Harrison Lee's Page

Hey Harrison,

During the first interview with household BC (if you have access to all the synthesis reports, look at the earliest account of the family), we found out that when the father was in the house, he would decide what to watch. I think that this is generally the trend in some of the households with more traditional/conservative hierarchical structures, where the father's word is pretty much the "last word". The other aspect of this, is that since the father often earns the majority of the family's income, and returns home later than the children, he is often served by the other members of the family as a form of respect/acknowledgment of his contribution (and his fatigue as well). Generally what we found is that either the father has the final say in what to watch when all family members are present, or the kids do, in situations where the father either doesn't care too much about it (just wants to relax), or where the parents tend pander to the kids' desires a bit more. Generally, the most "preferred by all" choice was hindi/kannada films.

One of the interesting aspects of our first interview with the family, was seeing how the social dynamics shifted after the father had left the house, after we'd finished interviewing him. Initially, the interviewer was an ethnographer named Meera, a 50 year old woman who speaks the local language. She sensed his discomfort in talking to her, so she purposely sat on the floor while he sat up on the bed, so that she would be looking up at him while asking questions. I don't know if it came out in the synthesis report or not, but when we had asked him what kind of games he plays with his kids, his answer was kind of like a, "why would I play with the kids?" in a way that implied that it was more the role of the women in the family to engage the younger ones in play. This is not necessarily generalizable to most of the families though, since it is contingent on several other factors...(see next comment)