Time Scales of Consumption: Children, Money and Transactional Orders

Recent research into children’s consumption argues for the centrality of children and childhood in rethinking and revising notions of consumer culture. This article introduces the model of time scales of consumption for exploring children’s talk about money. An analysis of short- and long-term cycles of exchange opens for scrutiny the complex ways in which children are affected by, and contribute to, processes of consumption. Culturally, money is usually an open resource; it can be converted into a collector’s item, a bribe, a promise or a goal, and used for solidifying and transforming social relations. Children’s notions of money talk about the cultural underpinnings of money and consumer culture that define and affect both children’s and adults’ future orientations. In addition, the perspective of children confirms that money is linked to everyday cosmologies that reproduce temporal dimensions and rely on the centrality of thrift. Etnographic study of time scales of consumption thus offer important insights for exploring the reproduction and transformation of consumer culture over generations.