Design

The first and second aim of this study was to investigate romance as a context for gender performances and to explore the outcomes of romance, respectively. Therefore, a key aspect of the design was to give participants the opportunity to talk about romance in different settings. This is in line with the ethnographic discursive approach that was adopted by this study, as it extends the variety of discourses that participants can access across contexts, allowing researchers to explore a range of discourses and identity strategies available to individuals. Therefore, I asked participants to plan ‘romantic events’

93 and then interviewed them about these events, as well as other instances of romance in their lives, including how they would typically be-romantic. This elicited a number of discourses about romance which are explored in Chapters 4 and 5.

The third aim was to explore the affordances of romance. As will be argued in the literature discussed in Chapter 6, it has been suggested that in hetero-normative

romantic contexts, male and female affordances may involve different gendered norms in terms of being actively (or passively) involved in planning and orchestrating romance. Therefore, I sought to disrupt this, to explore the effect disruption may have on the way that romance was constructed and narrated in an interview setting. Each individual participant was given the opportunity to plan and execute ‘a romantic event’ for their partner. In this way, if being romantically active is gendered, it will be disrupted as both the man and the woman would plan a date, and there would likely be discursive differences in the way these two romantic events were constructed by participants. Each participant was offered up to R500 to compensate them for expenses incurred, with a total of R1,000 offered per couple. Participants were also asked to photograph aspects of their event that they found to be romantic. Each couple was interviewed together and individually about these romantic events after they had taken place. These are referred to below as the post- event interviews, and there were three per couple (one couple interview, and one

individual interview each), and fifteen in total. These post-event interviews were conducted by myself, in one setting, and in most cases took places at the participants’ home13_.

Another aspect identified in the literature discussed in Chapter 6 of the Results and Discussion concerned differently gendered expectations about how men and women get ready to be-romantic. To investigate this, ethnographic interviews were conducted with each participant in their home, as they got ready to go on the date that their partner planned for them. These interviews are referred to below as the pre-event interviews and were conducted by a same-sex interviewer to try to ensure that the

experience was as comfortable as possible for participants. I conducted the interviews with the women participants, and my husband, Strauss Human, conducted the interviews with

94 the men participants14_{. Some aspects of interest included investigating appearance-based} vulnerabilities or anxieties; if there are any expectations around how they should look while being-romantic; what happens if these expectations are violated; and how these

expectations differ depending on different situations (for example how they ‘should’ look on a date compared to how they dress on a normal occasion). One interview was conducted per participant, with ten pre-event interviews conducted in total. All of these were

conducted at the participant’s current residence.

The fourth aim investigated instances of negotiation and resistance of the identities afforded by the romantic context. While this aim did not impact on the research design as specifically as the others did above, the kind of research design (ethnographic discourse analysis) used in this study assisted more generally in addressing this aim, as the sustained engagement with the participants provided access to multiple discourses. Therefore, there was rich and in-depth access to multiple instances of both collusion and resistance across the participants.

Overall this approach is known as “in-depth interviewing” (Taylor & Bogdan, 1984, p. 77), as it involves “repeated face-to-face encounters” between the researcher and participants. In this way, participants are given multiple opportunities to draw from

discursive repertoires, giving a more representative construction of these social constructs. These kinds of interviews are typically “modelled after a conversation between equals”, rather than the objective and detached approach adopted by positivists (ibid.). The kind of interview selected was semi-structured interviews. This meant that interview schedules

14 _{A note on the male assistant: The researcher’s husband, Strauss Human, was suitably qualified and had prior}

experience conducting qualitative field research, and agreed to complete the pre-date ethnographic interviews with the men participants. This benefited the study as he had existing skills and so needed less training than a novice interviewer; and he was already familiar with the premises and goals of the study because of his relationship to the lead researcher. Additionally, it added immense value to the process of building rapport with the participants as it enabled our personal relationship to be drawn from as a

springboard for discussion, and it seemed to make the experience less intimidating for some participants (as the research experience was positioned as ‘a couple talking to another couple about marriage and romance’, versus a more formal and intimidating research setting). This opened up channels of inquiry that might not have otherwise been available. For example, by sharing our engagement story (and expressing ‘feeling bothered’ that it was non-normative despite being more gender-equal because he didn’t go down on one knee), it gave participants the chance to critically reflect on gender dynamics and idealised expectations of proposals.

95 were developed for each of the three interview types which gave some consistency across the data set; however, interviewers were able to deviate from these where

necessary/appropriate in order to sustain the conversation (for example, making a personalised example if participants were struggling with a question) or to probe further, where unexpected nuggets of information were mentioned (Taylor & Bogdan, 1984).