The Business of Branded Enchantment

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Abstract
Mapping the global distribution of children’s consumer culture and its conditions of consumption and production, this article argues that while the continuing salience of sacralized understandings of ‘childhood’ lends enchantment to the means of consumption in the children’s culture industry, it also intensifies moral scrutiny of the industry’s products and conditions of production. The article examines the strategic use of sacralized understandings of childhood by both the industry and its critics and considers the disjunctive global flows of enchantment, exploitation and critical intervention mediated by information communication technology. It draws on a range of sources, including public domain information on corporations and industry associations, unobtrusive observation of sites of children’s consumption, the packaging and promotion of children’s toys, games and entertainment, ILO and NGO research on toy production in Export Processing Zones, academic and activist discourse on global consumer capitalism and recent theoretical work in the sociology of childhood.