ABSTRACT
The ethnography which forms the main body of this work has been organized so as to cover as comprehensively as possible those factors which have a bearing on women’s use of the VCR. This includes the domestic division of labour, organization of and differential access to spare time, technology in the domestic environment, as well as the more immediately related activities of television and VCR viewing. It is now necessary to reflect on this description of household cultures in order to extend our understanding of them in terms of the wider social structure. This is not, and cannot be, a conclusion in the conventional sense; but it will raise questions for further work in the area. An important part of this enterprise has been to mobilize available theories in so far as they appeared to have explanatory power. In the event, however, the interview data has revealed weaknesses and limitations in some theories which could not account for the kinds of social and cultural patterns which emerged.
