February 6

Okay, I want to finalize my semi-final question here. This is where I'm going for now but hopefully it's going to stick.

QUESTION: How does working together in the weaving houses affect the female family members and their relationships with each other? Is this a place for bonding with their family or primarily for social interactions with other women? How does working together affect the strength of family ties? Will it be a positive or negative affect?


Some specific questions that I have concerning my new research topic are as follows:
Do women tend to stick with their family in the weaving house? Or do they talk amongst other women primarily?
Do the women see this as a lifetime bonding experience?
Do they see it as just a job and nothing more?
What kinds of things do the women talk about while working in the houses?
Do techniques for weaving get passed on through families?

I have some concerns over my topic being too narrow. Only in the sense that I am afraid I won’t find enough family members that word together to get a good representative sample, or that they women won’t have much to say on the topic. I expect I’ll have to do a lot of observation and see how the family members interact together when working. Then, I could maybe even contrast that with how they act together in the home as sort of a control variable. I wonder if the way they act in the work-place and in the home is different. I wonder if they get sick of spending so much time together! Although, that’s a pretty big culture leap, because I know I got sick of my family when we hung out too much but I’m sure their culture is so much different, and it’s probably not a “chore” to spend time with your family. Or maybe it is, in the form of working in the weaving houses for the women. I guess most of these questions are ones that can’t be answered until I get to the field.