Introduction

As an assistant investigator working on a qualitative study seeking to better understand how families make sense of their worlds and the role of media in that process, I was hearing something important. The man sitting before me, the father of four children, was a Mormon, and a scientist-a complex juxtaposition of personal values. He explained how what he considered liberal environmental interpretations of the Greenhouse Effect, repeated in media and educational settings, had prompted him to offer to visit his son's science class to give the other side of the story. My method had revealed a simple act of volunteerism. But what do my guiding theories tell me about this practice in relation to media and greater culture? What strategies enable a Mormon scientist to blend two seemingly different worldviews to live within the culture that surrounds him? What role does he play within the family unit in the process of meaning construction and maintenance? What role does the entire family play in its relation to greater culture? And specifically, what is the role of media in this process of social interaction?

While this case study of a Mormon family in North-Central Colorado will not provide the answers to all of these questions, it is a beginning. In this first report of my work on this project, I will describe the theoretical and methodological foundations of our research, and specifically use the case study as a vehicle to begin to model one aspect of family reception phenomena-that is the family's apparent need to locate itself behind a boundary created and maintained with discourses of greater culture. I am also becoming aware that parents may play defined roles in the maintenance of the family boundary. What is more, in a process I have labeled "seeding," the parents work to plant the form of their boundaries in their children who are expected to develop their own boundaries which will admit appropriate influences while shielding them against cultural values the parents deem dangerous. Despite expressing progressive notions of agency, the parents expect their children's boundaries to eventually be similar, if not a mirror image, of their own. In the end, I hope the description of one family's practice in relation to media, and its revelations about the boundary metaphor, may help us move toward more helpful understandings of the way people define their worlds amidst a swirling profusion of symbols, calling into question the usefulness of concepts such as agency and determination.

Symbolism, Media, and the Lifecourse

The fundamental aim of scholarship in the social sciences is finding evidence that demonstrates the efficacy of models representing human relations. The history of media studies consists of a great diversity of attempts to reach this goal. The common story of the field in this country recounts: efforts to describe the 'instrumental' and 'strong effects' of media; the rise of the 'limited effects' paradigm, such as the 'two-step' or 'multi-step' flow; still more subtle effects, such as those modeled by 'agenda setting,' 'uses and gratifications,' and 'cultivation' theories; humanistic approaches that celebrate the interpretations and negotiations of each and every unique individual using the products of media; and continental critical theory which finds fault with any who ignore social processes that must in some way, they believe, determine the workings of our daily lives. I hope to demonstrate how my research moves toward the conclusion that each of these approaches lacks in its attempt to represent very complex processes of social interaction, including the oftentimes complicated role of media, by way of rather simple models. The questions: Are we determined? Are we autonomous? cannot be answered. We do not know enough yet to make those claims. Our models are not good enough.

The Symbolism, Media, and the Lifecourse project, under the direction of Dr. Stewart Hoover in the University of Colorado-Boulder's Center for Mass Media Research, is guided by several fundamental ideas that may, in the end, reveal compelling new ideas about social relations. We are attempting, through the theories we utilize in combination with the methods we employ, to put 'dust on the fingerprints' of social interaction - tracing the way people live and think and make meanings about their worlds. But the metaphor is not quite right. Fingerprints are material. We can never fully present the material of life, but are after better representations, models, and metaphors. Armed with the goal, the project is based on these fundamental ideas. First, we believe we have entered a truly post-modern time in which a growing number of people are seeking and questing, assembling diverse, and perhaps opposing, discourses about themselves and the greater world.(1) Second, we believe humans, like never before, have access to a variety of discourses from diverse locations. This is mostly due to the pervasiveness and availability of attractive and persistent forms of media.(2) And third, while the bulk of past scholarly social scientific work has focused on the individual or, greater society, we believe the family unit to be a rich, important, and often overlooked site of meaning creation and maintenance.

The qualitative methods we employ in our Lifecourse research, while not yet reaching the level of "active" or "complete" ethnographic involvement,(3) do afford a sense of Weber's notion of verstehen.(4) As I will describe below, to make sense of audience experience, we must find ways to account for the perceptions and emotions that define it. By developing a receptional verstehen, we can begin to model the complexity of the meaning making phenomena of reception.

Reception Analysis

It would seem natural in this sort of research that one would acknowledge, draw upon, and critique the classics of reception analysis. Indeed, Rosalind Brunt does us a service when she called fellow British media scholar David Morley a pioneer in the field, surpassing more instrumental media studies that, she argued, ignored the role of the viewers and "inhibited concrete engagement with audiences." She also held up Morley's work as an antidote for the research that celebrates "active" audiences and their resistances, as well as 'uses-and-gratifications' approaches she characterized as mere description, but not much else.(5) Morley conducted his research by presenting a particular episode of "Nationwide," a British current affairs program, to different, well-acquainted audience groups. He then analyzed their follow-up discussions about the program based on "dominant," "negotiated," and "oppositional" readings-an approach first introduced by the sociologist Frank Parkin and later expanded upon by Stuart Hall. Brunt was enthusiastic about Morley's "interest in actual audiences," his realization that audiences are linked to text, and that communication within established social groups often plays an important role in individual interaction with media.(6)

But Morley's "Nationwide" study, while making important contributions, suffered weaknesses. For example, Brunt had reservations about aspects of Morley's encoding-decoding model, especially his failure to account for the way groups actually decode television.(7) To be fair, Morley discussed the lacuna in "The 'Nationwide' Audience: a Critical Postscript," as well as Television, Audiences and Cultural Studies. He recognized that his model needed work, pointing out how it presented meaning as an un-changing packaged entity, and acknowledged that "decoding" was a much more complex act than the way he had described it. He also noted the inadequacy of locating various groups he studied within Parkin's typology of "meaning-systems." Morley wrote:

Although reference is made to the effectivity of the structures of age, sex, race and class, only the latter is dealt with in anything resembling a systematic way. . . . it can be argued that there is no a priori reason to stop at age, sex, race and class-that there is an infinite range of factors (from religion to geography to biology) which could be taken into account as determinations on decoding practices. But while there is indeed no a priori reason against this extension of the list of structural variables to be taken into account, there is considerable empirical evidence to suggest the greater effectivity of the factors selected in determining a range of cultural practices.(8)

Despite his attempts at theory evolution, Morley's model locates the momentum of meaning in the message and does not go far enough in accounting for the practice of audience meaning making.

Janice Radway represents the move of reception studies toward agency, but in doing so, may have overcorrected Morley's structural leanings. In her study of a particular reading community, Radway set out to capture the conscious and unconscious elements of the romance novel readership phenomenon, and on one level she clearly succeeded, drawing from her data a sense of readers forging for themselves a meaning making space.(9) Strengths included: a Geertzian approach to social understanding that recognized the way culture is a system of ideas, values and beliefs that organizes the way we think about the world; a rejection of the formalist belief that meaning is embedded within a text; the rejection of the Frankfurt School argument that mass society is all-determinant; and the recognition that the women she observed and interviewed used the act of reading to create their own space within the realm of dominant discourses.

But Radway overadjusted by apparently eschewing the Morleyean use of the "meaning systems" model and demonstrating the same celebration of "active," resistant audiences that Brunt warned about. While there is some recognition of a somewhat determinative social structure, the bulk of meaning making momentum, according to Radway's model, is lodged in the individual reader. We lose a sense of the complex interrelationship of individual, family, and greater culture. Radway carried the recognition of audience too far.

Brunt's study examining political opinion formation in a British community is exciting for the way she and her colleagues may have actually observed the essence of meaning creation and maintenance. By combining some of the strengths of both Morley and Radway, the Brunt team revealed new ways to understand the complex relationship between media and audience. Her study examined how community members constructed and maintained political meanings in relation to political coverage in the media. The Brunt project showed established social groups in a town a current affairs program that had introduced the community and highlighted important issues in an election. Group members conversed together, and with researchers, about what they had seen. Analysis demonstrated an overall resistance to media (across all of the social groups observed and interviewed) based on various conspiracy theories about presumed outsiders controlling their political fates. But the similarities ended there, with each group expressing a unified, but differing, view on the specifics of who, or what, controlled the media, often based on how much that group actually participated in the political process. For instance, miners (many of whom had been involved in political actions) shared one interpretation of media coverage, while a group of unemployed people who regularly met and discussed the news at a bar, had a different take on media bias and distortion. In the process of asking the groups to provide textual examples of media deviations from the assumed truths about local politics, they actually constructed new meanings. Brunt was able to show how Morley, by concentrating on the decodings of the text, missed the fecund meaning potential within social groups. Further, in contradistinction to the direction of Radway's research, Brunt urged social scientists to avoid the temptation to dictate to their subjects the real way to live, but rather, to work harder to understand the ways in which they are already really living on their own terms. "By not asking merely, What do people do with the text? (stop) but, What do they do with the text in the real world? a way is offered for 'audience' to mean more than merely receiver or reader of others' encodings," Brunt said.(10)

The similarities of Brunt's research to the emerging ideas of the ongoing Lifecourse project are striking. Though she did not arrive, Brunt's destination was a much more complex, nuanced account of the world of social relations than had been conceived before. Brunt's model did not locate the momentum of meaning-making in the text (Morley), or in the individual audience member (Radway), but rather, in a lived social reality. The Lifecourse project wishes to continue Brunt's journey, probing even deeper into social relations by drawing on, and hopefully improving upon, the approaches collectively titled "Cultural Studies."

Cultural Studies

Cultural Studies opened to analysis "a range of historical, lived practices in the cultural sphere which have traditionally been ignored or explained away."(11) It is important, as Gramsci argued, to understand social phenomena as a complex relationship of material as well as intellectual (social/cultural) relations.(12) Cultural Studies recognized the autonomy of the "appropriative and constructive actions of audiences."(13) Some Cultural Studies scholars have demonstrated the negotiative potential of an audience with media messages, and the ability of audience members to construct their own meanings in the practice of symbolic action. However, it has never completely shaken off the notion that capital interests 'determine' audiences. While problematizing class, it still considers class an empirical/normative category. As Carey argued, Cultural Studies has been hampered by its inability to realize life's embedded symbolic practices.(14)

The Lifecourse project seeks an "embedded and naturalistic understanding" of how we create and maintain meanings with media.(15) Following Klaus Bruhn Jensen, who problematized Saussurian "semiology" because of its unyielding promotion of the determining nature of language, Jensen's "semiotics" offered an alternative. Jensen wrote, "different signs enable us to know about reality, even though the status of signs and the nature of reality are subject to unlimited semiosis..."(16) To summarize, the first, 'intended,' meanings of symbols and media messages change (often quickly) as audience members fold them into their social worlds. With each use, we may see a new iteration of meaning, with the original meaning losing any connection to the sign.

But our method is about much more than simply describing the "subject," in this case the social phenomena of an individual family. As I have stated, I will offer a theoretical argument that recognizes a family's inherent need to ground itself within boundaries it maintains with discourses of greater culture. Before moving to examples from the case study, I will support these conceptions (grounding, boundary, discourse) with specific boundary theory.

Boundary Theory

In their classic work The Social Construction of Reality, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann presented the human as producing itself, not as an isolated enterprise, but in concert with all others in social phenomena-a self-producing social sphere. They imagined a dialectical process between individuals and their worlds of externalization, objectification, and internalization. We labor, they argued, the outcome of our labor is represented as named products or ideas, and then we further personally value them.(17) As David Morgan summarized:

A world is a relentless circulation of values, an unceasing exchange of labor for goods and goods for meaning. Each act is converted into the next, each presupposes the other. None of these moments is the absolute origin of reality, and none amounts to an ultimate aim, for every meaning that we derive from a product is reinvested in the unending quest for more or different meaning. The world is an ongoing production..."(18)

But can one imagine a model that might helpfully represent that "ongoing production?" We can make our first approach to the question with the thinking of behavioral scientist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

Csikszentmihalyi advanced the theory that the human self is fragile and constantly threatened by what he termed "psychic entropy." Each of us is, he argued, precariously balanced, always working to maintain equilibrium. It is the things around us, Csikszentmihalyi believed, that play a special role in our struggle against entropy. He and his colleagues demonstrated this with a cross-generational study of families and their relationship with the objects in their homes. By gaining entree, observing the 'stuff' collected there, and asking questions, Csikszentmihalyi concluded that these cultural artifacts are much more than just decorations or tools for living. These objects in turn help us to ground, or objectify, our selves in three ways. They include:

1. Demonstrating the owner's power and place in society (e.g., at one time the claw necklace gave the one who killed the bear a sense of enhanced power in the community. Now the spacious house and expensive car may play the same role);

2. Reminding, and thus connecting, us to the past, locating us firmly in the present, signaling hope for the future; and,

3. Giving firm evidence of one's position in her/his social order.(19)

When Morgan summarized Berger and Luckmann (above) saying that meanings are relentlessly circulating in an "unceasing exchange of labor for goods and goods for meaning," I would like to replace the term "goods" with Csikszentmihalyi's "objects." In other words, meanings are an ever-changing result of an "unceasing exchange of labor for objects and objects for meaning." It is, of course, simple to criticize the model as it is presented now. Standing alone, according to what I have argued thus far, the statement is asking us to believe that the meanings of our worlds are a result of our relationship with photographs, figurines, lamps, and other household artifacts about the home, and those objects help to define who we are. It is here, though, that I would expand on Csikszentmihalyi's notion of the "object." For instance, Csikszentmihalyi, appropriately, criticizes social scientists who devote their interest to the effects of television. He wrote these "researchers are not interested in how the television affects people but only the effects of programs."(20) But while adopting a McLuhanesque, 'medium is the message,' position on television, he forsook the work of social scientists he criticized, leaving television programs out of his analysis. With the help of cultural anthropologist Mary Douglas, I will try to rectify that oversight and demonstrate how thinking about all social relations in objective terms has great explanatory power.

Douglas was interested in interpreting schemes of classification, reaffirmed by our speech and rituals, that give meaning to symbols. She hoped her interpretations might reveal the patterns and the structures of culture. Douglas believed seemingly simple issues, such as the treatment of dirt, are paramount because of what they tell us about social systems and the rules of classification. In other words, activities such as tidying, cleaning, sorting, and putting things in their place reinforce the structure of social reality and moral sentiments. Douglas wrote:

...rituals of purity and impurity create unity in experience. So far from being aberrations from the central project of religion, they are positive contributions to atonement. By their means, symbolic patterns are worked out and publicly displayed. Within these patterns disparate elements are related and disparate experience is given meaning.(21)

We can thus use Douglas to expand upon Csikszentmihalyi in three ways. First, she provided an enhanced notion of the uses of 'objects.' It is evident when she wrote, "disparate elements are related and disparate experience is given meaning." The key word is "disparate." Csikszentmihalyi might agree with the objectification of the stuff we call "dirt," but Douglas helpfully moves a step further, by linking cultural values related to the concept of "dirt," such as the practice of higher classes considering perceived lower classes to be 'dirty.' Csikszentmihalyi might not categorize an entire class of people as an 'object.' Secondly, Douglas might objectify the act of negatively classifying the cultural practices of those classes, such as the media they use (e.g., television shows, movies, radio programs). The entire practice of, say, watching a TV program popular with a particular group sharing similar socio-economic characteristics may not appeal to those with a different demographic profile. Thirdly, Douglas enhances Csikszentmihalyi by identifying an act that connects with objectification when she wrote, "symbolic patterns are worked out and publicly displayed." This happens in the myriad rituals of daily life. Robert Wuthnow, in his summary of Douglas's thinking, wrote, "...ritual is preeminently a form of communication, a kind of language which communicates social information, and as such helps replenish society's collective sentiments."(22) This idea of "collective sentiments," or Douglas's "unity of experience" and "symbolic patterns" (above), further expands Csikszentmihalyi's ideas of objectification. People utilize the so-called objects of existence, both concrete and abstract, vested with meanings, to engage in rituals which form and maintain boundaries. Douglas contributed to social understanding by arguing that attitudes about dirt and cleanliness are rituals for maintenance of the status quo, or boundaries, just as much as more 'official,' institutionalized religious and political activities.(23)

Armed with a sense of the human need to ground within boundaries, what might these boundaries look like? Should we represent Douglas's 'status quo' with the metaphor of a single, dominant system of values? I would argue that it is more helpful to imagine a bundle of sometimes ideologically opposing meaning systems, intertwined in a complex relationship. The theory of French theorist Michel Pecheux is helpful here. Pecheux carried Saussure's semiologic ideas to the next level of abstraction, arguing for a "phenomenon of inter-discourse," a masterful explanation of the subject as intersection of discourses rather than the common Enlightenment notion of subject as defined unit of consciousness.(24) In other words, the space we occupy is crossed by a variety of different discourses that we "negotiate" with, accepting some messages while rejecting others. It is helpful, he explained, to think of this in terms of the "imbrication" of roof tiles. Each discursive formation is represented by an individual tile. As the tiles overlap one after the other, or "imbricate," to eventually form the roof, we can see the way that, while each tile does not equal the entire roof, or follow the pattern of the roof (think of occasional errant tiles that are cracked, or pointing in odd directions) as a whole, they follow its general shape. This roof metaphor might represent something we could label a 'status quo,' or 'dominant meaning system.' However, Pecheux's imbrication model allows us to understand how the status quo is a collection of sometimes opposing discourses. While Pecheux imagined the roofs of existence to be materially determined, like Gramsci (above) I hope to show how we must also account for intellectual (social/cultural) relations as well.

Case Study

The literature defining the scope and intent of the Lifecourse study called for a method "which is at the same time 1) sufficiently grounded; 2) centered on the subject; 3) rooted in the perspective of the subject, and; 4) draws its understandings from the constructions made by the subject."(25) Recognizing that a great deal of a subject's meaning construction takes place within the context of his/her private life, and recognizing that there has been little empirical work in this area, the Lifecourse project is following the approach of Silverstone, mapping household interaction with cultural symbolic resources.(26) In its initial phases, 60 households from a wide-range of social, educational, economic, racial and religious backgrounds are involved in a series of depth interviews, first as a family, and then individually. These interviews are a rich, multi-faceted source of theoretical as well as methodological insights as we ask questions, note interactions among family members, observe the symbolic character of the household, and pay special attention to activities related to media. Regular analysis meetings, where we pour over transcripts and notes, are a constant source of emergent ideas.(27)

From my first contact with the project, I was struck by what seemed to be a universal protectiveness exhibited by families in their relation to greater culture. They were especially wary of media and their assumed delivery system of the symbols and messages of the outside world. But with the help of other project members, I soon recognized subtle but significant differences in their practice with media. While some families seemed to comfortably co-exist with media, both appropriating and rejecting meanings with little anxiety, other families were more fearful of the potential dangers, and more careful with their interactions. The Carter family would fall into the latter family type. While there may be no 'bright white lines' in social relations, the Carters come close, presenting a clear example of the model I am trying to introduce in this paper-the boundary phenomenon.

The Carters

The Carters(28) are a middle class(29), white family living in a medium sized city in Colorado. 36-year-old Gary Carter is a professor of soil science at a state university. His wife, 35-year-old Katy, is a full-time homemaker. Both are registered Republicans. They have four children: 11-year-old Brian; 10-year-old Tommy, 7-year-old Manny, and 5-year-old Kelli. Gary described his family as "strong," "close-knit," and "openly affectionate."(30) Brian said he values his family for the feeling of "...love and care . . . you always have someone to go to with problems."(31) The Carters are active in their secular community, both parents are members of the PTO, Gary coaches sports and serves on a local zoning board, Katy leads a Girl Scout troop, and the older boys tutor reading at school. Katy said, "We have these kids and you just can't expect someone else to raise them . . . so we want to make sure that we're doing our part."(32) But their greatest involvement is with their congregation, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, where Gary counsels the bishop, Katy works with teen-age girls, and both volunteer for sub-groups such as Cub and Boy Scouts. "Church is kind of a central thing for us," Gary summarized. "I mean, first family and then church is really the way it goes in this...in our family anyway."(33) But in a later interview, Gary nudged the Mormon experience even higher on his hierarchy of existence. "Religion is so much a way of life that it is our family."(34) Gary and Katy are sixth generation Mormons. Katy proudly traces her lineage back to the famous 19th century handcart march across the mountains to Utah.

The Discourses

Gary is clearly the moral leader in the family and is able to abstractly define his system of beliefs. While Gary can (and enjoys) pouring over the finer details of Mormonism, Katy presents a more concrete version of their belief structure. Gary establishes and articulates the 'rules for living'-it is Katy's job to execute them.(35) Despite that, Katy provided the most succinct statement about the central focus in their lives when she described their Mormonism as, "a way of life."(36) Every aspect of their lives, from work, to school, to play, is touched in some way by their faith. For this reason, according to Penelope's definition (see endnote 24), their Mormon worldview is a dominant discourse in their life.

One might identify other discourses important to the Carters (e.g., worldviews related to democracy and community), but the second prominent frame of thinking I will locate in a model of their 'boundary' is a certain scientific rationalism, promoted by Gary at every opportunity, and tolerated by his wife. Because Gary is the moral leader, he is free to impose his scientistic views on his family. Gary's rationalist ideas often emerge in his discussions about media coverage of the environment, which he says is often one-sided and concentrated on the extremes of opinion. "It's interesting," he said, "that some of the things that are portrayed as being truth are very unsubstantiated most of the times. . . . we need to temper our reaction to it by what we really know is happening." We can do this, he said, by "getting the story straight."(37) We can do that, he said, by adhering to the known truths of science.

Before we move on to examples of the way media practice relates to what I have modeled as one family's Mormon/rational boundary, it is important to understand how the two seemingly opposing worldviews can be unproblematically interlinked to have such an influence on one family. For Gary Carter, it is easy. "The supreme scientist," he said, "is God."(38) The Mormon church shares the progressive scientific commitment to human progress, working to improve the sanitation, nutrition, and welfare of people worldwide, Gary said. Mormonism and Enlightenment thinking, he argued, also place humans squarely in the stewardship role, caring for the earth and all its living creatures. Both science and Mormonism, Gary said, are concerned with finding truth. "There's a scripture in the Book of Mormon that says that, 'By the power of the Holy Ghost you may know the truth of all things,'"(39) Gary said, adding that the more he looks into the life sciences, "...everyday I get something new that deepens my conviction in a supreme being and a creator."(40)

Grounding

Csikszentmihalyi's notion of entropy avoidance is evident in the way Gary credited his Mormon/rational foundation (or boundary), to a bishop who counseled him as he entered college to ground himself with "spiritual sensitivity." Despite being "bombarded" with a "lot of knowledge," the bishop promised him he would be able to "sift through it to find truth."

So to me, using spiritual sensitivity, if you want to call it that, tuned to all the truth that might be out there in the world, in the universe, can really help a scientist get to the heart of the matter, you know, look for the questions that really need to be answered, look for the things that are maybe not well understood enough to call, you know, the hard fact. So, I...just everyday I'm looking for stuff like that.(41)

Katy was confident in Gary's leadership about truth, but worried for her children, saying they need to be grounded in a strong philosophical foundation.

Katy: "...for kids, you know, it matters what movie everybody else is seeing, or, what...how everybody is playing on Sunday. Or, you know, how all the...how even Mormons that they read in the paper are playing on Sunday...you know. You know, Steve Young's a great guy and that...and so I think, that's the difficult part is teaching the kids.(42) I don't find it for myself difficult to...

Interviewer: But for the young ones who are more impressionable...

Katy: Right. And I think my parents probably felt that same way when I was growing up. But I think as an adult then you can see. So I'm hoping that that'll happen (laughs) when they become adults too.

Interviewer: Yeah, that they'll be able to guide themselves.

Katy: Right, right...(43)

Though they often could not verbalize exactly why, the Carter children seemed to 'get it' that being grounded in something is essential.

Interviewer: How important would you say religion is to you?

Tommy: (excitedly) It's important!

Interviewer: Is it important?

Tommy: Yeah.

Interviewer: Why?

Tommy: Um, I don't know.(44)

Boundaries

The Carters need to 'ground' and do so behind a Mormon/rational boundary. But what exactly does this practice look like? The boundary metaphor naturally evokes the first and simple explanation of this model-the act of repelling media material deemed 'inappropriate' according to their core values, because, as Gary explained, if "we're just absorbing things...then I think it can have a real negative impact."(45) The Carters, even the children to a limited degree, easily identify a long list of offensive topics. While describing his reaction to the "Beevis and Butt-head" TV show, Gary summarized that "nothing could be this far away from our personal beliefs."(46) The "out of bounds" topics the Carters said they avoid on shows like "Beevis and Butt-head" and others included the usual "mature subjects," such as sex and violence. But they also targeted more subtle, "irreverent," presentations, such as: programs that fail to portray the pain and devastation associated with violence (e.g., "Jag," and "Nash Bridges"); shows that promote disrespect to family and specifically parents (e.g., "The Simpsons"); programs that sensationalize "a small fraction of the population in society" (i.e., talk shows); and shows with no redeeming value (e.g., soap operas)(47). Their critique did not end there. The Carters also expressed concern about media portrayals that depict life in a "frivolous" manner (sitcoms), that resolve serious conflicts in an hour (dramas), that glorify war, that trivialize human suffering (TV news), that commodify culture (i.e., commercial jingles based on old hit songs), and depict "good looking girls and macho guys" drinking beer.(48)

It is natural to pay attention to what stays out, but by also asking the seemingly mundane question, 'What gets in?' the door cracks open to the complexities of media practice. When the Carters have time, they will watch "Home Improvement," a favorite of the entire family. They also enjoy sitting down together to watch "The Wonderful World of Disney" on Sunday night and will occasionally view a "TGIF" block of what Gary described as "family oriented comedies" on one of the networks Friday night. What 'gets in' is not limited to commercial programming. They also enjoy playing a game with the advertisements where the first person to identify the company represented in the commercial wins. I asked Gary what they win:

Nothing, you know, we just say, "I got that one!" You know, so you keep tally, you know, so they come on and, you know, they go, "Bud-wei-ser," (kids all laugh at dad imitating the Bud frogs ) or whatever, you know, and, "Ahhh! That's Budweiser!" or, "That's Toyota!" or "That's Ford!" or something like that.

The Carters appreciate public TV, especially nature shows and late night "oddball English comedies" which Gary will tape and show to his children. The family will usually go to, or rent, 'G' or 'PG' movies and will watch a 'PG-13' film, but only, Gary explained, "if we've seen it before and decided it wasn't too scary."(49) Action movies such as "Mission Impossible" and "Jurassic Park" are examples.

The first model I have created for this research project (see figure 1 at the end) does not completely satisfy the aim of the Lifecourse study because it represents the location of an individual in relation to greater culture and media, and not an entire family. However, it nicely summarizes the discussion thus far about the meaning making practice of someone like Gary Carter, and serves as a starting off point for the rest of this paper, which will attempt to represent an aspect of the meaning making practices (especially in relation to media) of the entire Carter family. As one can see, the myriad possibilities of greater culture are represented as a large arrow. A small fraction of the potential sources for meaning appropriation are listed within the arrow. As I have explained in my analysis (above), a large proportion of these 'message systems' or 'objects' (to use Csikszentmihalyi's conception) never get past the Mormon/rational boundary, while others fit the values of the boundary, perhaps reinforce it (consider the role of Csikszentmihalyi's 'objects'), and move through. But if it was as simple as that, I could conclude that I had merely re-worked an instrumentalist conduit model much the way Lazarsfeld did with the "two-step flow." But as I hope to demonstrate, what is happening is much more complicated.

At one time, the Carters had a "gift subscription" to National Geographic magazine. "We loved that," Gary remembered. "You know, the kids just like to thumb through that." In fact, Gary appreciates the informational value of a special edition on water so much that he still uses it in classes as a reference. "It's fantastic," he said. But National Geographic, Gary explained, suffers from a serious editorial problem. "There is a whole lot of a...of what I would consider a liberal viewpoint or environmentalist...professional environmentalist...viewpoints that's woven into a lot of the stories." It is interesting because he said those viewpoints are often delivered in National Geographic, PBS nature shows, and in his children's public school classrooms-all aspects of greater culture that clear his Mormon/rational boundary and come in contact with his children. Finally, when son, Brian, told him his science class would be studying the rain forest, Gary felt he had to do something. He knew Brian would be subjected to what he considered liberal environmental interpretations of the Greenhouse Effect, an atmospheric phenomenon said to cause global warming whose existence Gary questions. He knew the class would also be told the people living in the rain forests are employing slash-and-burn agricultural methods and must be stopped.

I lived in South America for two years. I was a missionary for the church down in Bolivia for two years, and lived with the Native American people down there in the Andes Mountains and stuff. And so I said, "Would you mind me coming in and talking about the culture of these people that I lived with?" and stuff. And I told them right at the outset, I want to weave in kind of an idea of what it's like to live in these countries where they're basically destitute. And they have...you know they're poor and undeveloped and other things and then kind of give them a little bit of a different perspective. They welcomed it. The teachers that I worked with. They welcomed it, and had me in two years in a row to do it when the boys were going through that unit in fourth grade and they've asked me if I'd come back and do it again in the future. So, and I said, "Yeah." And it is...they said, "You know, we're always looking for these balancing perspectives, but we don't get them in the curriculum that we get handed." So I think the teachers are looking for accurate information and they're not trying to be one-sided about it but that's what they have to work with...(50)

Gary's act of volunteerism, his attempt at boundary maintenance, paid off. Brian said, after what his dad reported in class and what he has told him on other occasions about the Greenhouse Effect, he is no longer concerned.

Brian: Well, he shows us things that are happening with the environment and things that we should help do, and, I know that my dad's teaching this, it kind of helps think, "Well this is probably pretty true." It helps you see that this is actually...

Interviewer: Have you ever seen something on TV and then, he said, "You know that's not really quite right."

Brian: Yeah. Things like all this stuff about this, um, the 'Greenhouse Effect.' He says it's not even happening really. He said if it, it's like warming up like point 000003 degrees every year. And it's not even enough to feel, and, it will never happen that the earth will, like, overheat. It's...it will never happen, he says.(51)

But While Gary has the special skills to recognize and 'set the record straight' on information about the environment, he is unable to keep all 'inappropriate' influences away from his children. Many cultural symbols and messages are too subtle, too persistent, or too prevalent for intervention. They may be packaged right along with acceptable symbols, messages, and values, and are impossible to parse out. For instance, this passage from the family interview provides an example of the way exposure to an 'acceptable' TV show such as "Home Improvement" introduces 'unacceptable' behavior.

Katy: (To Gary) Don't you think...don't you think we're like "Home Improvement?" Isn't that why you like to watch it?

Gary: A lot of times we are.

Katy: That we're like...these guys are like (imitates from the show--low voice) "Huh, huh, huh, huh, huh."

Manny: (7-year-old son, offers his own imitation--low voice) "Huh, huh, huuuuh!"

Gary: There's a lot of male...there's a lot of maleness in this house.

(The other boys are making sounds from the show, kind of like their mom and Manny.)

Katy: Everything you know, how much wattage can I put into everything...a...kind of the big deal. How much can I eat? And how much bodily noises can I make? Don't you think you guys are like "Home Improvement" guys?

Manny: Yeah. Huh, huh, huh!

Gary: The parents.

Interviewer: Are you guys like "Home Improvement?"

(Manny is really sounding like an ape now to which Katy responds)

Katy: Yeah! (Laughs) Huh, huh, huh, huh!

Interviewer: (To Gary) So how are you like...how are you like him? (Referring to character played by Tim Allen)

Gary: Oh, I'm very...

Interviewer: So every once in awhile you'll see something he'll do that...

Katy: (laughs)

Gary: (laughs)

Katy: All the time!

Gary: I'm...I'm...I'm...kind of clumsy. But, a...

Tommy: Kind of?

Gary: Yeah, and I'm into...I'm into things...

Katy: (laughs...then admonishes Tommy for what could be construed as disrespect to his father. Interesting to me that Gary ignored the comment, but Katy jumps into to reinforce the authority of Gary) Tommy!

Gary: I'm into things like electronics, and a...I'm not so much into cars like he is, but, you know, tools...and fix-it repairs and stuff like that. And, sports...and a...stuff like that...so it's a...I mean, wouldn't...I wouldn't make myself exactly him, but there's a lot of elements in him that we have here.(52)

The way "Home Improvement" is infused within this family is obvious, but what is most interesting is the way Tommy shows disrespect to his father by following up Gary's admittance of begin "kind of clumsy" by asking, "Kind of?" Despite still laughing from the levity of the moment, mother Katy recovers her role as rule enforcer, admonishing Tommy. Much of the feeling of the exchange is lost in the transcription, but hearing the tape, it is clear that Tommy's making fun of his father is not acceptable in this household. In his individual interview, Gary again brings up the connection to Tim Allen on "Home Improvement" but says, "I see myself as a little more intelligent."(53) Other examples of unacceptable material 'getting in' the Carters' boundary include dirty jokes on the Comedy Channel. Gary enjoys watching it at the hotel when he travels for work but said he does not feel comfortable repeating much of what he hears. Finally, Katy's is offended by the popularity of the "Budweiser Frogs" that croak "Bud...Weis...ERRR!" (Drinking is unacceptable in the Mormon faith.) "I mean, they love the frogs," she said, "it's so funny, you know that beer commercial, everything that's really funny, and this and that, and they tell you what happened on the last one and you think, 'Wait a minute! Wait a minute!'"(54) (Note how Gary actually evoked the "Budweiser Frogs" as an example of the family's commercial identification game [above]).

The boundary is, thus, not completely prophylactic. The examples demonstrate its porousness in relation to certain concepts which, in a sense, slip through. But the boundary also must not be permanent. It must have a life-a period of development, maintenance, and eventually a certain decay, even in as firmly rooted a family as the Carters. It is difficult to detect such long term dynamics over the course of a number of hours of family and individual interviews, but I may have stumbled upon evidence of a strong challenge to the boundary which resulted in a slight shift in their media practice. Due to medical complications, the Carters lost a child just a few days after delivery several years ago, an event Gary labeled "the most significant thing to happen in our family ever."(55) The death was subsequently related to a change in their use of the media.

Gary: I love to watch the news and "David Letterman" almost every night. When I get a chance I do that, the ten o'clock news followed by "David Letterman"...and the impact of...the changes that came on me emotionally and other things...I don't think I watched television for about two months after that, regularly. I never could go down and listen to the news very much and...the levity of the "David Letterman" show just didn't appeal to me at that point.

Interviewer: It wasn't funny anymore.

Gary: And so I just kind of didn't do that for a long time. So, yeah, I guess we did in a way avoid that kind of contact.

Katy: Well, my favorite show used to be "ER"...

Gary: Oh yeah, we watched that...

Manny: Oh, that was cool!

Katy: And I can't watch "ER" anymore...

Gary: We could never watch it again.

Katy: I mean, that...that...that's real. There's real people going into the ER...even though, I mean, that's dramatized...

Gary: It's not entertainment anymore.

Katy: It's not even...

Interviewer: That's interesting.

Gary: Yeah, neither one of us can watch...we used to watch it religiously, you know, we followed all the characters for a couple of years.

Interviewer: Yeah, I've watched that show.

Katy: And I found it very entertaining. But not now.

Gary: Not anymore.(56)

Gary was later able to come to terms with what happened. By fitting the event into the framework of his values, especially his Mormonism, he is at peace with the belief that he will one day be reunited with his daughter in heaven. However, Katy's boundary was shaken. Today, when she hears news reports of children being abused, she said she gets upset:

I would think, you know, it isn't fair...it isn't fair that somebody who wouldn't do that has a child die and there's other people, you know, or people who can't have children and all these people who want children are good parents...and can't for whatever reason, and then there's these people who throw them in a trash can.(57)

The Carters still do not watch "ER," and probably never will. Gary said:

I mean, now, having actually experienced that it brings it so close to home that...you know...you see it going on and you know exactly how you felt then and in fact you relive the feelings that you had immediately and the feelings that continue on now.(58)

Whereas, according to the model illustrated above, "ER" would have at one time been represented by an arrow making it through the boundary, it is now a casualty of a change in the boundary. The "ER" arrow is repulsed.

Seeding

Having moved from the description of a prophylactic boundary, to that of a porous and changing boundary, I would like to conclude with a more nuanced discussion of what I have identified as parental boundary 'seeding' (see figure 2, at end). The term is actually Gary Carter's.

I don't want them relying on what dad knew, you know, or mom knew that God lived. That this was what he wanted us to know, or this was what he taught us or something. I want to develop in them the desire for them to know themselves that that's right, that that's true. So we try to do everything we can to encourage them and teach them what we do know and say, "Look," you know, "here's what we've taught ya, but don't take my word for it," you know, and try to seed in them some real burning desire to know for themselves that it's true.(59)

The metaphor, the idea, emerged again and again in interviews with the Carter parents. For example, Katy hoped, "as (her children) grow older they can build within themselves" a sense of what is right.(60) But how, exactly, would they do that? In the Carter family, and I suspect many other families, this 'self building' is prompted and closely guided by the parents. The Carters identified two different versions of the practice. The first involved using media presentations to spur discussion that, with the parents' subtle direction, reinforces established boundary patterns. For instance, Gary recounted:

The kids feel open enough when they do see things that, kind of, are out of wack with things we've talked about as a family in terms of values that they'll bring it up, you know, they'll say something about it, and then we'll have a chance to say, you know, "Well, what do you think?" I mean, "Do you agree with that, or, is that consistent with what you've been taught?" And, you know, then it starts a discussion and generally it turns out to be a positive (discussion).(61)

"Positive" being code for 'falling in line with family values.' The second form of seeding evident in the interviews is the act of letting the children make rules about media use, according to accepted boundary patterns. This often happens during "family home evenings," a Mormon tradition where, one evening a week, the family gathers to learn biblical lessons, recite scripture, sing hymns, and play games. The Carters also use the time to come up with rules to resolve family conflicts, such as media usage. Gary asks them:

"What are we going to do about it?" And let the kids come up ideas that they have. And a lot of times, we'll have ideas already and we try to steer them into making those rules up too. . . . So then we'll kind of get them involved in the decision making that way. It works out really well because then it's their rules too.(62)

The Carter parents proudly point to 'successes,'or evidence that their children's boundaries are developing properly, such as the time Brian decided not look at pornographic magazines during a friend's sleepover.(63) Time and again, during the individual interview, Brian presented examples that his parents would probably identify as 'proper' boundary growth, including an ability to critique liberal environmental views from a scientific ("... it's like warming up like point 000003 degrees every year. And it's not even enough to feel, and, it will never happen that the earth will, like, overheat.") and a religious ("(God) created the earth and he wouldn't let it be destroyed because men are . . . using nuclear energy . . . He wouldn't let it happen.") point of view. Brian also exhibited a sincere lack of concern that his parents have forbade his watching what he identifies as attractive TV shows. In fact, he does not see the manipulative aspects of Gary's rule creation strategy. "That helps when you're able to actually make the rules," Brian reasoned. "You think to yourself, 'I made these rules, I should follow the rule I actually made.'"(64) Tommy agreed. His parents would undoubtedly feel good about this entire passage and his ability to articulate a protectiveness toward his younger siblings:

Tommy: I think (rules are) good because nobody's like hogging the computer, or, not getting bad ideas from the TV or like what to do or something like that.

Interviewer: Tell me about that, so in other words, if, let's say if there were no rules, what would happen?

Tommy: Um, we'd probably...my brother...little brother and sister probably would watch some TV that they didn't know was wrong and then they'd pick up on the cuss words, or, they'd be doing stuff that was on there, and they wouldn't know.

Interviewer: What would happen, say, to Kelli if she just sat and watched TV, like, whatever was on, just watched it night after night after night...without rules.

Tommy: She'd probably, like, memorize things and be picking up on the words and stuff, and, the bad words and the bad things that are on.

But the seeds do not always grow according to plan, even in a highly controlled Mormon/rational household. Often, the children could not give meaningful reasons for worshipping in the Mormon faith. They could not present a nuanced critique of media. Instead they had found concrete ways to express abstract ideas. And sometimes they missed the foundational value altogether. Tommy, for instance, had missed the point of his father's visit to his science class, interpreting it to mean we should not pollute the environment:

Interviewer: Does he ever talk about the "Greenhouse Effect" and...like the atmosphere getting warmer?

Tommy: No. He doesn't talk about that stuff.

Interviewer: He doesn't talk about that?

Tommy: Well he doesn't talk about it to me, he probably talks about it to my mom, but...(65)

Katy said she must constantly work to offset the attractiveness of violence:

I see it especially in Manny, like, war is really neat, you know, and they'll watch and then they'll watch and they'll say, "Oh...we should just...we should just kill that person! Or we should just..." I mean, (laughs) you say, "Wait! Wait a minute," you know, "No." Or they'll watch something where someone kills someone else and they'll go, "Oooh, cool!" You know, or...and...and just say, "Wait! (Laughs) Wait a minute! That's not..." And then usually, like, at a commercial or something, we'll say, you know, "What if...that's a real a person, you know, if that was a real person that's somebody's dad. Or that's somebody's brother, or that's somebody's..." you know...(66)

But what disturbed Katy the most did not come from the televisual medium, but rather, out of a school reading assignment. Tommy and two other boys were assigned the project of acting out a section of a book of their choice. The boys chose a passage where the protagonist gets drunk on moonshine whiskey. Katy protested, but since the boys seemed reluctant to find a different section of the book to act out, Katy went to the school and told the teacher she would not allow his participation. "I mean we were upset that he hadn't made the decision on his own, that we had to make that decision for him."(67)

Conclusion

In Cultural Analysis, Robert Wuthnow noted how Mary Douglas rejected Levi-Strauss's belief that the entire human social world is composed of paired opposites. "For her, it is often problematic whether a symbolic boundary exists at all," Wuthnow wrote, "and the interesting question therefore is to discover how clearly one is evident, how permeable or impassable it is, and how social activities dramatize its presence."(68) By continuing the tradition of reception analysis, by expanding the scope of cultural studies, and by building on the work of the Symbolism, Media, and the Lifecourse project, my research has allowed me to present a model that moves us toward fulfilling Douglas's goals. In summary, a model of a single boundary (see figure 1) protecting the entire family is not the most helpful representation of what might be happening here. Instead, the interviews led me to imagine a boundary seeded in each Carter child, with one parent overseeing the plan for their growth, the other enforcing that plan, and both watching them grow, pruning errant ideas that do not fit the patterns of the parents' boundaries (see figure 2). The goal is for the children to have a sense of ownership of their boundaries-boundaries that look very much like their parents', and yet, are not. In this way, the parents avoid the dissident reaction inevitable under a more authoritarian approach-an ingenious strategy for defending a family against media and greater culture. Thus, a boundary is "evident" in this family. It is "impassable" at times, "permeable" at others. And the "social activities" of the family allow me to imagine a representative model.

It is a first step. While the Carter family can be modeled with a highly rigid, well-defined boundary separating them from much of greater culture, including media, does that mean that more highly 'suffused' families-families who effortlessly move in and out of diverse cultural (and specifically media) situations-have more permeable boundaries?(69) We do not think so. Our research indicates that all social units that can be defined as 'families' function in relation to some sort of 'boundary.' However those boundaries may vary greatly in the discourses of their structure and the relation of families to them.

Finally, a question Lifecourse project members wrestle with regularly involves the role of agency and determination in relation to family boundaries. I am not yet ready to declare victory for either one. Concentrating on Gary Carter for a moment, what caused (the slight) change in his boundary following the death of his daughter? Was it the interrelated discourse of Mormonism/rationality which determined the change? Did the event of the death phenomenologically cause the change? Or, did Gary bring about the change? I will 'beg off' those questions for now and only conclude that the models I have presented support the claim that all three are happening at the same time (i.e., determinism, phenomenon, and agency). If that is true, perhaps conventional ideas about the nature of the self need updating. By modeling a boundary between family and greater culture, we are forced to face the complexity of the practice of media use. In light of the models emerging from the theoretical and methodological foundations of this paper, it is time perhaps to further re-think the traditional dualism of agency and determination.