Placing Friendship in Context

A unique collection bridging social psychological and social structural research to advance understanding of friendship.

Rebecca G. Adams (Edited by), Graham Allan (Edited by)

9780521585897, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 28 January 1999

222 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm, 0.33 kg

"Placing Friendships in Context is a provocative addition to the sociological literature....it provides a fresh look at an essential building block of social life." CJS Online

Personal relationships have long been of central interest to social scientists, but the subject of friendship has been relatively neglected. Moreover, most studies of friendship have been social psychological. Placing Friendship in Context is a unique collection bridging social psychological and social structural research to advance understanding of this important subject. In it, some of the world's leading researchers explore the social and historical contexts in which friendships and other similar informal ties develop and how it is that these contexts shape the form and substance the relationships assume. Together, they demonstrate that friendship cannot be understood from individualistic or dyadic perspectives alone, but is a relationship significantly influenced by the environment in which it is generated. By analysing the ways in which friendships articulate with the social structures in which they are embedded, Placing Friendship in Context redescribes such personal relationships at both the macro and the micro level.

1. Contextualising friendship Rebecca G. Adams and Graham Allan
2. The modernization of friendship: individualism, intimacy, and gender in the nineteenth century Stacey J. Oliker
3. The gendered contexts of inclusive intimacy: the Hawthorne women at work and home Stephen R. Marks
4. Friendship and the private sphere Graham Allan
5. Rich friendships, affluent friendships: middle-class practices of friendship Kaeren Harrison
6. Women's friendships in a post-modern world Pat O'Connor
7. Foci of activity as changing contexts of friendship Scott Feld and William C. Carter
8. The demise of territorial determinism: online friendships Rebecca G. Adams
9. Reflections on context Graham Allan and Rebecca G. Adams.

Subject Areas: The self, ego, identity, personality [JMS], Social, group or collective psychology [JMH]