Guest lecture by Helene Brembeck: Toys Matter

The Finnish Anthropological Society/The Department of Sociology guest lecture on Wednesday 23.9.2009, at 16-18 o’clock, Kirkkokatu 6, lecture hall 505

Helene Brembeck (Göteborg University)
Toys Matter: McDonald’s Toys and Nordic Childhoods (abstract below)

Helene Brembeck is a Professor in Ethnology and research leader at the Center for Consumer Science (CFK), Göteborg University. Her research interests are parenthood and childhood in consumer culture, also including food and eating and issues of ethnicity, and she has published several books and anthologies in this field. She is the editor (with Karin M. Ekström and Magnus Mörck) of ‘Little Monsters. (De)Coupling Assemblages of Consumption’ (LIT Verlag, 2007) and (with Karin M. Ekström) of ‘Elusive Consumption’ (Berg, 2004). Her most recent publication is the book ‘Hem till McDonald’s (Home to McDonald’s) (Carlssons 2007) about parents and children dining at McDonald’s.

Abstract:
The object of this lecture is to argue that toys take an active part in the constantly transforming chain of events and actors, human as well as nonhuman, where modern childhoods are being generated. Toys carry scripts of practices and subjectivities that might be carried out, transformed or subverted by the child, or by the materiality of the toy. I will follow this using McDonald’s Happy Meal boxes, toys and gadgets as the example. Examples of good and bad fit will be given. Departing from an international chain will also enable me to highlight processes of translations of the Happy Meal from an international (mainly American) context, to a Swedish (and to some extent Nordic) context; from the happy and grateful child inscribed in the first Swedish Happy Meal boxes from the late 70’s to the demanding and choosy millennium child, and the translations of the Happy Meal to pedagogic, safe and health conscious from the past decade to fit Nordic values.