Friendship and Kinship

Friendship and Kinship Lecture in parts ● Friendships versus kinship or ‘suffusion’ ● Bonding, bridging, intersectional friends and kin ● Ontological security and ‘personal communities’ across the life course; ● Digital mediation Kinship v Friendship or ‘suffusion’ ● Kin and friends as very different ● Kin and friends as similar ● Social change and the diminishing of friendship versus friendship on the ascendancy ● Suffusion and culturally specificity - the Chinese example of guanxi Kinship and friendship: difference ● Ascribed versus achieved? ● Given versus chosen? ● Obligatory versus negotiated ● reified/strongly institutionalised versus weakly institutionalised? ● Lasting maybe inalienable versus temporary and fragile? ● Traditional versus ‘modern’/’postmodern’ ? Who typically helps whom? ● Expectations of help vary historically, and by socio-economic circumstances ● Parent-child relationships and partners remain the key sources of support at life-course transitions ● Evidence both of reticence about asking for help and assumptions about selected significant others always ‘being there’ Kinship and Friendship: similarity ● Blurred boundaries (friends as ‘aunties’, ‘brothers’ mothers/partners as ‘best friend’ ● Overlapping categories (Some kin chosen, some friends obligatory) ● Suffusion - Friends as ‘the new family’ - Family as the new friends Friends as the new family? ● 21st century: ‘families of choice’; de-centering of couple relationships and of heteronormativity; rise of friendship as THE focus of intimacy ● Or shift to networked individualism, in which the connections are more important than the quality of the relationships Silver 1996 ● ‘Normatively, friendship is grounded in the unique and irreplaceable qualities of partners, defined and valued independently of their place in public systems of kinship, power, utility and esteem, and of any publicly defined status’ The Network Society Networked Individualism ● ‘The individual - and not the household, kinship group, or work group - is the primary unit of connectivity … people must actively network to thrive or even to survive comfortably. More passive or unskilled people may lose out, as the group (village, neighbourhood, household) is no longer taking care of things for them’ (Wellman et al 2006, 164-5) Guanxi ● Guanxi is a form of long-term interpersonal relation formed and governed by implicit social norms, including xinyong (trustworthiness), mianzi (face) renqing (norms of interpersonal behaviour), reciprocity in favour exchange and obligation (BArbalet, 2014:c 54’ Qi, 2013: 310) ● The obligation generated in gaunxi exchange is a resource frequently applied to instrumental purposes Bonding, bridging, and intersectional friends, kin and social change Who typically makes friends with whom? ● Structure of opportunities to make friends ● Homophily - ‘birds of a feather’ ● Geographical proximity ● Bridging and bonding? (Granovetter 1973, Putnam 2000) ● “We could characterize intersectional friendship as being the model for how affinity across social categories leads to greater understanding and alliance.” (Murco, 2012) Britain 1950s-80s: working-class ‘community’ versus middle-class friendship? ● “I don’t see my best friend much. She’s married too, and she’s always round here. Mum’s like I’m always round mine” “since we’ve had the children I’ve got no more friends - outside the family I mean” (Young working-class married women speaking. Young and Willmott, 1957) ● The common pattern it seems, is to belong to a small, intimate network of ‘friends’, mostly coming from the surrounding 20 or 30 houses, though some people, particularly in professional or managerial jobs, also have friends living further afield … This system, largely organised by the women, is the analogue to the ‘extended family’ of the East End.’ (Willmott and Young, 1976) Graham Allan on class and gender differences in friendship UK in 1990s ● Shared ideal of ‘true’/ ‘real friend’ across classes - but working-class men least likely to claim one - preference for ‘mate’ over ‘friend’ ● Marked class differences in spending time with friends, with working-class friendship more context specific (e.g. made at work, tend to stay at work) linked to material position and need to limit expenditure. Cross-ethnic friendships UK ● Survey of 11 year olds in multi-ethnic secondary schools in greater london found many cross-ethnic friends (Bagci et al 2014) ● Small scale qualitative research of BME young adults suggest ‘best friends’ may be less likely to be cross-ethnic friends (Reynolds 2007) Ann Murco: gay-straight, cross-gender friends USA ● Straight men and women in relationships with opposite gender. Lesbians or gay men ‘relieved of pressure to conform to compulsory heterosexuality and normative gender.’ ● Gay men valued unconditional love free from sexual pressure and interpersonal competition; feared loss of heterosexual woman’s friendship after marriage ● Lesbians also valued gay friends deflecting unwanted attention from straight men Asexuality, cross-gender and intersectional friendship? Important studies of Kinship and friendship Claude Fischer 2011 ● Careful assemblage of data from multiple large scale surveys conducted in USA since 1970 ● Looking for evidence of change and continuity in ‘personal network’ of family, kin and friends over time ● Both kinship and friendship remain subjectively valued and actively part of our lives. ● Number of friends and ‘important kin’ do not decline Spencer and Pahl 2006 ● 60 in-depth interviews; deliberately across different ages, stages, backgrounds and circumstances. ● Use concentric circle diagrams - interviewees asked in advance to list those who were ‘important to them now’. During interview asked to arrange the names in order of importance on the map in an appropriate place in relation to themselves in the centre ● Adopt the term ‘personal community’ (which they attribute to Barry Wellman) to describe what was being mapped. Charles, N., Davies, C.A., and Harris, C. (2008) ● Examined change over time by seeking to replicate a mixed-method study conducted in the 1960s (Rosser and Harris, 1965) which combined a survey of 2000 sampled households with participant observation in two specific localities ● Unable to exactly replicate but surveyed 1000 households and conducted in-depth interviews and some observations in four areas. ● Found women still doing more kin keeping than men and no decline in the significance of kin, ‘connections and solidarity are maintained by kin across households and in the context of greater geographic mobility, higher rates of relationship breakdown and increased cultural variation (Charles et al, 2012, 453) Ontological security and ‘personal communities’ across the life course ● Convoys, linked-lives or stage-of-life specific relationships ● Significance of presence ‘being there’, durability (shared history and memories) ● Significance of composition, complementary and linkage in networks of care and support Types of personal community Spencer and Pahl ● Friends like - more friends than family and friends often seen as more important than family ● ● ● ● ● Friend-enveloped - central ring has close family, usually partner and children but friends form the largest group and provide a wide range of social support Family Like - family outnumbers friends who are restricted to sociability and fun Neighbour based - neighbours equal or outnumber friends and family Partner based - partner is the focus, family and friends minor role Professional based, professional colleagues the focus, family and friends play minor role Spencer and Pahl’s repertoires of friendship ● The basic repertoire - simple single stranded friendships ● The intense repertoire - small, all friendships are close and multi-stranded ● The focal repertoire - small number of close friends and larger group of friends ● The broad repertoire - many different strands and types of friendship High Commitment Low Commitment Given Relationship ‘Traditional family’ In some cases; Gof parents, fictive’ aunts and uncles, professional carers to those in care More distant kin. In some cases: cousins, great aunts and uncles could be Godparents, ‘fictive’ aunts and uncles, professional carers to those in care Chosen relationship Very ‘close’ friends and family Less ‘close’ friends, members who are recognised acquaintances, ‘everyday as friends routine relationships… which perforce have to remain relatively superficial Ray Pahl and Liz Spencer Personal communities // current sociology (2004) Personal community and ontological security ● Shaken by the loss of key relationships ● Sense of self can also be shaken by meeting ‘old friends’ - not wishing to be reminded of former ‘horrid’ self, not wishing to be reminded of former ‘horrid’ self, not wishing to be reminded of the changes of ageing, or to be faced with the disappointment at not having achieved their youthful ambitions. Fragmentation of ‘personal communities’ ● Loss of kin keepers and key friends can damage the whole constellation of a ‘personal community’ ● I have been lonely at home. She [mother] was my best friend. (Susie age 13). Speaking after death of her mother (Jamieson and Highet 2013) ● Older men who have relied on a spouse as the orchestrator of their social world become particularly vulnerable to social isolation on widowhood. Difficult Friendships: Smart et. al. ● ‘The Ups and Downs of Friendship’ Directive, sent out to the panel of writers in November 2008 resulting in responses from 135 women and 71 men (Smart et al 2012) ● The narratives suggest how critical friendships are in people’s lives, not simply supportive or fun, but ‘as very damaging and unsettling, and that people (and especially women) could be left feeling quite scarred by these relationships.’ ● I have an ongoing friendship with a divorced man . . . who is a good friend in many ways, but who can be very overbearing, loud and insensitive . . . and he has an anxiety problem. I am sorry for him but find myself totally drained after a day in his company. It is not a peaceful or stimulating friendship, and can be quite boring but due to the length of time I have known him (15 years) and his problems, I do feel a certain ‘responsibility’ as he has a grown up family, but no other friend. (W2107, Female, aged 68) (quoted in Smart et al 2012, 96) ● The authors refer to interviewees’ strong moral codes of friendship, judging themselves by how they have treated their friends. Limits to friendship ● ‘He and I became close friends, I toyed with coming out to him time and time again… because we got on so well a bit of me was dying to be more honest with him, and another part of me thought, do I need that sort of risk’ ● Adam 63 year old Christian Bisexual man talking about his friendship with the vicar quoted in Toft and Yip, 2012, 244 Digital mediation ● Digital mediation now an aspect of face-to-face relationships, intensified by pandemic lockdown ● Affordance of mobile phone: constantly connected and surveillance ● Facebook friends - displaying, negotiating and defining friendship ● Internet chat about friendship Suffusion of online and offline ● Main uses of mobile phone and social media are connections with people we see faceto-face or continuing distance relationships that started face-to-face ● Livingstone and Sefton-Green intensively studied one London comprehensive school class of 13 and 14 year olds Impact of being ‘constantly connected’ ● Intensified intimacy and intensified surveillance ● New social pressures ● ‘The special requirement of the age of the networked individual is to be connected and findable. It is a precondition to successful networking and network building. It is also a reality that is anathema to privacy and solitude.’ (Rainie and Wellman 2012, 290) Finding ‘old friends’ ● ‘I began to use facebook because I began to think that there were so many friends from the street where I was born and grew up … we used to play together … And I began to realise that some of them had different paths, some went one way, some went another, and I didn’t know many of them. I used to hear a lot of people saying ‘you can find a bunch of people [on Facebook].’ I didn’t want anything like that, I just use it to keep in touch with old friends.’ (female, age 42 [Policarpo 2018]) Geographic mobility and friendship ● Studies of young adults who migrate to study or work show the importance of using affordance of digital devices to maintain friendship networks for a ‘sense of ‘being at home’ in the world despite relatively transient connections to particular places’ (Conradson and Latham, 2005, p288) ● Not just on-line mediated friendships ‘back home’ ● Also using digital means to establish face-to-face connections with fellow migrants here and now. Friendship and social media ● Are facebook friends ‘friends’? ● Is social media transforming friendship? ● ‘Friendship’ is a major ideal being exploited as a principal future of social network site communication, within the process of publicly displaying connectedness. However, this new, mediated, friendship, is being shaped by conventions that vary considerably from those associated with the traditional sense of friendship formed before web 2.0 (Chambers, 2013, 4) Reasons given for accepting social media friends ● Actual friends ● Acquaintances, family, colleagues ● Inappropriate to say no bc you know them ● Easier to say yes than no ● Want to look popular ● Indicating I’m a fan ● Your friends reveal who you are ● Their profile is cool so makes me look cool ● Lets you see more people (Friendster) ● Only way to see their profile; their bulletins and posts or lets them see yours (Myspace) ● You can use your friends list to find someone later Mary Holmes ● Uncertainty about the degree of emotional closeness appropriate ● Difficult to know how to feel and how to behave ● Expanded definitions of friendship ● ‘Emotionalisation of reflexivity.’ Internet Forum: Friends after breaking up ● Original poster (OP): Friends who stay friends of both in some way keep the link that I want to sever.… ● ● ● ● Commenter 1: Friends who do not contact you or who are wishing to remain friends with both ex-partners are not true friends. Yes, relationships end, but as the person having been dumped, I could not imagine trying to remain friends with anyone who still considers my ex as a friend.... Commenter 2: It is complicated with the mutual friends. I ended up telling them that my ex didn’t mean anything to me and they finally stopped telling me his whereabouts.... OP: Thank you for your answers, it truly helps. It is better for mutual friends to go one way or the other, staying neutral appears to neutralise the friendship.… (Aeby and VanHoof 2019) Conclusions ● Kin and friends remain ‘important’ in Euro-American lives; diversity of personal networks/communities with evidence of both ‘suffusion’, similarity and difference between kinship and friendship; for most people friends are not all you need ● Intersectional friendships remain exceptional but… ● Negative as well as positive impacts of friends and kin demonstrates significance for ontological security ● Social media intensify both negatives and positives but more continuity than radical change. AUDIO Apologies that this lecture is late. I'm afraid of the knowing some technical problems. So friendship and kinship we've got a picture here of a friend, the popular TV programme, our conventional kinship diagram that distinguishes men and women, mesh relationships, biological to say this lecture is going to be in part so I'll probably do the first two parts in one recording, talking about friendship versus kinship, or suffusion. Talking about bonding bridging, intersectional, fence and kin for doing parts of ontological security in personal communities, and digital mediation So, kin and friends are often contrasted as if they are the different kinds of relationships. But then this distinction quite quickly breaks down when we start to talk about specific empirical cases. And it can also be theoretically argued that actually there's quite a lot of similarity between constraints. So we'll do that part first. Before also talking as an aspect about different stories about social Change in the extent to which friends we can have different and interconnected and suffused, And I'll briefly talk about a Chinese example. One Sheet I've probably pronounced me badly But it's an interesting institutionalised form of friendship that helps us. Try to avoid being too centric. I'm starting from understanding is much more rooted in European and American literature So when we think of kinship and friendship as different categories, we often talk about how we're born into a kinship is ascribed First, we will choose appearance. We don't choose a kid but we do choose our friends And friendship is maybe air. Mirrors kinship is given And friendships maybe have to be much more negotiated which is huge. Because it's given an obligatory And The givenness means it's already institutionalised where we're already part of system that predates us, and that we didn't make careers. There's no institutionalisation in the kinds of friendships that we often have. And that means maybe their friendship is more fragile kinship is possibly inalienable because it's a system that there are meant to the P exists for us. We can't dispense with it. And as sometimes also suggests that kinship is kind of traditional It's tradition and friendships, maybe more, more relationship. So all those differences All of that, as if it's this or that Have course be challenged. There are some exceptions, but maybe that exceptions that prove the rule rather than the ignition button. Maybe actually these distinctions are suspect I have to return So This guy asked course and given chosen doesn't Work for manage relationships. So actually can Chip isn't just about blood and Lin Ah, it's also about affiliations of man. Which are legal and insurance. So again system, but they are sometimes chosen, or not always they can be arranged by King One of the ways that cleaness has been looked at whether they are really different or not, it's in terms of who helps to helps with Aarthi really different relationships can choose friendship relationships and The kinds of assistance you might get if In need of help, in terms of who would put it for sale canes with help and who you could reach Simply expect to give different kinds of help. I'm actually in Political Studies often show people are quite reluctant to ask for help. In some cases texts of either frame So I can and that within can chip is only certain kinds of relationships that are relied on Carefully as if any in any circumstance That's helpful be given and the parent child relationship and partner relationships or treat each other differently from him. And those relationships are much more drawn on for help and And then pedicle that you turn around this is quite complicated and interesting and complex suffice the simple divisions quite quick So as well as seeing them differently, there's also of course arguments. They're similar and similar in both the ways that they might offer love, so that we might sometimes be tempted to turn to friends. We might get economic health, emotional health. categorical help. bars have said parent child relationship, partner relationships of teachers. Friend of mine hopefully she can help Also the way that we speak about friends, you can shores are certainly blurring. So we might talk about some friends who are not biologically or legally connected to us in kin language, so we might call them sisters or Auntie's or brothers Even though they're not biologically related, and similarly, we might call some kin relationships, friends or best friends, we might see our mother as a string. So, we do blur the boundaries. In an everyday life, in this culture and again the empirical literature shows that from within our kin group, not all are treated actively came, but rather we choose and we tend to choose because of the quality of the relationship and often that quality To use more friendly, so we make friends of some of our kids At the same time in the literature and friendships shows us that sometimes friend relationship can have an obligatory character. It can feel like They are relationships that are bound by obligations and that cannot be dropped and they are a sticky character to them that means we cannot set them aside Talk of suffusion of friendship and kinship. Elizabeth Spencer and me Use this term fusion. And we'll talk more about that later but we might see frame For a new family or we might see family or the new friends So the Stories of the history of what has happened in personal relationships that I've already referred to in earlier lectures. Often also make different assumptions about friends and kin and whether they are suffused, are diverging. So in the 21st century it's been quite common to talk about families of choice or that phrase was made more often during the academic literature. I can't rest anthropologist Writing several decades ago about gay gays, gay people in San Francisco Bay. Yeah. And families of choice, being families of friends, that the term to bring their own families reject to them and they came out as gay. The idea that we may be no all have families of choice has become more common and particularly author are arguing that the couple's relationship and heteronormativity are losing them. To get the kind of conventional norms of family life much looser and testing in stage French is becoming a much more important kind of relationship. Perhaps the main focus of interest See I suppose a slightly different take on this is the burning realm and kind of argument that we are now much more networked. And as networked individuals, that connections will be more important to have many connections so to help a particular kind of connection with twin flames when you think about Anthony Giddens, his description of the Pure religion kinship us, only surviving because it is a mutual mutual concern mutual interest mutual benefit. He was writing, thinking mainly about couple relationships but actually friendships are arguably the ultimate peers relationship because there's no threat of institutional structure in the United Kingdom unit most beautiful American, North American culture. Friendship is not an institutionalised, formally institutionalised, legally institutionalised. arrangement. So couple arrangements, even when you're not married, if you could as a couple you tend to be treated as if married, and some of the baggage of institution of marriage might nevertheless kind of start to set on the feet of that into in friendship, it is perhaps ultimately the pure relationship. So the essence of the passionate isn't in roles or obligations is in people spawn subjective. Definitions of friendship should be it's not normatively constituted by some public declaration. Friendship is a choice in the sense of continuous creation of cash flow will. But remember, the literature also talks about different types of friendships. And that's a very long standing idea goes back to at least Aristotle and about different types of friendships or what friendship actually means to people. It's an empirical question. It's something that we have to know through. Search and it may well be something that is very need not only across cultures even within one national context. People might have rather different chances it might mean something rather different. But there is this idea that you make a friendship. It's not given to you. For some reason, I'm having trouble So, just remember I made this I think I showed you this previously, from very well and about networking. The individual unit for connectivity is the individual He puts more emphasis on individualised To the job market But again, it's like the idea of actively constructing rather than anything being given So I wanted to also talk about just the Usually when she pokes Not planting Because it is It's a long term relationship. There are norms that govern the relationship. But then you can see in European and American cultures there are norms of friendship but there aren't Let's search but maybe with Guangxi there are more definite norms that can be named trustworthiness face ideas by Appropriate behaviour maybe are more specific The idea of reciprocity Is The But maybe that is also again the case in European mathematical friendship. And there is quite a lot written in anthropology about different giving and dress prosity. And different styles of reciprocity Marshall sons vote de feu stresa prostitute who don't have to get back directly, and one of the assumptions but the difference between kinship and friendship is that perhaps kinship can stand less direct trace across to them friendship and Western European context. Because it is because it's a system that already that if you don't give back straightaway, you know, the relationships not going to disappear and still be struggling. Whereas, if you don't return a favour to a friend, they may not be your friend and more within one ci that are maybe more strict rules about nature, play prostitution. And there's been a lot written about this. A lot of interest, I think by scholars outside of the region, partly because of its potential in business. And it's use instrument we use with quantity relationships in as it's here for the instrument purposes. But start to see how this is not a kinship relationship. But yeah, it has institutional aspects. So the blurring of the boundaries again, So moving on to talking about bonding, bridging intersectional kinds of friendship, kin relationships. Because you don't choose your kid whether they are people with him A narrow range of kinds of social and economic backgrounds or a diverse is is an interesting issue. But not nearly as studied similarities and differences in friendship. So the idea that you choose friends like you Self is established in the research But to church so there's a lot of evidence that people tend to meet friends with people like themselves. And it's but it's not clear whether that's largely the structure of opportunity. And or it's also an element of choice and you'd expect it to be an alien. of choice in terms of Berkshire's understanding of habitus that you feel comfortable just as you feel comfortable in certain contexts because of your upbringing and the kinds of experience experiences you had in your earlier life make more or less comfortable with certain sort of experiences later in life. The kinds of relationships you have in your earlier life might make you more comfortable with certain sorts of relationships or certain sorts of people, people who have certain kinds of K To this face. So it may be that people have propensity to look for people like themselves. But certainly, if We live in very socially segregated worlds we will only we will only have opportunities to meet people like ourselves. And if we live in a socially segregated social world, so can I likely to be very similar as well. At least in their socio economic backgrounds and opportunities also obviously about geographical proximity as well as social, social grouping. Low, the freeze change Social capital was the decision Between renting and bonding was originally made in a paper in the early 70s. Despite granovetter but Understand that have different kinds of relationships. Either making connection between the different sorts of social Greetings are dear friends intensifying the similarity. To the finding the connections within a grouping that the idea that you might be doing one or another of those two things was developed by But written about in a very famous book called Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam which was oh Meaning that in the United States the extent of Social segregation is becoming greater And link kg speech We know people are becoming more attenuated. You are less likely to have pitching relationships. We're coming to you tomorrow. So for worlds And that social connections in general were becoming attenuated, particularly connections. And the opposite of that kind of view. Is that because we're becoming more culturally diverse as people are more mobile and cities in particular, some cities become hyperbole makes use of different kinds of people. Then opportunity is for connection across different cars. to crease and intensify the We'll do more mix relationships of all different kinds of thoughts and wishes. altas Perhaps due to Mutual understandings in life. across boundaries. So that argument If you need in a paper for For friendships, and about friendships, but its argument the source would be made to buy We're back in his later writing and he's more optimistic writing when he started to Talk about global families and kill connections being made. I marriages inter national inter cultural marriages or partnerships between relationships of couple couple relationships, family relationships, building You can network so we're connecting. Was this also around in the lecture chat Okay, so Food typically makes friends with. Again, it's an empirical question and we'll talk a little bit more about some of the literature starting with author Brett Fish lecture. So, in the pH 158 writings writing about class differences in patterns of kinship and friendship, basically arguing working class people are much more embedded in kin relationships and friendship relationship. And that friendship was a more important insight More important means of connecting for middle class people, particularly geographically and socially mobile, middle class people and the More and more people surround themselves with a network of friends in ways that might be somewhat analogous to the network of kin. working class people of that period. Surrounded themselves with There was also a bit of Gender dynamic to this in that it was women who were much more the keepers and the people who Were orchestrating the kingdom relationships and making them strong relationships and sustain For different generations, previous men might have meets friends work they were Kept specific to those contexts and didn't spill over into the environment. It is the middle class pattern of friendship was to move friends from whatever context they were first in Matan Nolan back into the household to Graham Allen I wrote about this both this source class differences in the gender differences And I argued that there was maybe a shared ideal of a true friend or a real friend across classes, but there were very strong class differences. system how likely people were to actually claim such a friend. Partly because of the very different pattern of Spain. Maintain time with friends and not using the form To bring friends more into your life for what class people friendships being kept outside the room and probably kept to the, as I said the context in which it was originally started. And Alan explained that class difference in terms of the different material security The people and the need to limit was sceptical arrangements might spiral beyond what they could cope with. But we can't mess with the conclusion Working Class friendships are less intimate. Because it captures specific contexts. They may still forms of practical assistance, emotional support. Perhaps discourse gender differences In the extinct race Friends are used for too. scholarships are also Kind of common feature of virgin something that Ireland Talks talks about So you are Prepare to Share and talk tends to be At this time by gender so cross ethnic French gyms also are not as common as the kind of optimal Stick accounts that Good is back. Maybe was writing in Is later on points in life When you look at certainly not When you look at Children's friendship multiethnic school. In the PDH In the aliens First we get towards the press. I There is more optimistic writing So it's actually a bit of a mixed picture. So we can't trustees two pieces of research random Talking about fluc minority ethnic young adult qualitative piece of research finds that Bass trains are much less likely To be crossing a friendship but they The 11 year old son, the Greater London School, studied by fax by Chief and colleague I found that the 11 year olds had many prosthetic friendships. They collected data from nine secondary schools and that seven classrooms were given annex planation of the term ethnic group and cross ethnic friendship before being asked. Hello questionnaire So there are different types of data And it's possible that one has providing less, more superficial answers. So the This at a fair Jeremy up to this piece of work. This is a North American study interviews with 20 women 25 men in dyads couple type, diet or One triad in friendships or triad chips from the Bay Area of United States. Cross a range of different ethnicities. So these are straight men. Unless being women or gay men and straight Be in and she's talking about how these cross gender but also cross sexuality combinations could Escape the pressures of sexual I see that cross friendships between men and women. usually feel under and treat so follow you and gain support from the relationship in a different way because of their combination of gay, straight and cross gender So they they had games cross gender friendships. Cow normally half So it's a different kind of situation. Say Many years Too Unusual to generalised from two The potential future of friendship but in a way that is what the author was doing when she suggests It's in the Atlanta court, that maybe this is the kind of model of how we're going to move. to transcend the kinds of social divisions and antagonisms to Other to others. We've seen the strong evidence was recently in American Society Transitioning from Tron Okay So I met We'll start this part in a new Because I feel like I've been to skimming over material. And I just want to make sure that you've got some grounding in some of them critical studies. So I'm not going to talk about these in huge length, I want you to at least be aware of them. So the first one I'm speaking about is called Fisher's still connected, which was a study that brought together in secondary data analysis, a whole range of surveys since 1970. So what Fisher wanted to do was to look at change over time, through the evidence that surveys offered about what people were thinking and doing in their friendship and kinship relationships. So he's looking for evidence of change in continuity in what he called the personal network, the whole constellation of relationships that some other authors have called personal community, family can And he showed from the evidence he pulled together, that both kin and friends remained very important to Americans in this period. Across the domain does he protect subjectively valued and actively Part of life's in terms of exchange relationships in terms of helping were feeling in terms of the rules. They were And the number of friends In court can wear Still more or less the same across the field. Yet, although the actual whole number of Kim the total number of Kim may have diminished because of smaller family sizes. Okay, so, the other two studies I want to draw your attention to both British and slightly older I think these studies are particularly interesting and important because they're substantial pieces of research, although of course, I'm not the only substantial pieces of research and Excuse me, but I'm again having trouble I have trouble We're changing the slides. So Spence As Spencer it should be not Spent spent So how Published rethinking friendship in 2006 and it was based on 60 in depth interviews. And though that's not a huge number, but it's a large number for it in depth qualitative study and they were deliberately finding people across all kinds of circumstances ages, stages socio economic circumstances, ethnic backgrounds to try to Get from a whole range of different kinds of people and do To the count of there for the cold, personal community and in fact the term personal community he attributed to very well. The American scholar North American. I think it's Canadian. In fact, I beg your pardon. And so they were authors who use the concentric circle diagrams that you've been asked to use afresh, to use these. They've been used much here And the given count in this book have the kind of origin of the concentric circle diagrams as far as they're concerned. And unlike the way that I asked you to do this in the exercise. What they actually did was they asked the people We're going to interview to list their Important people that were important to the man before the interview. So before the interview people were asked to leave This list actually the same the same The interview means twins. He labels. So although he didn't, and they made it clear that he didn't have to have 20 important other people, but they said that's how many labels they sent them. I think partly because he wanted them not To think we had to generate hundreds. They couldn't didn't feel they were caught with many more than 20 in the interview And they didn't want people to necessarily take up to 20 But that's what they did. That's how they did it. 728 tables and they also suggest stood on the label that people Write the name And also identify the gender I should have the passion hi Also how long they've known them and some other background, characteristics and alike. How they met him or her occupation. And then in the interview, they use the concentric circle maps asking people to place these named people written on the labels in appropriate places. In relation to themselves in the centre Again, their findings reaffirmed this significance of family friends and kin, but they also found considerable diversity in personal communities. really wide ranging variation is The kinds of people that get got placed or for the total set of people that got placed on the concentric circle day. Perhaps the composition and This stories that we've been told about them. So the new To that Well, some people look to Family or partner for intimacy and support, treating friends as purely sociable companions. Others look to friends as closest confidence and supporters, considering family simply as an ally. liable backstop. Yeah others of highly suffused personal communities we are friends and family Play varied and overlapping roles. In light of this, it makes total sense to claim that people nowadays have abandoned traditional families of feet for families of choice based on friends since the truth, Perhaps unsurprisingly, as for More complex. Okay, so that's quoting them from page 115. So the third piece of research I want to draw your attention to you You've already perhaps read to Pittsburgh because it was a reference from this work I asked you To probably read For the first exercise on the meaning of friendship so here, Rosa, Mickey Charles and her colleagues Davies has wanted to go back to a piece of research done much earlier by Chris Harris and other colleagues in the 1960s in wheels, which was then a very large survey and detailed ethnographic work in to specific localities in Wales will their team by put together by Nicky Charles wasn't completely able to replicate the study. He didn't have sufficient money to serve in 2000 people, but they did serve The 1000 households across the same more or less the same geographic area, and then they did some In Depth work in four sets localities may have to Do it in four because it's been so much fun. wider social change, changing composition of localities. The wanted to make sure that the captured all the differences including the ethnic minorities who moved into the area. Again they found that the concentrated more on kin and friends they found the kids We're still very important in people's lives. I found that women were still being more of the king. Keeping the main but there was no overall decline between the 60s industry Pete's certainly into That's all kins significance and consider quarter to year. connections and solidarity and maintained by kin across households. And in the context of greater geographic mobility higher rates of relationship predict and an increased cultural variation. But despite all of that change can remain important. Okay? So now moving to Talking about on to logical security which I mentioned in my first lecture that relationships are fundamental in terms of secure Unity of our sense of self and being in the world, that our confidence in who we are and our place In the world is fundamental issue. shaped by having personal relationships. shaped family childhood brought to mentor Health maybe to some extent Also physical health is mean to Bye Having some confidence that other people that are some other people who cared about us recognise us who respect us. So That how that works as Paul and Spencer short is the Nev the constellation who is in our room 14 people can be very different And we can be moving like convoys with counting kind of set of people along with us over time in linked life survey very durable or we might have stage of life specific relationships. So are quite different at one stage from another. It might be some mix of these things, but they're In general, really, most people talk about the significance of others. Being there that that having at least some people with a durable sense of shared history and memories, and some people would call present. Maybe not literally face to face cooperative but available to be In some way, whether it's mediated or face to face. These are important aspects of ontological security what sustains ontological security and there's a discussion in the literature about you know further Some compositions of personal network or personal community are more helpful. In terms of providing support at another switch before done on this particular main With thinking about Older people living alone and what Kind of constellation of personal network will be more support for them. And there's discussion Today and whether you know 110 and friends are substituting for each other what happens when a key a key can keep a person or linking person a person who's doing the anchoring down on the network of care and keeping it all working for happens when that person if that person is missing so there's different understandings of how this works in the future. So just to say a little bit more about Spencer and lb seem to seem to wish to Mangle was Spencer's name. Got a name missing so so the talk about these different kinds of personal communities that people have with the focus more on friends Or more on a family or sometimes more than neighbours and sometimes professionals. So, a first second here, and you know it's not this is not something that you've obviously got to remember by heart rate Like that, but it's just to try to see how varied This is. We and maybe you've got flavour in your neck Exercise When you come to speak to other people and look across the so called diagrams that other people have produced And they also talk about varieties and types of friendship. From Clear you are using a free Just in one For one kind of purpose, whether it be Just to have fun together, whether it be for practical systems, whether it be a kind of work buddy and that helps us study or some work related task or whether it be somebody that is sick A specific kind of advice from but you can have relationships or just about One kind of thing. Or you can have multi stranded people who've your relationship with them can maybe do all of those things. So some people have got kind of stuck you can imagine an array of relationships and each person in the array is doing something different. So you I only play certain games this person may have leak advice about how to deal with my money from this passion. I only Get going to the movies With this passion or You know, each one is different Already can have an intense So griefing fear every He is doing all of these You can have For core group with a wider Cash envelopes. Have Less close friends Complicated network of many The kinds of things and types of friends Okay, so The this grid here is using what the saw as two important dimensions of people's On the called personal community, you know that relationships, we talked about how if you think of kin and friends is different one is given and one is chosen, although we also talked about In fact, that's not that simple in the last part of the lecture, but you can also be more Are last committed to people or you can assume that this isn't relationship is going to endure. That you will All this work after all, You can assume It's maybe a transient fleet. Relationships is good for now, but not grown Maybe doesn't need a lot of investment time, energy reciprocity can be you know, light touch and occasional rather than a diffuse reciprocity they need to keep giving even though you're not getting something back so The tried to categorise different sorts of people's relationships and According to higher level commitment given on choice You can see that although we've got in high commitment relationships, we've got Both Family we've got friends who actually fictive family through relationships like God preamps are effective and smokers. You might have Professional theatres, for people who need lots of care and for whom professional theatres are actually partly their main relationships. So you can see how even in that category, there's a complicated mixture. So you may You may not find that kind of psychology helpful for yourself. One of the ways Rich We See The significance of personal relationships with Welcome to logical security Is post shaking people are buying the loss of relationships and when relationships go wrong and also when People are confronted with relationships from the past. is up Part of themselves you don't wish to them So There's so examples of that interviewed by Neeson And smart heafy on the reading list about friendship and ontological secure Not Maybe tends to focus on We can Think of that. Also terms of bereavement And for some people losing friends and family as it feels it can feel like losing elements of yourself. Thinking about that in terms of individual loss is one way of Looking at it but also if you think about it Personal community, personal network as sometimes working together, then there are some people who might be more key to that than others I've already alluded to. So mothers often play the role of timekeeper for children. So Loss of a mother can mean actually the loss of grandparents or the loss of celebrate events with wider kin because the mother used to orchestrate recent father's sometimes Of course step up to the plate and then take on that role, but sometimes don't feel evil To do that Also artists St George friendships, mothers often play quite an important role in like making sure friends get invited or that the child gets He comes to places where friendships are enabled. And again fathers to step up to that role. But sometimes, if it's not an all that they've been told played, don't quite manage it. On the circumstances, older men are often more isolated than women. And sorry, older men with being nine are often more isolated to Windows that were diverse because Women may be more used to orchestrating a network of relationships that they've benefited from. But men who've lived all their lives are not necessarily disadvantaged in this way. It's the loss of someone who doing it for you. That makes people more isolated and that some friendships can become very burdensome. One of the pieces of research that I already alluded to involved a mass observation survey. Last observation is an organisation. That's that keeps a panel of writers on the same day these days was called directives, asking people to write about them. Take a look. And smart enough colleagues got funding to ask the app Sometimes of friendship, and that included some very damaging and unsettling stories about fake friendships that were made them feel very unhappy. So Spencer how colas The heart sing King friendship He also to about this and in their work so here's a story about feeling totally free after the D in the company of somebody who isn't, is a good friend that described as a good friend But actually They're sticking with the speed. Because they We are that Got a few other things perhaps not surprisingly Because of the reader Swimming to sky. Ever since man behaviour But she doesn't feel Evil to justice. And so there is a strong can be amazed. struck a chord of friendship, which maybe links with one xi and Chinese norms of groundsheet. I'm not sure be interested to hear more from Chinese students. But there's also limits. So the if you read the article about friendships, or relationships with homosexual people This is describing someone who was afraid to come out and explain sexuality, even although really speaking To the vicar The religious leader And here himself as a Christian Time But if fears that time Despite This man will maybe Project Feel free So the friendship In itself isn't enough to allow him to take Press OK So Just now I want to move to a different topic. To The Top think critically about digital intonation Actually perhaps I'll just do this in a separate, sharp face sharp section. So, just final section on digital mediation of personal relationships of kin and friendship. This, obviously is an aspect of relationships that are face to face. And I'll just say a little bit about that. First, before some specific remarks about the mobile phone, and Facebook friends and internet chat, drawing on some of the literature that's on this section of the reading list. So I think the pandemics made us aware that digital mediation is an aspect of everyday life because we are in lockdown Those of us in lockdown are trying to maintain relationships with their normally face to face through zoom chat, whatever I think in the early days of the To connect research some research has made a dramatic claims for how mediates relationships which completely replace face to face relationships. But actually, that's not proved to be the case. The ways in which we use both the mobile phone and social media is to keep in touch with people that we're seeing anyway. Or to sustain relationships that start with face to face. So, a whole new world of possible relationships with strangers is not the main use. And some people would never use those devices or the affordance of the internet to do that. And this has been fairly intensively studied at different age groups. Sonia Livingstone, in Britain, with her co author section conducted a very intense study of a particular class In a London Comprehensive School of 13 and 14 year olds, looking at all of the ways in which they use digital media and with respect to friendship, the report People are friendly face to face with lots of people have lots of action also on social media and the people in the class We've got a few friends and also tend to not be very pressed on social media, so The two are Very suffused, the online and the offline. The impact of being constantly connected is both one of intensifying sense of connection and Maybe therefore a feeling of intimacy also, the potential for feeling trolled and surveilled and it creates new social pressures. So fact of having to be seen to be Responding to public profile on social media. Possible bullying and negative kinds of messages that that can sometimes bring are all new forms of interaction that young people may have to deal with that he didn't need to deal with when I was their age. So it's been, you know, obviously is a significant Change but it's a change that intensifies issues that were already there. It's not completely transformative but is unequivocally creating news. senses of social pressure Making some forms of experience particularly solid tetenal Central tremor scheme As Rena and Wellman comment more difficult Maybe feeling for a particular for some younger generations less ever experienced too Portuguese scholar Polycom Aren't you sir All nor To sustain relationships to you recruiting friendships. And then to the success of some social media sites that help you find old friends like French, United Frenchie united is because of this norm. She's quoting here, a 42 year old woman. Talking about how she used Facebook to try to chase old friends. Although Then maybe are not going to find a nearly Connect They become renewed friends that they may not Longer have much in common. It's interesting that this form of reaching out to other people is more common than trying to make new friends with strangers. through the internet. So again, I think it's pointing to the We the face to face is still very Important. So friendships were first formed. Face to face people Trying to rekindle them through digital means is more common than finding completely new friends through the internet. And another different kind of example of entanglement of offline and online worlds is research on young migrants. So these are young. This particular study by Conrad Baker, most Australians who migrated to London to work or study. And we're both keeping in touch with their friendship network, back home in Australia, but also using the network to contact other people from Australia did my engagement to London and farmer Kane named Cleveland Face to face relationships within London that made them feel up Social media of course also does involve more than An extension of face to face relationships. So it's not that people are only communicating with people that you're seeing as friends face to face and Facebook can be used praying together in a very large number of people as Facebook friends across all kinds of different aspects people's lives and including acquaintances, people are not at all well known and wouldn't otherwise be cold friends. And it's so It is Slightly different phenomenon It's interesting to think about what It is people befriend People on Facebook Does seem to Ask convention so Quite different chambers to see Here in the country To be considerably From those associate pretty traditional sense of friendship So you have friends on Wi Fi But that would not be be included in a traditional view of change Kids. Why is that and what does it mean? mean and how is that impacting on how we understand friendship Every day Way So here chambers less the sorts of reasons that people give for offending someone And obviously some of them actually are friends. In conventional sense, many of them are acquaintances or family or colleagues. And people often just don't feel able to say no. Or sometimes it's people actually more Want to have as many friends on Facebook as possible because it makes them look as if they are popular. Sometimes It's just about wanting to see other people's profiles. This spring Together of different social worlds So acquaint constraints with act Friends and including work colleagues are sometimes maybe even people who Pin supervisor. The rules Teacher roles Rules faders maybe Or thority and sometimes Of course gone wrong for people Cause People difficulties in their work, for example, because they've been seen on Facebook doing something that's considered inappropriate or that one part of their network finds offensive And over time it's resulted in a development of a native carriage of how to conduct yourself friendship. Amelie Holmes writes Informal language that you might use to suppress emotional closeness to friends Face to face doesn't always feel The appropriate On Facebook Something helps people find it. quite difficult to know For To post not to pause Reading homes To use his online advice about Facebook etiquette, and to kind of try to analyse the evolving norms and argue set And speaking people roar or she's calling emotionally to flex and some emotionalize ation of reflexivity is put here. So, Thinking about the impact of a post of different sorts or images of different sorts on other people imagining How they will feel about it is something that we maybe we think about other people's feel legs in relationships anyway but we're happy. No having to Think about it in a broader spectrum Have kind relationships because of the way In the Facebook print Lots of different kinds of Relationships together in one place. And it might make us Be more reflective about emotional impact is part of What many homes is suggesting here? And then In my final exam Hole is two to do with posting this piece of research and avian hoofs article by The custard who gets the custody of the friends? Online narratives of changes in friendship networks following relationships, break down or break up So this is I think English speaking forum about divorce or relationships, issues and so somebody has posted friends who stay friends with both Some we keep the link that I want to server and then other people have come in to doneness. The overall view is such as better, that kind of amount Jesus, it's Extra people don't Trying to be neutral once your relationship peaks But the site was well Personally speaking wants to save them. Utah being neutral is unfavourable to the relationship. Friendship neutralises friendships. So this kind of dialogue about friendship online with maybe with strangers is another aspect of the affordance of the internet where there is a forum for every kind of relationship that you can imagine a place where people can discuss maybe anonymously, their feelings and views about relationships, including friendship. And it's another source of data to study that this particular article is a much is as much about coupled relationships as it is about friendships, because One of the aspects of the article is people reflecting on how actually they neglected to put enough effort into their friendships, and because of the couple's relationship And how complicated that is. That keeps Once the couple of research into Hey Okay, so it's got multiple things Article it's not really just about digital Digital mediation All right. Good. To stop there Over the last couple of sections of talks about how can friends You mean Domain important looking at some research that tries to show it out that tries to show sufficient kinship and friendship but also, some people continue to keep them separate categories. Very few people will be relying on friends And that intersectional friendships across class ethnic boundaries, sexualities genders still remain relatively exceptional. And it's maybe not completely clear whether the sum of the hopes pinned on that kind of friendship across boundary breaking down social divisions and inequalities. Between hierarchies of categories will, you know will help to solve that to help to work against that. friendships can be negative as well as positive. As of course you too can have Kimberly friendships, but this just helps us understand how important they really are to people. So ontological security, the fact that they can cause people Do you do harm As well as keep them supported. And the social media and affordances of digital technologies intensify both the negatives and the positives of our ontological security, security, enhancing Some chips but overall there's maybe as much continuity as radical change and the pandemic has made me just flecked more on the extent to which we could survive by mediated relationships alone without the future To face without a physical contact and I think most of us conclude that We really need People here in not just so Socially mediated through digital means.