Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on the contributors
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Contextualising friendship
- 2 The modernisation of friendship: individualism, intimacy, and gender in the nineteenth century
- 3 The gendered contexts of inclusive intimacy: the Hawthorne women at work and home
- 4 Friendship and the private sphere
- 5 Rich friendships, affluent friends: middle-class practices of friendship
- 6 Women's friendships in a post-modern world
- 7 Foci of activity as changing contexts for friendship
- 8 The demise of territorial determinism: online friendships
- 9 Reflections on context
- Index
- Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences
4 - Friendship and the private sphere
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on the contributors
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Contextualising friendship
- 2 The modernisation of friendship: individualism, intimacy, and gender in the nineteenth century
- 3 The gendered contexts of inclusive intimacy: the Hawthorne women at work and home
- 4 Friendship and the private sphere
- 5 Rich friendships, affluent friends: middle-class practices of friendship
- 6 Women's friendships in a post-modern world
- 7 Foci of activity as changing contexts for friendship
- 8 The demise of territorial determinism: online friendships
- 9 Reflections on context
- Index
- Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences
Summary
Introduction
One of the central arguments of this book is that friendship is a social relationship, and not just a personal one. Of course, it is a personal one, and one over which people can exercise a good deal of agency. However, it is also a relationship which is socially patterned – shaped and constrained by factors over which the individuals involved have only limited control (Duck, 1993). In particular, the forms which friendships take vary historically with changes in the dominant characteristics of the social and economic formation in which they occur. Expressed differently, the nature of the obligations and solidarities which arise between friends – and indeed who is recognised as a friend and what this represents – is influenced by the web of other commitments and obligations which an individual has. And these other commitments and obligations are themselves rooted in the economic and social ‘realities’ which confront the individual. Exactly how these impact on each individual will depend on their specific location within the social and economic structure. Class, ethnicity, gender, kinship, caste, age, and whatever other social divisions are most pertinent to that society at that period will impact on the ‘freedoms’ there are to develop forms of informal relationship and shape the consequent solidarities that emerge.
As discussed in the introductory chapter, this type of argument has long been accepted in the field of family studies.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Placing Friendship in Context , pp. 71 - 91Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999
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