Doctoral Dissertation Research - Caring Consumption: Negotiated Meanings of Childrearing and the Market

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the meaning of consumption for parents seeking the "good care" of their children. The research focuses on the emotional processes by which these consumers decide just what is good care and what kinds of "things" are part of that care. Textual analysis of toy catalogs will be combined with ethnographic fieldwork on shopping trips and interviews with parents about consumption and raising children. These multiple methods (conversations about buying, observations of spending, and considerations of selling) seek to explain how people make sense of the convergence of consumption, class, and care in our contemporary culture.