Page 296 - Culture Media Language Working Papers in Cultural Studies

NOTES TO PAGES 17–22 285

15 ‘Contamination’ is often referred to; see, for instance, G.L.McCall, ‘Data quality
control in participant observation’, in McCall and Simmons, Issues in Participant
Observation.
16 Even when connections are admitted, the concern is specifically to rescue that
which is ‘scientific’ for the sociological method. See McCall and Simmons, Issues
in Participant Observation, p. 1.
17 See, for instance, the section on ‘The quality of data’ in McCall and Simmons,
Issues in Participant Observation.
Chapter 6
Green Farm Scout camp

1 Such an invitation to a group of boys was given in the course of dealing with an
emergency at this particular camp. After an incident with another boy one of the
young Scouts escaped from the site and made his way home, thus dramatically
breaking the exterior spatial rules of the camp. His absence motivated a large-scale
search of the surrounding area. But happily the event turned out safely.
2 ‘Avuncularity’ is here defined as a relation in which men and boys are orientated to
a common task, outside the immediate context of the family.

Chapter 7
Housewives and the mass media

1 This extract is part of a longer study which looks at the culture of young working-
class housewives at home with young children. The research was conducted by
tape-recorded interviews and observation in their homes, and it covered many
aspects of their personal experience both before they were married and in their
present situation. For a fuller discussion, see D.Hobson, ‘Housewives: isolation as
oppression’, in Women’s Studies Group, Women Take Issue (CCCS/Hutchinson
1978); D.Hobson, ‘A study of working class women at home: femininity,
domesticity and maternity’ (unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Birmingham,
1978).
2 In my present Ph.D. research I am looking at the production processes of various
popular television and radio programmes, which involves interviewing and
observing the programme makers in the encoding moment, and I will then move to
the audience of those programmes to try to understand their decoding of the
televisual texts.
3 The essential finding of the research from which this extract is taken was that it
was the isolation of their lives which the women found most oppressive, coupled
with their inability to escape from the home either to paid work or leisure activities
(see Hobson, ‘A study of working-class women at home’).
4 For a fuller discussion of the absence of leisure activities, see ibid.
5 I.Connell, L.Curti and S.Hall, ‘The “unity” of current affairs television’, in Culture
and Domination, WPCS, no. 9 (CCCS, University of Birmingham, 1976).
6 There has been some early work on the audience responses to radio serials. Hertzog
looked at the structure of audiences and their responses to programmes of a similar
kind—daytime radio serials. She was predominantly concerned with the