Girl Scout cookies, familiar to most residents of the USA, represent more than tasty treats, suggests this Ph.D. thesis:
“Smart Cookies: The Gendered Spaces of Labor, Citizenship, and Nationalism in the Girl Scout Cookie Sale,” Denise Marie Goerisch, Ph.D. dissertation in Geography, San Diego State University and University of California, Santa Barbara, September, 2013. The author explains:
“Each year thousands of Girl Scouts sell co
okies to friends family, and neighbors to raise money for their troops and local councils…. Scouts learn to give and care for others under the veil of market capitalism, neoliberalism, and American nationalism, which seeks to reproduce hegemonic gender roles regarding labor, education, and citizenship. Based on a two-year study on the Girl Scout cookie sale, using qualitative methods and rooted in feminist methodologies, this project seeks to understand how ‘spaces of giving’ emerge in the cookie sale and how these spaces shape social constructions of gender, citizenship, and national identity.”
(Thanks to Ron Josephson for bringing this to our attention.)