Turning it on is a class act: Immediated object relations with television

Television is part of the grain of everyday life, notes Silverstone (1994), who has made the case for television’s particular relationship to ontological security in terms of its spatial and temporal significance. Similarly, McCarthy (2001) maintains that analysis of television should focus as much on its materiality as immateriality, looking at the medium’s reorganizations of space and time, both in its spectacular and unremarkable functions it performs (such as a piece of furniture). In this commentary we detail the significance of the television object in the making of class relations through space and time. Drawing on a multi-method research project on reality television conducted in the UK we show how relations with the television object constitute and make visible people’s investments in time, space and taste which contribute to the production of their classed subjectivity.