narratives of three generations of urban middle-class - eTheses ...

homosocial intimacy that were often in contradiction with his self claimed companionate
coupling and gender democratic space within it. The total number of couple interviews
undertaken was 14 with 7 men and 7 women also giving individual interviews.
In order to counterbalance the inter-generational and intra-generational cultural
hindrances in eliciting narratives of intimacy, I also consciously modelled interviews on
the basis of various kinds of grouping. I conducted 4 focus group interviews in which the
first one consisted of 6 men of the third generation. The second focus group interview
consisted of 3 men and 3 women of the third generation. The third one consisted of 5
women of the second generation and the last one consisted of 3 second generation
women, 2 third generation women, 1 first generation woman. These interviews ensured
conversations and dialogues between and amongst the participants of this research
without the researcher’s explicit intervention into it. Such inter-generational and intragenerational
groups based on gender produced insights that were sometimes difficult to
elicit from direct one to one interaction with an individual. These focus group interviews
involved debates, discussions, agreements and dialogues where from stories kept
emerging one after the other, providing unhindered and spontaneous insights into
various gendered and generational power dynamics of intimate relations and identities.
Most of the one to one indivual interviews and also couple interviews were carried out at
the subjects’ home to ensure privacy. Group interviews of both men and women were
designed to be intergenerational and were conducted sometimes in any of the subjects’
home through an informal get together of participants, some of whom already knew one
another. These interviews were consciously modelled on adda (which means casual
chats, gossips and informal discussions, integral to the culture of urban middle-class
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