DANIEL THOMAS COOK is Professor of Childhood Studies at Rutgers University – Camden, USA. He has published widely on consumer culture, childhood, and their intersections in culture and history. He is author of The Commodification of Childhood: The Children’s Clothing Industry and the Rise of the Child Consumer (2004), and editor of several books, including The Lived Experiences of Public Consumption (2008). He also serves as co-editor for the journal Childhood.

J. MICHAEL RYAN is Assistant Professor of Sociology at The American University in Cairo, Egypt. He has previously taught at Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) in Quito, Ecuador, and at the University of Maryland in the United States. He is coeditor (with George Ritzer) of The Concise Encyclopedia of Sociology (Wiley Blackwell, 2011) and the forthcoming Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Theory (with Bryan S. Turner et al.). Before returning to academia, he worked as a research methodologist at the National Center for Health Statistics (which is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) in Washington, DC. His research interests include consumer culture, gender, sexualities, and globalization.