the construction of retail departments specifically for children in USA clothing stores in the 1930s offers an insight into two intersecting spatial dimensions: aspirationa…
The Mother as Consumer: Insights from the Children's Wear Industry, 1917-1929
The historical context of the emergence of the “mother as consumer” is the subject of this article. The newly formed children's clothing industry and its trade press (1917–1929) serve as entry poin
"The Other "Child Study: Figuring Children as Consumers in Market Research, 1910s-1990s
This article examines how notions of “the child” were constructed in marketing research literature from the 1910s through the 1990s. Drawing on children's industry trade literature, market reports and books, I argue that children have become increasingly portrayed as individualized, autonomous consumers. Over this time period, the desire for consumer products becomes figured by industry observers and researchers as a mode of children's “self expr…
Exchange Value as Pedagogy in Children's Leisure: Moral Panics in Children's Culture at Century's End
This article examines the relatively recent emergence of a new ethos of acquisition for acquisition's sake in the practices of collecting and trading cards and plush toys purportedly manufactured for children. I analyze public debates surrounding three fads in children's popular culture in the late 1990s: sports "chase" cards, Beanie Baby plush toys and Pokemon trading cards. These crazes take the form of moral panics whereby sacred values are sa…
Past, present and futures of childhood studies: A conversation with former editors of Childhood
Agency, Children's Consumer Culture and the Fetal Subject: Historical Trajectories, Contemporary Connections
The aim of this article is to offer a perspective on how the personhood implied in and by children’s consumption can extend beyond its initial context to inform other identities, like that of the individuated, autonomous fetus. Drawing upon historical material on the rise of the child-consumer in the USA, I examine how the practices and institutions built up around this child-consumer laid the cultural, philosophical and epistemological groundwor…
Opinion, Dialogue, Review: Childhood is Killing `our' Children: Some Thoughts on the Columbine High School Shootings and the Agentive Child
Childhood as a moral project
Disrupting play: A cautionary note
Introduction: Specifying mothers/motherhoods
The place of mothers and motherhoods in commercial life represents one of the great under-told stories of consumer culture. At once revered and despised as leisure shoppers, women nevertheless have borne the brunt of the labor of consumption for the household and thus have garnered the attention of advertisers and marketers since at least the early decades of the 20th century. During these formative years, the ‘mother’, as conceptual persona, can…
Taking exception with the child consumer
The promise of an unanswered question: Multi-/cross-disciplinary struggles
The promise of an unanswered question: multi-/cross-disciplinary struggles." Children's Geographies, 8(2), pp. 221–222
The Dichotomous Child in and of Commercial Culture
The mire of its own construction? Childhood studies and the “crisis” at the Mexico-U.S. border
The wages of constructivism
This ‘kind of thing: Twenty-five years of Childhood and counting
Knowledge of childhood: Materiality, text, and the history of science – an interdisciplinary round table discussion
This round table discussion takes the diversity of discourse and practice shaping modern knowledge about childhood as an opportunity to engage with recent historiographical approaches in the history of science. It draws attention to symmetries and references among scientific, material, literary and artistic cultures and their respective forms of knowledge. The five participating scholars come from various fields in the humanities and social scien…
Introduction: The Elephant in the Living Room
The Mother as Consumer: Insights from the Children's Wear Industry, 1917-1929
The historical context of the emergence of the “mother as consumer” is the subject of this article. The newly formed children's clothing industry and its trade press (1917–1929) serve as entry poin
Opinion, Dialogue, Review: Childhood is Killing `our' Children: Some Thoughts on the Columbine High School Shootings and the Agentive Child
"The Other "Child Study: Figuring Children as Consumers in Market Research, 1910s-1990s
This article examines how notions of “the child” were constructed in marketing research literature from the 1910s through the 1990s. Drawing on children's industry trade literature, market reports and books, I argue that children have become increasingly portrayed as individualized, autonomous consumers. Over this time period, the desire for consumer products becomes figured by industry observers and researchers as a mode of children's “self expr…
Introduction: The Elephant in the Living Room
Exchange Value as Pedagogy in Children's Leisure: Moral Panics in Children's Culture at Century's End
This article examines the relatively recent emergence of a new ethos of acquisition for acquisition's sake in the practices of collecting and trading cards and plush toys purportedly manufactured for children. I analyze public debates surrounding three fads in children's popular culture in the late 1990s: sports "chase" cards, Beanie Baby plush toys and Pokemon trading cards. These crazes take the form of moral panics whereby sacred values are sa…
From Joe Camel to Hip, Fit Girls
Kids and Sport
Spatial Biographies of Children's Consumption: Market Places and Spaces of Childhood in the 1930s and Beyond
Drawing upon historical research, contemporary academic treatments of children's geographies and some preliminary observations of a few `children's' retail settings in the USA, this article concentrates on building an analytic of commercialized children's spaces. An account of the construction of retail departments specifically for children in USA clothing stores in the 1930s offers an insight into two intersecting spatial dimensions: aspirationa…
Symbolic Childhood
Agency, Children's Consumer Culture and the Fetal Subject: Historical Trajectories, Contemporary Connections
The aim of this article is to offer a perspective on how the personhood implied in and by children’s consumption can extend beyond its initial context to inform other identities, like that of the individuated, autonomous fetus. Drawing upon historical material on the rise of the child-consumer in the USA, I examine how the practices and institutions built up around this child-consumer laid the cultural, philosophical and epistemological groundwor…
The Commodification of Childhood: The Children’s Clothing Industry and the Rise of the Child Consumer
Betwixt and be Tween: Age Ambiguity and the Sexualization of the Female Consuming Subject
In this article, we argue that what is now known as the ‘tween’ cannot be understood apart from its inception in, and articulation with, the market exigencies of childhood - specifically girlhood - as they have emerged since the Second World War. Drawing upon trade discourses from the children’s clothing industry since the 1940s, interviews with children and views expressed by children’s market observers, we demonstrate how ‘the tween’ (or subtee…
Beyond Either/Or
The Dichotomous Child in and of Commercial Culture
Consumer Culture, Children's
Children's consumer culture refers to the institutional, material, and symbolic arrangements which organize a young person's involvement in, and movement through, the early life course in terms of commercial interests and values. Children are both subject to and arise as subjects in consumer contexts. The meanings which adhere to commercial goods are at once imposed upon children, childhood, and their social worlds and are taken up by children as…
The Missing Child in Consumption Theory
Children are essentially invisible in theories of consumer society and culture, despite their presence and centrality in everyday life. In this article, I argue that children and childhood, and thus mothers and motherhood, must be acknowledged and investigated as constitutive of - rather than derivative of or exceptional to - commercial, consumer culture generally. The focus here is not on how to better accommodate children and childhood (and mot…
Semantic Provisioning of Children's Food: Commerce, care and maternal practice
Drawing upon in-depth interviews with mothers in the US about feeding their young children, this article examines how consumer culture - broadly construed - constitutes part of the indispensable context of mothering practices. The argument put forward is that mothers not only provide food and sustenance for their children, but necessarily encounter, engage with and make use of commercial meanings of foodstuffs as part and parcel of the caring wor…
The promise of an unanswered question: Multi-/cross-disciplinary struggles
The promise of an unanswered question: multi-/cross-disciplinary struggles." Children's Geographies, 8(2), pp. 221–222
Children's Consumption in History
The academic study of children as consumers took root in the 1960s and did not begin in earnest until the 1970s, when the paradigm of ‘consumer socialization’ took hold among psychologically oriented business scholars. In the 1980s, some discussion of the history of children's consumption and popular culture began to appear in edited volumes and journal articles, with full treatments of some aspects of that history coming into view in the 1990s. …
Introduction: Specifying mothers/motherhoods
The place of mothers and motherhoods in commercial life represents one of the great under-told stories of consumer culture. At once revered and despised as leisure shoppers, women nevertheless have borne the brunt of the labor of consumption for the household and thus have garnered the attention of advertisers and marketers since at least the early decades of the 20th century. During these formative years, the ‘mother’, as conceptual persona, can…
Taking exception with the child consumer
Children as Consumers
A politics of becoming: When 'child' is not enough
Disrupting play: A cautionary note
Knowledge of childhood: Materiality, text, and the history of science – an interdisciplinary round table discussion
This round table discussion takes the diversity of discourse and practice shaping modern knowledge about childhood as an opportunity to engage with recent historiographical approaches in the history of science. It draws attention to symmetries and references among scientific, material, literary and artistic cultures and their respective forms of knowledge. The five participating scholars come from various fields in the humanities and social scien…
Sociology (28 works) · Psychology (18 works) · Political science (13 works) · Business (11 works) · Children's Rights and Participation (10 works) · Media, Gender, and Advertising (10 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Advertising (9 works) · Art (9 works) · Law (9 works)