Conway 1
Kelli Conway
Kathy Rowley
English 201
23 February 2012
Literature Review: Dyes and Dolls
My article “Dyes and Dolls”, by Ann Ducille discusses issues involving culture and
diversity. The author uses the toy industry to represent the issues that happened throughout our
world. After writing the essays in this course so far, I have a better understanding about
everything that is discussed in this article. I am also prepared for my argumentative essay when
that comes up. When writing my annotated bibliography, I found multiple sources that give
outstanding information on multiple aspects throughout my article. The main topic throughout
the article “Dyes and Dolls” by Ann Ducille, would be the commodification of race and diversity
within culture.
This Literature Review seeks to find additional sources on my topic of culture and
diversity throughout the article “Dyes and Dolls” by Ducille. My first source was, "Schools And
The Diversity Transition In The Wealthy Societies Of The West" by Richard Alba. This was
very scholarly as well as informative of different cultures. The article discusses immigrant
children growing up in school. There were many examples of how schools do things differently.
Also it discusses how societies are going to depend on the older generations to step in,
maintaining the cultures and diversity. It’s a little different than my other topics, but it still seems
to touch on the same overall concept of diversity within culture. It goes on about diversity
changes throughout different societies and states that some modest policies bring improvement
Conway 2
and each system can improve from one another. This relates to my social issue and gives some
insight about culture and diversity within other type of systems like immigrant families versus
natives. This source also analyzes is the performance of the education systems and how it is
crucial for preparing children for life. It will be helpful for my research to look at a different side
of the culture and the diversity involving people of different ethnic backgrounds as well as
different social classes. None of my others discuss situations with the educational systems which
I think with help with a different aspect of my research. My article and other sources discuss a
lot about children and their childhood, but this one is helpful in a different way because it
discusses more of the educational side which is where children learn a lot growing up.
My next source is "Ethnically Correct Dolls: Toying with the Race Industry” by
Elizabeth Chin, which relates to my article extremely well and uses almost exactly the same
examples that Ann Ducille uses in the article in the textbook. Both of the author’s use Barbie
dolls as an example to represent diversity as well as children feeling disconnected from their own
cultures. As well as looking at children’s consumptions of toys and how that portrays how they
act. Using this source will help me by having another view of the same issue and same type of
examples used by both Ducille and Chin. I will be able to compare and contrast what both
authors discuss as well as get a better understanding at the same time. This article focuses on
social inequality and portrays that by using children as an example. They use children as subjects
in a case study by seeing what toys children choose to play with. This relates to my article with
my social issue because they both use toys and children to represent the issue of diversity and
separation of children from their cultures. Chin talks about a case study with the ethnographic
look at race and commodities in children. Using kids in a study like this makes the bigger
theoretical issue more approachable among their age, class, gender and race.
Conway 3
Another view of diversity and culture is represented in the article, "After the Ivory
Tower: Gender, Commodification and the 'Academic” by Joanna De Groot relates to the issue of
discrimination in the UK as well as here in the United States. This made me realize that diversity
issues were not only happening in the US, but around our whole world. There are many issues
with race and gender that appear in many different regions. This article differs from the others
because it is from a different country. In my other sources, my social issue is portrayed with
examples of dolls and girl issues from our class textbook. Groot discusses more about women in
the job industry and the diversity that appears there. As well as the women academics open up
possibilities for women in the UK. This article seemed to connect with the culture and
commodification but outside of the toy industry. This article is written from a feminist
perspective of commodification of those working in gender areas. It addresses that
discrimination is still an important factor for women academically. This came from more of a
historical context approaching terms more like alienation, anxiety and accountability (Groot).
The article explains more about woman getting jobs and how discrimination occurs through that.
Like I stated above, it is discussed from the UK, which means these issues are occurring
globally.
Also relating my social issue globally is another article, “Commodity Cultures” by Peter
Jackson. This article discusses things more with the future. It argues more on the complexity of
people’s relationships in the world. There were a lot of diverse responses from this research. The
whole thing is focusing on what is happening today in our world with commodification of forms
of culture difference, and what can be changed in future research. Like the previous source it
looks globally but also stresses on getting a more complex relationship with people and goods.
What caught my eye with this article was that they worked with anthropology in debates which
Conway 4
with my social issue, anthropology was also used. This article has wide ranges of diversity in
things and seems to use examples to portray the idea culture difference.
The article "Global Encounters: 'Barbie' in Nigerian Agbogho-Mmuo Mask Context" by
Chinyere Okafor discusses the Barbie doll image that represents the beauty image throughout
our world. In America people look at this image and want to be identical to it. But beyond that,
this article discusses how and who it affects globally. They specify with Nigeria, and how it
affects women and their health. The article goes further and discusses the multiple types of
images represented by Barbie dolls. In Nigeria, they appreciate this so that they can acknowledge
the flaws with her. I believe that this is a huge issue, that Barbie is such a huge impact on people.
I think that people should be who they are. Nigerians shouldn’t need to look at a Barbie doll to
feel accepted, while also struggling with their own health just to be portrayed like someone else.
This relates to my article because she relates everything to Barbie dolls and that image that is
portrayed. In my article, the author brings up the other nationalities of different Barbie dolls and
the affects that has on children. This is a scholarly source and relates well the article that I am
working with.
With all of these sources that I have, I believe that they can all relate in some kind of
way. Some sources can be grouped together better than others. For instance the two that discuss
diversity and culture issues globally; I believe that these two are similar in the global aspect but
different at the same time. Beyond these two, all of the sources focus on my social issue and will
all help me have a better understanding of my research. I have become well prepared for my final
essay in this course of English 201. All of these scholarly sources have given me enough
information to build a strong argument and what an argumentative essay entails.
Conway 5
Works Cited
Alba, Richard. "Schools And The Diversity Transition In The Wealthy Societies Of The West."
American Behavioral Scientist 55.12 (2011): 1616-1634. Academic Search Complete.
Web. 23 Jan. 2012.
Chin, Elizabeth. "Ethnically Correct Dolls: Toying with the Race Industry." American
Anthropologist 101.2 (1999): 305-21. JSTOR. Web. 23 Jan. 2012.
<http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/stable/683203>.
Groot, Joanna De. "After the Ivory Tower: Gender, Commodification and the 'Academic'"
Feminist Review 55 (1997): 130-42. JSTOR. Web. 23 Jan. 2012.
<http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/stable/1395791>.
Jackson, Peter. "Commodity Cultures: The Traffic in Things." Transactions of the Institute of
British Geographers 24.1 (1999): 95-108. JSTOR. Web. 23 Jan. 2012.
<http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/stable/623343>.
Okafor, Chinyere G. "Global Encounters: 'Barbie' in Nigerian Agbogho-Mmuo Mask Context."
Journal of African Cultural Studies 19.1 (2007): 37-54. JSTOR. Web. 23 Jan. 2012.
<http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/stable/25473377>.