THE STRUCTURE OF FAMILY AND ROMANTIC TIES IN THE SOAP-OPERA - AN ETHNOGRAPHIC APPROACH

The authors offer a new approach for the study of soap opera, aimed at discovering the social boundaries within which a particular culture n egotiates its primordial relationships. The interaction between cultur e, power, genre, and gender is revealed by tracing the complex kinship structures of family and romance among soap opera characters and by o bserving how this structure is activated by the narrative. The advanta ges of this ethnographic method are examined within the framework of t hree parallel research traditions of audiences and texts: (a) quantita tive analysis of social stratification (and the corresponding gratific ations) and the wielding of power (content analysis), (b) analysis of meaning and process in the decoding by viewers (reception) and in narr atives (literary analysis), and (c) ties and contexts in the ethnograp hy of viewers and of characters.