Page 30 - Cultural Change and Ordinary Life

Concepts and theories of everyday and ordinary life 21

the process of the interview. This involves modes of belonging (to the family
and to educated middle-class groups), distinguishing (from those who watch
lots of TV and listen to stations other than Radio 4) and individualizing (in
that while tastes connect to others, she is still in control). These themes are
taken up further later.
In this chapter, therefore, I have taken some of the initial steps in the
development of the overall argument of the book. I have maintained that
ordinary life is important, but that it is often theorized inadequately in
the context of theories that are of little contemporary use in understanding
complex social changes and is itself changing. Moreover, ordinary life is media
drenched and is increasingly constituted around mediatized processes, but is
not the same as media life. I have tried to exemplify some key aspects of this
through the consideration of the importance of sound and music in ordinary
life. The next step in my argument is to consider in more depth the key
contextualizing social and cultural processes that are reconstituting ordinary
life.

Note
1 This theme is important in Williams’ novels, Border Country (1960), Second Generation
(1964) and The Fight for Manod (1979).