Sweets & Children : senses, consumer culture, and society

Abstract

This study examines the phenomena where children are developed into sweet consumers via sensory perception and socio-cultural construction of the senses. The methodology is an ethnographical approach, involving embedding in a rural community of Nakohn Si Thammarat province, southern Thailand, for 10 months and using diverse data collection such as mapping, writing field-notes, focus group discussion, in-dept interview, participant and non-participant observation and household surveys. The finding indicates that Thai society now involves a 'sweet culture' as integral to lifestyle. In the past, the lifestyle of Thai people rarely involved consuming desserts because sugar was unavailable and only produced in some households. In contrast, more sugar is now available therefore, sweets have become greater part of the modern rural village, helped by factories producing sugars and sweet goods, transportation (roads, vehicles,), electricity, convenient devices, advertisements etc. Nowadays the sweet is a prominent and important taste, especially for children. They love to consume snacks and soft drinks. This phenomena isn't only influenced by a biological factor, sweet taste buds, but also by socio-cultural construction creating a children world as social reality which is compatible to sweets. Modern Thai society constructs a children world by discourses, many institutions and consumer goods, that let children be autonomous and relatively free from traditional authority. A children world is constructed as a world for eating sweets, watching television and play giving a live of fulfilled imagination, freedom, fun, adventure, and the sweetness of the age of innocence. In the mean time, it has transformed childhood into a space of indulgence which is suitable for the consumption of soft drinks and sweets including binding children to sweets that repeat reality of freedom and authority of children. Otherwise, shaping the sensory world of children relates to sweets towards constructing sensory perception of the sweet