Researching Children's Popular Culture

The place of childhood in popular culture is one that invites new readings both on childhood itself, but also on approaches to studying childhood. In our focus on methods of researching children's popular culture, we argue that the interplay of the age of the players, the status of their popular culture, the ephemerality of the objects, and indeed the ephemerality - and long lastingness - of childhood, all contribute to what could be regarded as a particularized space for childhood studies - and one that challenges many of the conventions of "doing research" involving children At the heart of this book is the idea of children's popular culture as a research site made up of a number of research spaces. The book starts out by examining the political space of children's popular culture in the context of its low status and ephemerality. It then moves on to consider various ethnographic and textual approaches to researching children, childhood and popular culture: memory spaces which explore the place of children's popular culture in adult memory, visual spaces and the gaze of the child as visual ethnographer; physical spaces and children's bedrooms as cultural texts, v

Claudia Mitchell is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education, McGill University. Jacqueline Reid-Walsh teaches at McGill University and Bishop's University.