Health Education Research, Vol. 16, No. 2, 131-142,
April 2001
© 2001 Oxford University Press
Smoking and symbolism: children, communication and cigarettes
Northern Ireland Centre for Diet and Health, School of Biomedical Sciences and
1 Department of Psychology, University of Ulster, Coleraine BT52 1SA, UK,
2 School of Nursing, Universidad de Cantabria, 39005 Santander, Spain and
3 School of Nursing and Midwifery, University College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland
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Abstract |
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Health promotion, with its concern with empowerment and autonomy, must recognize the agency of its target population. Based on 85 in-depth interviews with 10- to 11-year-old children throughout Northern Ireland, this paper argues that it is necessary to focus on the social relations of children if we are to understand and prevent childhood smoking. Addressing the complex issue of childhood agency, it is argued that regardless of various restrictions to their choices, children can act intentionally in constructing their identities. Instead of viewing the smoking children as communicating with the adult world, we focus on smoking as negotiation of status within the children's culture. Such negotiations utilize symbolism derived from and shared with the `adult world'. It is important that those analyzing children's lives understand children's ideas and behaviour on their own terms. We must make sure that the very concepts in which the children's experiences are put are appropriate ones. It is suggested that the metaphor `rite of passage' and terminology such as peer `pressure' versus adult `influence', commonly used to analyse the children's smoking behaviour, may actually conceal important aspects of childhood agency.
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Introduction |
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In spite of a growing number of research projects focusing on young people and smoking, the viewpoint of children is often not represented in the research output. This may partly be explained by the relative absence of sociologists and anthropologists from the field of childhood and adolescent smoking (Pedersen, 1998
) which, in effect, means that little of this research is based on sociological qualitative methods. This paper directs focus towards 10- to 11-year-old children's conceptions and perceptions of some central aspects of child smoking, as we explore some of the symbolism involved from the vantage point of children. The data presented suggest that children may see childhood smoking as a means to communicate and negotiate social status. The analysis is based on a position, which focuses upon children's experiences and which recognizes the agency of children. The ways in which children's experiences are researched and analysed, we suggest, may in some cases make it difficult to recognize such agency. Finally, recognition of childhood agency is important in health promotion and consistent with current approaches, even if not always applied in campaigns.
The views and attitudes of our participants in relation to smoking are in most cases not based on any personal experience with cigarettes. As this paper is based on the first of four annual rounds of longitudinal interviews, the findings presented here represent a `baseline' which, through subsequent research, will be compared and contrasted with views, attitudes and experiences expressed by the children as they move into their teenage years. The longitudinal findings will be compared cross-culturally with parallel studies underway in Spain and the Republic of Ireland [see (Hyde et al., 2000)].
Theoretical framework
Children are not simply objects in the social process of producing adults. On the contrary, they should be `...understood as social actors shaping as well as shaped by their circumstances' [(James et al., 1998), p. 6] and we should see them as `human beings' rather than `human becomings' [(Qvortrup, 1994), p. 4]. Childhood agency has only recently become a focus within the social sciences (Qvortrup, 1994; Mayall, 1996; Corsaro, 1998; James et al., 1998). Traditional health sciences and psychology, the disciplines which have conducted most of the research on childhood and adolescent smoking, seem largely to view children as lacking in power and unable to influence their own life to any significant extent. Children have almost always been portrayed as passive objects that must be protected from a range of `risk factors' such as parental smoking status and socio-economic factors [e.g. (Oei et al., 1986; Jessor, 1991; Brook et al., 1997; Najem et al. 1997)]. This is often based on models that were developed to help interpret the youth movements of the late 1960s (Lloyd and Lucas, 1998), that view activities such as smoking and drinking as `problem behaviour' (Jessor and Jessor, 1977). Other studies have focused upon the possible links between personality type, sensation seeking and smoking [e.g. (Smith and Fogg, 1979; Zuckerman, 1979; Patton et al., 1997)], and some argue that circumstances, attitudes and personality (as very young children) may predict future smoking patterns [e.g. (Collins et al., 1987; Block et al., 1988; Charlton and Blair, 1989; Jarvis et al., 1990; Smith et al., 1994; Hampl and Betts, 1999)]. Although substantial knowledge about adolescent smoking has been derived from such studies, there remains a lack of understanding as to how the young people themselves explain the dynamics of child smoking and how their understanding best should be interpreted. As our data indicate, to describe children in such passive terms is not in correspondence with either how the children see themselves or with how the authors believe children's ideas and actions should best be interpreted.
Pavis et al. have recently warned against seeing individual agency as `structurally disembedded' [(Pavis et al., 1998), p. 1407]. They are concerned that a too strong focus on agency may lead to the assumption `...that individuals operate without social constraint and or without a sense of their own social embeddedness' [(Pavis et al., 1998), p. 1408], and they demonstrate how the smoking and drinking habits of teenagers in Scotland are constrained to a significant degree. Pavis and colleagues are right in pointing out that the relation between agents and social structure is a complicated one. This relation should be seen as interactive and of mutual influence. That smoking is structured, e.g. in terms of age, may actually to some children represent a means with which to create a more prestigious identity, both personally and socially. Given that so much attention in recent years has been given to the structural aspects of childhood and adolescent smoking, more research is needed in relation to the intentions and motivations of young people who chose to smoke or not.
To see children as agents in their own life is not the same as saying that children do not have constraints and limitations upon what they may or may not choose to do. Children's lives are clearly restricted, and in many respects much more so than adults'. However, children are not deprived of all means of influencing their own lives and identities. Indeed, children's intentional behaviour might not sometimes be perceived as such by adults (including social theorists) because of the terminology and models imposed upon children's experiences on their behalf. In the following it is suggested that the current concepts such as `peer pressure' and `parental influence' may actually conceal important aspects of childhood agency. We will argue that childhood agency is useful not only as sociological or psychological perspectives, but also because the children seem to claim such agency on behalf of themselves and their peers. Childhood agency as a sociological model through which to understand children and as a model for children to understand themselves is, of course, not the same thing. Both perspectives, however, are highly relevant to health promotion.
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Method |
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Background
The interviews reported here form the baseline in a longitudinal study that will interview the same children annually for 4 years. Parallel studies are being conducted in Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and in Spain, and will provide a basis for cross-cultural comparison of longitudinal data. The aims of the project are to determine social and cultural factors underpinning smoking uptake among children, and to map the early `smoking career' of young smokers. Smoking may have meanings attached with which some children wish to identify (Amos et al., 1997
) and it is important to detect what they may be. The meaning smoking has for children cannot be assumed from the meaning it has for adults. For instance, the importance of peer pressure in relation to smoking uptake may be something adults rather than children identify as a direct cause (Michell and West, 1998, 1999). As Lloyd and Lucas put it in relation to teenagers, `the lack of successful intervention may lie in the very different views of the world held by medically oriented academics and by the teenagers themselves' [(Lloyd and Lucas, 1998), p. xii]. This project therefore seeks to gain understanding of why children smoke from their point of view in order inform effective health promotion. It has been established that the association between smoking and social and economic deprivation is increasing (Marsh and McKay, 1994). For this reason, the sample was recruited within economically deprived areas, both urban and rural. The data reported here are derived from 85 initial in-depth interviews with 10- to 11-year-old children in Northern Ireland and the participants were interviewed in 18 different youth clubs. Northern Ireland is commonly associated with sectarian divides based on religious affiliation. In relation to deprivation and associated consequences for health, however, social differentiation rather then religious is the significant one. Although the majority of our participants lived in `Catholic' areas, it is unlikely that the views the children expressed on smoking would be different from those living in `Protestant' areas and, indeed, we found no such differences in our data.
The study group consists of roughly equal numbers of males and females (41:44). Three of the children reported to smoke on a regular basis and another 20 had tried smoking. The children volunteered to be interviewed at an initial visit to the clubs where the project was described. Letters of consent were sent to the parents of the children who volunteered and all these parents agreed to participation by their children. Individual appointments were set up and the interviews took place at the time the youth club was open, commonly between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. The children were interviewed on a one-to-one basis and each interview lasted 20–60 min. Following well-established qualitative research rationale (Merton and Kendall, 1956), the interviews took the form of conversations departing from a loosely constructed topic guide. To some degree, themes got the attention that the individual child thought necessary. The topics covered in most interviews included how the children experienced their school and home environment, their perceptions of healthy living and health promotion, and their views and possible experiences with regards to smoking, alcohol and drugs. The aim was to obtain a rich picture of each child, which will be further developed in subsequent interviews. At the end of each interview, a short lifestyle questionnaire was filled in. The interviews were taped and transcribed ad verbatim. Following a thematic content analysis (Burnard, 1991) which produced a systematization of the data into individual but interrelated themes, the transcriptions were imported into the software package NUD*IST (Qualitative Solutions and Research, 1997) which assisted in further systematization and organization of the vast body of data.
Problems and limitations
Interviewing children is challenging and even more so when sensitive issues are involved. In spite of reassuring the children of confidentiality and that the interviewers wanted to hear their point of view, the interviewers could potentially have been perceived as adults in a role of authority. Some of the answers given might therefore have been more what they thought we wanted to hear rather than what they themselves thought. Some children may on occasion have been somewhat `primed' by their friends who had been interviewed or where waiting their turn. Contradictions and monosyllabic answers were frequent, and added to the challenge of classifying and interpreting the data.
The number of participants who had personal experience with smoking was relatively low. The views explored and explained in this paper thus represent notions of smoking that are largely unaffected by such experience. With the exception of perceptions of peer pressure, there were surprisingly little differences between the views of those who had experience with smoking and those who had not or between boys and girls in relation to the particular topics of this paper. All the participants held very negative views of smoking and in particular of smoking among children, yet they identified the potentiality of smoking as part of negotiation of status. Smoking, and smokers, were frequently assessed as `stupid'. The meaning `stupid' had for the children appeared to be somewhat ambiguous, since the same children would associate smoking with the qualities of `cool' and `hard' (or with attempts to achieve such qualities). That smoking simultaneously was associated with something `stupid' and something with potential power did not appear to be contradictory to the children. It might be that the `stupid' part of smoking is related towards health (and thus echo adult views), whereas the `cool' and `hard' aspects relate themselves to the social dimension of smoking, which often seemed to be the one most important to the children. To establish the specific meaning of `stupid' is of some importance and will be followed up in subsequent research.
We may expect to find more significant discrepancies in views and attitudes between the participants during subsequent rounds of interviews when they are older and more experienced. By the time of the second round of interviews are conducted, the majority will have entered adolescence and changed from primary to secondary school. Relationships in childhood and adolescence are qualitatively different (Cotterell, 1996), so that the social dynamics of the everyday life of our participants may also change. The findings in this paper can therefore not claim to be relevant for age groups other than that of the 10- to 11-year olds.
While the research team possesses interdisciplinary expertise, the perspective adopted in this paper is mainly a sociological one.
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Results and discussion |
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Smoking as an adult activity
The view that smoking is an activity that should be engaged in exclusively by adults came clearly across in the interviews. Participants often stated this explicitly by saying that the legal age for smoking should be raised to 18 or older because until reaching that age one is not old enough to know what one is doing.
`...about 20, because you're grown up and can make your own decisions.' [Male; ever-smoker]
`16 is too young...should be 20...to young to understand how bad it is.' [Female; never-smoker]
`I know you are a teenager at 16, but it's still too young.' [Male; never-smoker]
At a later age, it is perceived, one will have `common sense' and `know more'.
`Cos they know all about the consequences.' [Female; ever-smoker]
`Cos you're older and you know more about fags. At 16 you don't know much.' [Male; never-smoker]
A reason frequently cited for why adults smoke was that it `calms them down', operating as a coping mechanism.
`They said they were stressed out...angry...a bit calmer after smoking.' [Male; never-smoker]
`She said she was trying to stop...looking after us is terrible for her because my little sister tries to talk to her when I'm trying to talk to her and she just has to take a cigarette.' [Female; never-smoker]
`Mummy and daddy used to smoke quite a lot, but whenever I talked to them, they cut down on how many they smoked a day. But they said they shouldn't have stopped because it helped to calm them down when they're stressed.' [Female; ever-smoker]
Smoking thus is perceived as having some positive effects in the life of adults as it `calms down nerves' and helps them cope with life.
Only one of the respondents claimed that she was allowed to smoke by her mother. In all other cases, smoking was strictly prohibited for children and parents were perceived as strongly against it whether or not they were smokers themselves. Other adult authority figures, such as teachers, youth leaders, etc., have communicated the same univocal message to the children.
`They told me not to start, because whenever you start you get addicted to them and you just can't stop.' [Male; never-smoker]
`She shouted at me and said that I was stupid and that I didn't want to end up like her for she is addicted to them.' [Female; ever-smoker]
Just as smoking is associated with mental maturation, the body of smokers should also be mature. `Young' lungs are perceived as more vulnerable to any effect, which is commonly described as `turning black'. The adult body, however, is stronger and can tolerate smoking better.
`You're not really allowed to take it until your body's grown up.' [Female; ever-smoker]
`Young people are destroying their health straight away. Adults are the time for smoking.' [Female; never-smoker]
`...cos the more the smokers under 16 are more likely to get lung cancer and the smokers under 16 will have bad breath.' [Male; never-smoker]
That smoking is seen as more dangerous for children gives weight to the idea that the habit belongs, and should belong, in a grown-up domain
Smoking as taboo for children
Parents are presumably concerned with the health of their children and commonly react very negatively towards childhood smoking. From the viewpoint of our participants, the disapproval of parents was depicted in rather dramatic terms. Most of the children expressed that their parents would `kill' them, they would be `grounded for a year' or `beaten up' if they were caught smoking. This illustrates that the children believe that their parents also consider smoking as something adults may do, given that parents often smoke themselves, but which is forbidden for children.
`If I was caught smoking my dad would kill me.' [Male; never-smoker]
`She'd go mad...she'd just go ballistic.' [Female; never-smoker]
`They'd give me a hammering.' [Male; never-smoker]
Smoking is viewed as a serious transgression associated with dire consequences and punishment if detected. Some report having experienced such punishment.
`I got grounded and smacked and all that rubbish.' [Female; ever-smoker]
`She nearly half killed me.' [Female; ever-smoker]
Children express, both on behalf of themselves and their parents, a taboo against child smoking. A child smoker can be seen as symbolically intruding into a domain in which s/he does not belong, and this intrusion will be punished. Many of the children claimed that adults who break the taboo also deserve punishment. For example, shopkeepers who sell cigarettes to children should `be put in jail' and the shop closed down.
`The shop should be shut down if they sell to kids.' [Male; never-smoker]
`...put in a law that if the shopkeeper sell them, the shop should be shut up and the shopkeeper should be put in prison.' [Female; never-smoker]
`The shopkeeper should get fined some money for giving weans cigarettes.' [Male; ever-smoker]
The taboo and the associated punishment makes child-smoking a risky business. Those who engage in it do so hiding away from the adult domain, `in the fields', `down the lanes'.
`I seen them one time down the back fields... their mammy doesn't know.' [Male; never-smoker]
`Outside around the place, down the canal where nobody can see them.' [Male; never-smoker]
`Somewhere they are not allowed to go, like a field at night so no-one can catch them or anything.' [Male; smoker]
The exclusion from the adult domain is thus expressed through the use of space. It is when children become older (14–16 years old) that our participants believe it is acceptable for smokers to be seen smoking in the streets, but not yet by their own parents. The vast majority of the 10- to 11-year-old children not only accept but also agree with their exclusion from the domain of smoking and they express clearly that they do not have any wish to take up the habit.
`I might drink, but I'll not smoke.' [Male; never-smoker]
`I'll never smoke!' [Male; never-smoker]
`I'd never smoke again cos you need to be fit for sport.' [Male; ever-smoker]
`I'll definitely not smoke [next year] and definitely not take drugs. Maybe I'll drink.' [Female; never-smoker]
Some thought, however, they might do so when they get older (i.e. old enough).
`I might smoke when I'm allowed to.' [Female; ever-smoker]
Regardless of their own attitudes the children are, of course, aware that some children do smoke and that, in spite of the taboo and the symbolic exclusion, consuming cigarettes is something children may at some time may choose to do.
Smoking with a purpose
Our research participants are at the very start of adolescence as a transition into adulthood. This stage typically involves a search for a `new' identity, often expressed through a break with the past. Unlike many other societies, Western Europe has few institutionalized rituals with which to mark the transition from childhood to adulthood. For a relatively long period of time a young person's status may appear unclear and negotiable. Different forms of symbols and symbolic action may help initiate and bring about negotiation over the individual's status. Smoking, perceived as exclusive to the adult world, could be one such symbol and may represent a potent means for transforming one's status or identity. To present smoking as an initiation into the adult world is not a new idea. It is to some extent part of a Western culture, manifest in literature such as Mark Twain's famous stories of Huckleberry Finn (Stewart and Livson, 1966). Indeed, this idea has been incorporated in the marketing strategies of tobacco companies for decades. In 1975 the Brown and Williamson tobacco company was recommended to `...present the cigarette as one of a few initiations into the adult world...in an elegant manner touch on the basic symbols of growing up...' [(ASH, 1999), p. 7].
Almost all of our respondents expressed that the children who would smoke do so to communicate certain images or even as an attempt to transform their social identity. The child smoker aspires to look `big', `hard' or act `grown up'. Even if this was frequently evaluated as being `stupid', this meaning attached to child smoking was universally recognized by triers and never-smokers alike.
`Just to be big men, to try to look big. They want to boss people around and all that.' [Male; never-smoker]
`I thought that if I started to smoke I'd be all big and that. I could make myself look older if I smoked.' [Female; ever-smoker]
`You could act more cool if you smoked.' [Female; never-smoker]
`Because they think they're hard to smoke. They think they're big, but they're not big, they're stupid.' [Female; ever-smoker]
Smokers, never-smokers and ever-smokers agree that children smoke in order to communicate something and to leave a favourable impression in others, appearing `hard' and `big'.
Negotiation in the `peer culture'
Ritualized ways in which to transform the status from, for example, that of a child to that of an adult, are known as `rites of passage'. These rituals inform the environment of a significant transition by expressing that a change of identity is socially recognized. Smoking initiation by children can for obvious reasons not be defined as a ritual in the way rites of passage are commonly described in the literature, most importantly because it does not produce a globally recognized social transition (we have seen how vigorously adults, and many children, oppose such behaviour). When smoking, children may be actively opposing the cultural idea that smoking is for adults, and they do so outside the domain of adults (`in the fields') and will not receive the adult's consent (`She hit me'). Smoking by children can not be a rite of passage into the adult world since this world rejects the validity of such rituals/behaviour. Childhood smoking may be better understood as a `status offence' (Qvortrup, 1994), with the child conducting a conscious breach of a `taboo'.
Even if smoking may not represent a rite of passage into a world of adults for the 10–11 year olds, it could still be seen as a kind of initiation. Smoking could serve as an initiation into a specific category of children, the characteristics of `cool', `hard' or `big' (with its ambiguous link to `stupid') identifying the smoker as belonging to a particular social group (Michell and Amos, 1997; Barton et al., 1999). To be accepted by ones friends is extremely important, for children as for everyone else. Indeed, it has been argued that the peer group is of more importance for children and adolescents than for other age groups (Coleman and Hendry, 1990; Cotterell, 1996). A shared experience of smoking may form a basis for identity and solidarity. Both ever-smokers and never-smokers expressed this.
`...and they would say yeah, they say that's all right, you can hang about with us and all'. [Male; smoker]
`I think they smoke because they don't want to be left out. They want to act cool.' [Female; never-smoker]
Some reported experience of such social dynamics.
`I was up in camogie one day and this girl says `do you want to come with me cos I've started smoking' and I said ok so we went down the public toilets.' [Female; ever-smoker]
`My friends and me went on a wee picnic. They were aged 10 and 11 and they smoked, so I just tried it...I just asked them for one.' [Female; ever-smoker]
As mentioned, the children express that smoking is an attempt to negotiate one's status or group membership. By definition a negotiation involves several parties. It seems that smoking children are not seen as trying to negotiate with adults (because they are described as smoking in places adults do not normally go and as taking great care in hiding their consumption from adults), but with their peers. Some children, then would, according to their peers, smoke to negotiate their position in what may be called the children's culture (Corsaro, 1998; James et al., 1998). Like all other cultures, children's culture divides its members into different groups that can be hierarchically arranged according to prestige. Categories such as `wild', `popular', `top' and `bottom' are used by children to classify each other (Mitchell, 1997; Mitchell and Amos, 1997). If one gains membership in a prestigious group through consuming cigarettes, smoking may represent one way of empowering oneself as a participant in the peer culture. Even if child smoking is relevant (from the point of view of the 10–11 year olds) to the peer culture and not to the `adult world', symbolism derived from the adult world appears to be utilized. Cigarettes symbolize adulthood, and adulthood, from the viewpoint of children, symbolizes power (James et al., 1998). Appropriating symbols from the powerful world of adults is believed to empower the smoker to `boss people around' and to claim that `if I see my brother smoking, I'll kill him' (as was stated by 16 year olds in a pilot focus group). The effect of this appropriation will, ideally, manifest itself in a desired status within the children's culture. It is important, however, to keep in mind that not all the social groups within the children's culture will value smoking as prestigious. We showed earlier how many of the children distanced themselves from this activity and this has also been reported from elsewhere in the UK (Michell and Amos, 1997). Smoking is therefore not seen as a universal strategy for social mobility. The formation of various social groups among children and adolescence will be explored further through subsequent interviews, and as more of our participants experiment with cigarettes, how smoking is related to group dynamics and to other group-based behaviors.
Peer pressure?
Initiation or incorporation into a group through smoking will often take place after encouragement from within the children's culture. `Peer pressure' is often pointed out as one of the most important reasons for why children smoke (Krosnik and Judd, 1982; Eiser et al., 1991; Morgan and Grube, 1991). Many of the participants in our study also identified the influence of friends as an important reason for adolescent smoking.
`Their friends probably force them to smoke and they say if you don't smoke that you are not playing with them.' [Male; never-smoker]
`They force them to do it. They just can't say no to their friends.' [Male; never-smoker]
`If they don't smoke their friends might call them chicken and that.' Female; never-smoker]
`I don't go near her anymore, just in case she gets me into smoking.' [Female; never-smoker]
It is hardly surprising that conforming to one's friends is seen as an important reason why children smoke. After all, children and young people seem to actively form a consumption pattern that conforms with other people's: wearing certain clothes, listening to a particular kind of music, preferring certain kind of sports because `everybody else does it'. A substantial part of what children do is because others do it (e.g. their friends) or because they are told to (e.g. by parents).
So what about childhood agency? How can children possess agency when they live under so many constraints? The children themselves claim to have the ability to choose their course of action. Many of our respondents maintained that even if peer pressure or conformity may be an important reason why children smoke (or do not smoke), one has a choice. This choice is often entangled with the wider choice of friendship or other aspects of one's identity. Some explained how pressure to smoke could be handled and how they had responded themselves in such a situation.
`Yes [I was offered a cigarette], but I refused it. I said there's no point in it. We're only young'. [Female; never-smoker]
`I said no, because my daddy would smell it from my breath'. [Male; ever-smoker]
Q: `What made you say no?' A: `I just wanted to be a good footballer.' [Male; never-smoker]
`I know a wee fella that smokes and he tried to get me into it, but I just punched him of the wall.' [Male; never-smoker]
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Peer relation and agency
The difference between those who, prior to experience, assumed peer pressure to be important and those who had experienced a situation of being offered a cigarette is significant. Michell argues that the peer pressure to smoke commonly identified may be an `adultist' construction assumed to be relevant for the children without necessarily being so (Michell, 1997
). This view may be transmitted to children who then, prior to experience expect there to be a significant peer pressure to smoke (Michell and West, 1998, 1999). We share the concern of Michell and West, and suggest that some of the concepts commonly applied in research on smoking in childhood and adolescence may conceal the degree of influence that children as a group and as individuals have in their own lives. It is remarkable that the concept of `peer pressure' in the research on adolescent smoking is almost only applied to what is evaluated as negative behaviour, i.e. pressure to smoke. The statements from children throughout this paper illustrate that among children there not only exist different views on the dynamics within the peer group, but also that there exists a pressure (or influence) not to smoke [see also (Cotterell, 1996)]. This form of peer pressure is largely ignored by researchers. When describing various impacts on children that are relevant to their smoking habits, we commonly talk about peers as `pressuring' the children while health promoters and teachers are `informing' them. Parents `influence' their children when expressing anti-smoking attitudes, but represent a `risk factor' when they smoke themselves or appear indifferent to their children's cigarette consumption. Parents and peers that do not smoke, on the other hand, can act as `protective factors'. This terminology clearly reflects the attitude that smoking is unwanted and that anything that can lead to children taking up the habit is a negative influence while what may prevent it is a positive influence. As much as we would agree with this view, we would warn against applying such assumptions while trying to understand how the children themselves process the range of influences and conditions within which they make decisions. To apply biased concepts is bad science and we should remove or redefine such concepts to avoid biased analyses. To understand the position of smoking (and non-smoking) children, we need to address the influences that the children experience from various directions. Parental pressure, peer pressure, media/fashion pressure and health pressure (presented via teachers, health promotion campaigns, media, etc.) are, from the point of view of the children, all significant factors that they must consider carefully and different children will probably assess such pressures differently. To obey parents may be rewarding while disobeying them could lead to serious punishment. To impress friends can be important for one's social. To disobey parents or teachers may result in impressing friends and to say `no' to friends may lead to rewards from parents. Children's ability to choose a course of action, who they wish to be friends with and to apply certain behaviour to achieve this, are important aspects of childhood agency. To choose to smoke as part of a creation of friendships may therefore actually be an expression of agency and this insight would be lost without an understanding of the social relations of children. To fully understand children's actions and priorities we need to continue to focus on their social relations.
Consumption and agency
As the data presented earlier suggest, smoking among 10–11 year olds is of a very social nature and the children express that their peers may smoke cigarettes in order to communicate certain images, which would set them apart from others (the un-cool). Bourdieu explains how the consumption of significant objects provides a basis for social distinction (Bourdieu, 1989) and it has been said that `consumption involves the incorporation of the consumed item into the personal and social identity of the consumer' [(Gell, 1986), p. 112]. When consuming, one can therefore utilize meanings that are embedded in both commodities and practices (Gray et al., 1997). Consumption is communication (Miller, 1995). From the point of view of the 10- to 11-year-old children, smoking belongs symbolically to the domain of adults. Moreover, it is associated with the status of `hard' and `big' in the `children's culture'. All these meanings are `stored' in the cigarette and the activity of smoking. Since smoking is a notoriously social activity among children, there will always be significant others who will receive whatever is communicated (e.g. `I'm hard'). Non-consumption is of course also a form of communication and by not smoking or expressing anti-smoking attitudes, which the majority of the respondents did, they use the same cultural ideas to communicate aspects of their identity (e.g. `I'm not part of that').
By consuming a potent symbol, the cigarette, some of that symbolism is associated with the smoker and ideally incorporated into his or her identity (Gell, 1986; Gray et al., 1997). Such an approach with a focus on consumption and the intentions behind certain behaviors must recognize the agency of the individuals involved. If this perspective is applicable to smoking in childhood, childhood agency therefore becomes crucial.
Health promotion and agency
Recognition of agency is entirely consistent with the current general approach within health promotion; nevertheless, it is not always taken on board in concrete campaigns or efforts. Health promotion is commonly presented as `the process of enabling people to exert control over the determinants of health and thereby improve their health' [(International Union for Health Promotion and Education, 2000), p. 2] and these processes of empowerment will ideally lead to individual autonomy (Downie et al., 1996). If anybody, including, of course, children, shall be able to `exert control', however guided, their ability to act intentionally and to choose certain forms of behaviour (within restrictions) must be recognized. This is not always fully put into practice. One example could be health promotion efforts that seek to empower children to resist peer pressure. They simultaneously see children as lacking agency (in that is the peers are seen as causing the smoking behaviour) and possessing it (in that they are in position to be `empowered'). The position of childhood agency needs to be clarified, and we need to make sure that the analytical concepts used to understand children, their interactions and experiences, and which are used in the construction of health promotion efforts, are appropriate. We have warned against using phrases that identify pressure within the children's culture as exclusively negative. Different factors working against child smoking, such as parental punishment and peer influence, might indicate that the child smokers are more goal-directed than is commonly believed. We need to understand social processes among children the way children experience them. For example, if smoking should be understood as a `rite of passage' it is important not to see this `passage' as being between the status of child and adult. Contrary to what is commonly reiterated, smoking among 10- to 11-year-old children is not an initiation into the world of adults as much as it is one that utilizes symbols from this world.
Childhood agency must be seen as part of a mutually influential relation to social structure and cultural ideas. It might be precisely because smoking is structured in terms of age that it constitutes such a potential for communication among children. If this is the case, it provides a good example of the inter-relations between structure and agents, as parts of the structure provide basis for efficient agency. We need to investigate to what extent children (like anybody else) act as agents in their interactions with the rest of society.
Peer-led health promotion education has recently been pointed out as being among the most successful in preventing smoking among young people (International Union for Health Promotion and Education, 2000). Could this be because young people recognize each other as social actors and because they have an insight to the meaning of smoking among young people that adults often lack? In fully recognizing children's experiences and views as a basis for their agency, health promotion aimed at preventing childhood smoking may be more successful.
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We wish to thank Gavan Quigley who conducted a substantial part of the interviews on which this paper is based, Julie Sittlington who helped with the analysis and Caroline Adams who transcribed the interviews. We also wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for useful comments. This study is part of a larger project funded by the European Commission Directorate General V entitled `Children Talking: Why Do They Smoke?'. An early version of this paper was presented at the Conference of the European Sociological Association in Amsterdam, August 1999.
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Received on April 10, 2000; accepted on July 13, 2000
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