LAUSR

place debates about childhood centre stage. Focusing on very different material, both identify and grapple with the reductionism of much of the literature in the field. There are illuminating parallels between Rudd’s analysis of the contemporary child reader and Buckingham’s child consumer which helpfully encapsulate the challenges facing so many scholars in this area. Rudd notes the very real shifts that have occurred, but what is striking is the extent to which childhood still remains the sight of redemptive possibilities – however ‘adult-like’ the new idealised child reader might be. And for Buckingham, thinking beyond structure and agency throws light on both the stigmatisation of the consumption practices of children and the intersection with inequality. This is a rich and varied collection. Covering a wide range of issues, in places it offers a rigorous audit as opposed to new theoretical insights and in this respect it is ‘politics’ and children, more than ‘childhood’, that takes centre stage. But in bringing together commentators from across the social sciences and applied disciplines it presents an effective ‘history of the present’ which will be of much value to students and scholars. Read as a whole it makes a compelling case for the need for all scholars to take childhood seriously, for as the contributions here demonstrate childhood is not only central to political debates but goes to the heart of debates about subjectivity and the role of the state.