Children’s Cultures

Children’s culture is a subject that has been informed by work across a number of disciplines: anthropology, cultural studies, folklore, history, media and communications studies, and sociology. The nature of culture is itself needs defining before an understanding of children’s culture can be developed. Culture as a concept is complex and has many distinct meanings, but in this context refers to the beliefs, customs, and practices of a specific society or group, in this case, children. This entry considers children’s culture in its traditional everyday practices, in which children construct and transmit their own culture through peer-to-peer interaction; and the way in which commercial culture, media, and technology have combined with traditional patterns in children’s play and culture in shaping new forms of contemporary children’s ...