Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
16th ESA Conference 2024. Tension, Trust and Transformation. , Porto, Portekiz, 26 - 30 Ağustos 2024, ss.1-2
The sociological studies on childhood and on finance have grown separately since late 1980s. Yet the intersection of the two has not been a distinct field of study. Two major figures around the subject, Viviana Zelizer and Nina Bandelj have studied the intersection of economic and/or non-economic value of children and financial parenting practices while barely mentioning the financialization of childhood. However, the promotion of financial products and services to children has always been one of the main marketing strategies of commercial banks since the early 20th century. This study aims to analyze the children’s piggy banks advertorials of three major commercial banks (Türkiye İş Bankası, Vakıfbank, Halkbank) in Türkiye. A semiological analysis of those advertorials, based on the coding of their texts, visual (symbols, objects, subjects) and auditory products, reveal that financial behavior of investing/saving in children's piggy banks is encouraged to develop the child's future socio-economic security. Although the advertorials promoting saving in children's piggy banks are embedded in the cultural/social/moral/political context of intensive parenthood and the ongoing digitalization of the daily life, there is an ambiguity in those advertorials as to whether they address children or parents, and whether those interlocutors are financial investors or consumers. In any case these advertorials all insist on educating children and their socialisation into responsible individuals equipped with the idea of saving. All in all, advertorials promoting financial products to children appear as an actant in the process of assembling children as economic agents, or at least as future clients.