Everyday Friendships: Intimacy As Freedom In A Complex World (palgrave Macmillan Studies In Family And Intimate Life)

Everyday Friendship conceptualises the lived experience of intimacy in a world in which the terms and conditions of love and friendship are increasingly unclear. Drawing on writing on friendship, love, and intimacy by such thinkers as Simmel and Kracauer, Elias, Goffman, Luhmann and Honneth, the book charts the modern meaning of intimacy and the freedoms it offers, as well as the continued challenges of entrenched gendered assumptions in everyday relations of affection, trust and respect. It shows that the analysis of the 'small world' of dyads can give important clues about society, and in this case about its gendered makeup. Everyday Friendship seeks to reintegrate into sociology the study of friendship and the analysis of dyads. Everyday Friendships Conceptualizes The Lived Experience Of Intimacy In A World In Which The Meaning Of Love And Friendship Is Increasingly Unclear. Drawing On Such Thinkers As Simmel And Kracauer, Elias, Goffman, Luhmann, And Honneth, The Book Charts Modern Intimacy And The Freedom It Offers. This Freedom Is Made Visible Not Only In Friendship's Resistance To Commodification And To Integration Into The Therapeutic Temper Of Our Times, But Also In Its Potential To Generate Changed Perception Of Self And New Life Trajectories. There Are, However, Persisting Challenges. Gendered Assumptions Continue To Orient Personal Relationships, And Limit The Freedom Of Intimacy In Everyday Relationships Of Care And Affection, And So Demand Reflection. For, If Friendship - Arguably The Freest Of All Personal Relationships - Is Limited By Gendered Power, Gender Divisions Do Their Work Not Only In The Unequal Distribution Of Public Opportunities But Also In Private Relationships Of Trust That Aim To Realize Care, Affection, And Respect. Everyday Friendships Thus Demonstrates That The 'small World' Of Dyads - Relationships Between Two - Can Offer Insights Into Deeply Entrenched Dynamics Of Power In The World At Large. -- From Back Cover. Introduction -- Modernity, Intimacy, And Friendship -- Friends, Friendship, And Sociology -- Love, Friendship, And Freedom -- Friendship, Intimacy, And The Self -- Gender And The Love-friendship Paradox -- The Love-friendship Paradox And Cross-sex Friendship -- Conclusion: Friendship's Embedded Freedom -- Notes -- References. Harry Blatterer, Macquarie University, Australia. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Cover; Contents; List of Tables; Series Editor's Preface; Acknowledgments; Introduction; Structure of the book; 1 Modernity, Intimacy, and Friendship; The modern experience, public and private; Friendship and commercial society revisited; Intimacy, recognition, and romanticism; Conclusion; 2 Friends, Friendship, and Sociology; Sensitizing concepts: social relationships, dyads, friendship; Differentiating friendship from friendly relations; Semantic conflation and contemporary complexities; Conclusion; 3 Love, Friendship, and Freedom; Love, friendship, and the problem of institution This book conceptualises the lived experience of intimacy in a world in which the terms and conditions of love and friendship are increasingly unclear. It shows that the analysis of the 'small world' of dyads can give important clues about society and its gendered makeup.