‘Got my shoes, got my Pokémon’: Everyday geographies of children’s popular culture

Abstract This paper considers a particular popular-cultural phenomenon: ‘Pokemon’. Specifically, it concerns a social–historical juncture – a so-called ‘Pokemania’ – wherein Pokemon toys, games, collectables and merchandising were ‘must-have’ items for many children in South-East Asia, Europe, North America, and Australasia. Drawing upon research with Pokemon fans aged 5–8 in the UK, the paper explores some ways in which global cultural phenomena become intimately, complexly and constitutively co-implicated with/in everyday geographies. In so doing, I argue that the quotidian social and spatial import of Pokemon – and other analogous phenomena – should sensitise accounts of children’s everyday spatial practices to the ever-presence of contemporary popular cultural forms, and sensitise accounts of global popular culture to the importance of multifarious, contingent spatial practices.

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