Abstract

This article studies the symbolic and practical meaning of the placement of television sets in different home spaces. Based on fieldwork conducted among a low-income population in Santiago, Chile, it shows how their move to a social housing estate constitutes for these families an opportunity to start organizing their domestic space in a different way, particularly in accordance with modernist distinctions between public and private spaces. In this context television sets appear as a central element of the material culture of the home, symbolizing for family members their access to the normal stock of material culture in urban homes. But at the same time the practice of watching television both in public and private places is commonly resisted, showing that the device still occupies an ambiguous place within the ideas of domesticity of the members of the families under study Copyright © 2008 SAGE Publications.