Television and domestic: class marks and gender inequalities

Mar del Plata on the sixties

Abstract

The present article takes up the main findings of an investigation on the introduction of television sets in Mar del Plata households in the middle decades of the twentieth century (Pérez, 2012). The main objective of the research is to think how some of the dynamics observed in the middle of the century allows us to analyze the changes that have taken place in the last decade. In this sense, the text is organized in two different sections that investigate, on the one hand, how the dissemination of television allowed the construction of class distances, and, on the other hand, what was the gender markers of television and television consumption. In both cases, spatiality and temporality are key dimensions of the analysis in this research, both in terms of the importance of regional differences and the possibility of thinking about the history of television in a situated way, but furthermore in relation to the manners in which the boundaries between the public, the private and the domestic, in the home and in the neighbourhoods, were constructed.