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RESULTS

In thinking about this project and attempting to make sense of some of our findings, I turned to existing ethnographic accounts of Europe, hoping to take advantage of their longer time horizons and deeper understandings of particular cultures and practices. Prior to the 1980s, ethnographic accounts of Europe tended toward studies of villages and small-scale rural communities (6, 7). In the 1980s and 1990s, there have been a range of new theoretical and methodological approaches to Europe; anthropological accounts pay attention to the current complexities of identity and identity politics in Europe, with various moves (both legal and economic) that have served to deformalize national boundaries (8, 9, 10). These moves complicate notions of identity, nation, and belonging, as well as community, boundaries and family. However, American anthropology does not have a strong tradition of exploring and examining the complexities of contemporary European cultures let alone of examining the intersections of social practices and emerging technologies in and around domestic spaces.

From our research, it can be said that there are a number of ways in which it is possible to generalize about European life. There is a greater awareness of environmental issues in Europe and a greater willingness to shift and moderate behaviors in order to conserve energy and preserve or renew environmental integrity. There appears to be a stronger sense of the need to balance work and home life–people were not working 60 hours a week (in fact, that is illegal in a number of EU countries) and spending time with family, actively engaging with them, was viewed as a priority. Food, cooking, and eating are also associated with strong rituals and are a source of great pleasure. Public spaces and places seem to have different use patterns and are frequently treated as an extension of the home. People's domestic spaces are, on average, considerably smaller than American homes and occupied according to distinct seasonal rounds. There is a long history of participatory and iterative design in Europe, and choices in domestic appliances reflect a strong appreciation of good design. The phone system (like everywhere else in Europe) is still metered for local calling, so Internet access is not cheap. However, for as much as all of these commonalities might exist, there is no one Europe, and to think about Europe means thinking about a range of different cultural and national traditions.

In approaching Europe, we were especially interested in what people were doing in their homes. We were interested in the "ecology" of the home, that is, the ways in which space was used, and not used, and in the ways that activities went on in and around those spaces. We were also interested in what could be found in those spaces, how people used objects within those spaces, and what people said about what they were doing. Moreover, we were curious about the relationship between the household and the broader community (11, 12).

It also became obvious that a significant portion of people's lives in Europe is conducted outside of the immediate domestic sphere. So in thinking across the domestic and the public sphere, several important cultural domains emerge. All four domains try to focus on people's lived behaviors rather than on technologies. These domains reflect one way to talk about the European material comparatively across cultures.

Domains of Cultural Significance

Here I want to talk about these domains both in abstract terms but also with reference to specific examples that arose from our fieldwork.

Togetherness. Notions of family, kinship and community are extremely important in European households. People talked about their social networks and about the kinds of relationships they had, where they took place, what they revolved around and what events were emotionally important to them. These patterns of sociality became ways of framing how people occupied their space, the kinds of activities they engaged in and with whom.

Along with her husband and three teenage children, Rina lives in a small rural village on the outskirts of a larger town. Rina says of herself, "I am not a housewife; I am an architect with three children and a house to clean." Rina's children go to schools in the neighboring towns, and Herbert, her husband, works as an accountant nearby. It is extremely important to Rina that her whole family eats together. The main meal of the day is frequently mitagessen (lunch), which Rina always prepares. Every day her husband comes home from the office so that he can eat lunch with her. School lets out in the early afternoon so that kids can eat at home with their parents. Rina says that she really likes it when her family can eat alles zussamen (all together) and talk. Meals are the time that everyone is in the same space together. This desire to eat together as a family, as a household, was expressed repeatedly in our interviews in Europe, and it became abundantly clear that meals served as social rituals.

There are other occasions when people gather together. These are often around meals, frequently in public places, sometimes at sporting events, and sometimes for leisure activities. Sometimes people spend time together simply watching television. George and Sara live in a medium-size town between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Married nearly 40 years, Sara has retired from nursing and spends her days tending her garden, walking and swimming for her health, and socializing with her friends in the local community center. George is a doctor and still continues to practice medicine every day. When George comes home in the evenings, he sometimes goes up to his study and works on the computer. But most nights, he comes downstairs to their farm-house kitchen where Sara is cooking, paying bills, washing dishes, and watching television in the background. George says, "Why would I want to sit upstairs without her? I spent all day without her; when I come home, I want to be with her." Although they have bigger televisions in the house, the little one in the corner of the kitchen is the one they watch most.

Across Europe, there is a premium on spending time with other people in person, and much energy is dedicated to make such occasions possible. And although there were marked differences in the kind of language people used to talk about their families or other important social units, and the amount of effort expended to ensure face-to-face social time, the idea of "togetherness" was present in all the households we visited.

Media experiences. There are many different kinds of interactions and experiences that people have around "media." (Here, media was understood to include the widest possible range of media types and media content.) Not only were we struck by the range of different media being consumed by individuals across Europe; we were also struck by the amount of content that was being produced. In almost every population center we visited, there were people painting, drawing, sketching, playing musical instruments, and participating in all manner of artistic production. In several of the countries we visited, this sort of activity is supported by the State, and it is actively encouraged by a range of local municipalities.

All of the homes we visited had televisions, but the ways in which television factored in those households and the lives lived within them varied across cultures. They stood in sharp contrast to the ways in which television factors into life in the US. Print media also plays an important role in daily life across Europe, and there is a genuine diversity of publications and content. Paying attention to television, and to all the other kinds of media that exist in people's homes and people's lives provides us with an interesting vantage point on European daily life.

Across Europe, a history of government subsidies means that television programming has developed along very different lines than in the US. In the UK, and elsewhere, people explicitly talk about the television as providing educational and cultural programming. Thus, in making sense of European media habits, it is important to know the history of media outlets in specific countries: are they government controlled or regulated; what is the nature of that regulation; is there compliance; what is the role of non-local content, and so on. Likewise, it is useful to have a sense of the patterns of programming and offerings: when is the watershed hour; how many channels are there; where and when are timetables published; and how is a broadcast day structured.

Mirabella is a single parent. She lives with her three teenage children on a quiet street in a small coastal town in France. She is a journalist and works long but erratic hours. She used to have cable but she unsubsribed when it became clear that her son was watching too much television and not doing enough work. Now most evenings, she gathers her children on her bed, and together they watch a movie on television. In France, at least one television station plays a movie in its entirety every night. There are no commercials and only a brief intermission at around 9:30pm. Mirabella sends her youngest children to bed at intermission and jokes with me that she is preserving the surprise for them. On Wednesdays, she sits down with her children to watch educational programming: during the summer of our visits, this consisted of a series that followed a typical day in different countries around the world.

The households we visited were strewn with all manner of print media: newspapers, broadsides, cooking magazines, catalogs, fashion and entertainment glossies, television guides, pricelists, and newsletters. Rituals of reading and use abounded, with times and locations peculiar to specific families communities, and nations. Mark is a senior partner in a well-respected global consultancy firm. He lives alone in a large penthouse flat in London where he cultivates a lush garden on his balcony. On the weekends he is in town, Mark buys three different Sunday papers: The Financial Times, The Guardian and The Independent. He says, "I like to know what is going on from a variety of different perspectives; reading all those newspapers gives me that." Mark is not alone in this. Many Londoners read more than one daily newspaper. There is a culture that various news and newspapers represent very different political and social positions. Picking a newspaper that tells you what you want and need to know, as well as one that reinforces or re-inscribes your identity is a common practice across Europe.

Consumption habits. Food shopping is a really important part of daily life in most European countries. There is a range of different consumption patterns and a variety of different spaces in which such consumption takes place. Unlike the US, where grocery shopping happens weekly or fortnightly, in Europe, it appears that shopping is conducted almost daily. People frequent a wider range of merchants with smaller selections than their American counterparts, and what constitutes a good deal is very different. It isn't just about saving money; it is about the perception of value (which doesn't just map directly onto money). Value, in turn, is tied up in relationships between the merchant and the customer, in levels of loyalty, trust, and familiarity.

In a number of countries there is a distinct preference for very fresh foods and thus for daily or weekly produce markets. The marché, or open-air produce market, is an extremely important part of French daily life. In a culture that places high value on preparing, cooking, and consuming food, the act of shopping for foodstuffs is an important one. Even when supermarkets are readily available, people will still choose to shop in the local market. Patrice lives with her husband Frederico and their two small children, in a tiny village in Brittany. In her early 30s, Patrice has retired from working in the company she and her husband started. She now runs her household and looks after her kids and husband. Like many other European women we interviewed, she expressed serious reservations about catalog shopping, saying "I like to touch and see things before I buy them." And although she lives just a five-minute drive from a town with a large supermarket, Patrice chooses to shop in the local produce markets, which cycle through southern Brittany. It is important to buy what is locally and seasonally available: "it just tastes better," Patrice says.

Shopping is not just about buying things, however, it is also about an extended network of social relations. In Spain, you shop locally, frequenting merchants in your barrio. Anna lives with her husband and toddler in a large Basque town near the coast. Her husband is a supervisor in a nearby tire plant and she is taking time off to raise their daughter. After her husband has gone to work, and Anna has tidied up the house and put the bedding outside to air, she goes shopping for the day's meals. She always shops at the same merchants within her barrio, the local neighborhood in which she lives. She goes to the butcher, the baker, the green grocer, and the fish merchant. She waits for them to serve her, taking the produce they offer her while exchanging news about her husband and their daughter and listening to stories about what is going on in the barrio. Anna says, "I always shop in the same stores; they know me; we trust one another; it has been like this for a really long time." This idea, that shopping is about an extended set of social relations, was repeated across many of our interviews. Shopping connected people to their communities, and it was characterized by forms of reciprocity and inter-dependence.

Life outside of the home. There is a range of significant spaces, activities, and players/forces outside of the European home. In Europe, the contemporary American distinction between home and other places is sometimes less visible. We were repeatedly struck by how much time was spent outside of the home in Europe and by the diversity of behaviors that occur in those "public" spaces.² People socialize in gardens, parks, museums, bars, pubs, beer gardens, cafes, markets, tavernas; they socialize along promenades and boulevards and in the plazas. People talk, read, argue, play games, flirt, admire art, create art, listen to lectures, eat, socialize, drink, watch television, politick, dance, swim, walk, and hang out.

When people's domestic spaces are small, these public, or third places function as social nodes. The frequency with which people visit these nodes, and the number of nodes that comprise their routine geography varies with age and life stage. Liz and Jim live in a duplex in a working class suburb of Glasgow. Three years into retirement, they are still settling into a non-working life together, establishing new routines of eating, sleeping, and spending time together. Some things are new: Liz now stays up late to do crossword puzzles and stays in bed til 9 a.m. Jim spends more time in his garden and can play golf twice a week. Some things remain the same: for the last thirty years, they have belonged to a bowling league, and now they go bowling with friends three nights a week. They eat at the bowling club a couple of nights a week with the friends they have made over years of working, taking holidays, and bowling. Along with a local community center, where they recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary, the clubhouse at the golf course, and a local pub, the bowling league is an important site of social activity. For their oldest daughter, Mary, her home in Edinburgh is augmented and extended by a tiny caravan she owns in an open field in the highlands. Mary, who works as a nurse, calls the caravan her "bolt hole" and clearly views this space as a retreat from the demands of social activity and daily life. Yet, even this caravan in its remote alpine paddock is embedded within a network of social nodes: there is a local pub and restaurant where the owners know Mary by name.

Many European homes appear to exist within a constellation of sites in which social activity transpire. In the UK, it is your "local" pub; in France, there is the brassiere and the café; and in Germany, the bier garten. In the Basque area of Spain, in which we spent time, it seemed to be less about this constellation of non-domestic spaces, and more about a redefinition of what constitutes domestic spaces. With families spread across multiple households, the barrio functioned as an extended domestic sphere and accorded many of the functions of home-like spaces. In the early evenings, people stroll though their barrios. When asked, people say that el paseo was as much about participating in the social life of their community, than it was about healthy activity. People let their children play in the plazas and talked about the ways in which those spaces were safe, and by some measures, private and controllable. Yet, people's homes were considered to be private, and it was rare that even close friends had visited each other's dwellings. It was far more likely that when they socialized, they did so within the barrio, at cafes and tavernas.

This slippage between domestic spaces and social activities is an important facet of life in Western Europe. Non-domestic ecologies provide opportunities for socializing and social activity. They also operate as sites for the consumption and production of media content, as well as significant technology use.

² Ray Oldenburg calls these sites "great good places" or third spaces–neither work nor home. He suggests that such places have a set of characteristics including neutral place without host/visitor connotations, socially inclusive membership, heterogeneous, frequented by, and visited because of, locals; stimulates good conversations, unpretentious in style and in mood, home away from home, etc. (13).