Daniel Thomas Cook, PhD
Associate Professor of Childhood Studies
Department of Childhood Studies
Rutgers University-Camden
405-7 Cooper Street – Rm. 306
Camden, NJ 08102
ude.sregtur.nedmacnull@kooctd
856-225-2816
Research Interests:
Youth and Childhood; Consumption and Media; Qualitative Methods; Cultural Sociology; Urban Sociology
Daniel Thomas Cook (BS, University of Illinois; MA, Annenberg School of Communications, University of Pennsylvania; PhD in Sociology, University of Chicago) joined the Rutgers-Camden Department of Childhood Studies in September 2007. Dr. Cook studies youth and childhood and commercial life from a cultural-interpretive perspective.
Dr. Dan Cook teaches the graduate Proseminar in Childhood Studies, Interpretive Research Methods, Introduction to Childhood Studies and Children in Consumer/Media Culture.
Research
Dr. Cook’s research focuses on the rise of children as consumers in the United States, presently and historically. In particular, he explores the various ways in which tensions between “the child” and “the market” play themselves out in various sites of children’s consumer culture, such as advertising, food, rituals, clothing and media. He is the author of The Commodification of Childhood: The Children’s Clothing Industry and the Rise of the Child Consumer (2004, Duke University Press) and an Editor of Childhood, A Journal of Global Child Research http://chd.sagepub.com/. Along with John Wall, Cook is editor of Children and Armed Conflict(2011, Palgrave Macmillan) http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=413746 , and is sole editor of Symbolic Childhood (2002, Peter Lang) and The Lived Experiences of Public Consumption (2008, Palgrave Macmillan). He is author of numerous articles and chapters on children in American culture.
Service and Outreach
Daniel Cook is founder of The Consumer Studies Research Network (CSRN), a scholarly network, associated with the American Sociological Association. CSRN was created to exchange information and to bring to the fore the depths to which commodities and a market logic have come to pervade virtually all forms of social life and social interaction. For information, please email Dan Cook.
Dr. Cook was interviewed for “Marketplace,” (FOX 29 TV, Philadelphia, Dec 11, 2007) about the role of targeted marketing to kids, ages 9-14, called “tween.”
Dr. Cook’s research on “princess culture” was highlighted in Rutgers Focus (2/6/08). The article points to troubling aspects of merchandizing for children, especially girls.
Publications
Books
The Commodification of Childhood: The Children’s Clothing Industry and the Rise of the Child Consumer. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Journal Articles (refereed)
2011 “Through Mother’s Eyes: Multiple Mothers in American Mothering Magazines.” Advertising and Society Review. Vol. 12, No. 2.
2011 “Embracing Ambiguity in the Historiography of Children’s Dress.” Textile History. Vol. 42, No. 1 (May), 7-21.
2009 “Semantic Provisioning of Children’s Food: Commerce, Care and Maternal Practice.” Childhood. 16(3), 317-334.
2008 “The Missing Child in Consumption Theory” Journal of Consumer Culture, Vol 8, No. 2 (July), 219-243.
Keynote Presentations
“The Missing Child in Consumption Theory.” Invited Keynote speaker, Second Biannual Conference on Child and Teen Consumption 2006, Copenhagen Business School, (April), Copenhagen, Denmark.
Editorial
Founding Editorial Board Member, Oxford Bibliographies Online: Childhood Studies. Oxford University Press.
Editor, Childhood: A Global Journal of Child Research, 2008-present.