ABSTRACT

The conventional western soap opera constructs a ‘symbolic community’, weaving together the everyday lives of its inhabitants in a fine web of intricate relationships between kin and neighbours, friends and enemies. The proximity of people’s lives, their closeness in time and place and in their relationships, generates narrative conflict and movement. In key respects, the soap opera embodies many of the characteristics of local life in Southall: the central importance of the family; a density of kin in a small, geographically bounded area; a high degree of face to face contact (a ‘knowable community’), and a distinctive sense of local identity. Similarly, the proximity and contiguity of kin and neighbours generates much of the distinctiveness of social life in Southall.