Page 11 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

x . Preface

on. In the introduction to this book, issues related to doing fieldwork at
home are sketched out; they are addressed more fully in the book's after-
word. For those interested in knowing more about these aspects of the
work before diving into the ethnographic material, I suggest going to the
final chapter first. I have not placed this material earlier in the book,
however, because it seems to me that as it is, it takes almost too long to
get to the lives of the children who are the focus of this work.
Children and childhood have been marginalized in ethnographic in-
quiry. In particular, the lives and worlds of children have rarely been
viewed as profound enough, complex enough, or important enough to
support serious social theory or political economy. A growing number of
scholars have begun the important work of critically investigating child-
hood in ways that do not reproduce the paternalism (or maternalism)
that has plagued much previous research, placing the lives and worlds of
children at the center of social, historical, and political processes. In these
new perspectives children are viewed as knowing historical subjects. As
people whose lives have implications that go beyond a personal, small
sphere, children are more than receivers of care and sustenance, con-
sumers of food and resources: they are, like their adult and adolescent
counterparts, active participants in the complex processes that make up
daily life and global politics. This book does not engage in a detailed dis-
cussion of theoretical issues surrounding the theorization of children and
childhood, although I view such questions to be of great importance. 1
Rather, in basing this ethnography on children while engaging questions
of political economy, social justice, and social inequality, my belief is that
the relevance of children's lives to these important arenas—and the ways
in which we think about them—is made clear.