Thesis Title: Subtitle

What is a Friend?: Talking About Friendship in Late Modernity

Pahl (2000) argues that from the 15th to the 17th centuries benevolent bonds in England and other Western countries were few and far between. The reason for this, Pahl (2000) argues, is because there was little space for affective social bonds in a world in which personal relationships and economic success were intertwined. The advent of commercial society (i.e. modernity), Silver (1990) argues, created space for affective bonds of friendship to flourish. Commercial society formally decoupled economic transactions from personal relationships. Economic transactions were now the domain of the impersonal market. Market exchange therefore allowed for the production of benevolent social bonds. As friendship is the product of its context, shifting social patterns at the beginning of the 20th century meant that the transient and impermanent nature of urban social life limited the creation of affective social bonds. It was from these conditions that Simmel (1921) theorised that friendship and modern urban life were incompatible. The lasting legacy of

commercial society as it developed over time was that it increasingly allowed individuals to distinguish between interest based relationships that sprang from necessity, as opposed to those based on mutual sympathy and affection (Pahl 2000). Commercial society was built on technological advances. The effects of these technological advances created space for friendship to (re)develop.

In a similar way, Facebook, in the increasingly fast-paced and highly mobile context of late modernity has created further space for friendship. This gives friendships a fighting chance where they might otherwise be separated by time and space. However, as Facebook grants users reflexive control over their friendships, it has been argued that this means these connections are less valued than before (Turkle 2011). As demonstrated in the following section, these connections are still valued and affect is one of the key criteria in deciding which connections to sustain. Participants demonstrated awareness that not all their connections on Facebook constituted friendships. In fact, participants often defined friendship by what happened in addition to Facebook, as opposed to limiting friendship to that sphere. This section will begin with a focus on how participants understand friendship in general, and examine the extent to which these definitions reflect previous socio historical definitions.

Shared History and Emotional Life

While it is acknowledged by research participants that friendship takes ‘work’, the affective, aesthetic element of friendship was deemed more central and important. As apparent in the socio-historical account of friendship above, the instrumental function of friendship has been and remains an unresolved tension in a relationship celebrated for its affect. Nonetheless, instrumentality was seen as an inevitable part of friendship. For the purposes of this chapter, I will remain focused on the affective aspects of friendship, and how they echo classical ideals, as this is most in keeping with participants’ accounts. For example, while the practices of friendship, such as spending time together are emphasised, instrumentality is absent from Camilla’s (F, 32) description of friendship.

Friendship relies on a basis of affect (as opposed to instrumentality) that can then be built on, and sustained through, practical means.
I think it’s a relationship that you build and it takes a long time to build, but it also depends on the connection you have with the person. I think it’s all about first connection and then time to build on that connection. It has to be – I think it takes a while to strengthen ties with people. To make it work you have to spend time and talk and doing things together. It’s just like a relationship.

As described in Camilla’s quote above, the central feature of friendship is the ability to share emotionally, both negatives and positives. While the friendships the participant is describing may have other more practical features; the ones that participants chose to talk about, and identified as central in their definitions of friendship are those of emotional closeness; caring about the other person. While the participant described more practical acts of ‘doing’ friendship such as spending face-to-face time together, these are perceived as a way to facilitate emotional closeness. However, affect and the rather difficult to quantify ‘connection’ between two people is the core on which friendships are built. Real friends, as time goes by, seem to take less work than other relationships. According to Brendon (M, 27) “a real friend is with whom you can just sit next to each other, not talk, and still not feel awkward.”

For Carol (F, 23), affection, interest and a shared history are also important in creating a close friendship. When asked what defines friendship for her, she replied, “mutual affection, interest in each other's life, a shared sense of humour (usually), shared interests and experiences (usually).” Sharing experiences and caring for the other party was a central theme in participants’ accounts. This theme highlights the fact that participants do not solely define friendship based on a Facebook connection. Sage (F, 31) highlights authenticity as another important part of friendship, in addition to the intangible ‘extra connection’.

It's got a lot to do about caring for each other, shared experiences…That can be present or history. But your better friends tend to be ones that you do have a bit of a history with and you can feel comfortable with just to kind of let loose, be yourself with. It's got to be someone you like. Just in the world you can't always predict who that's going to be. But there are some people that you just don't really like hanging out with and some people that you really do like hanging out with. That's probably because they are more interesting to you or they're funny. Normally people say they connect with you a bit more as well.

In terms of the literature described above, the ways in which participants described friendship could be categorised as rather traditional. This may be partly due to the fact that friendship, in contemporary Western society, is an idealised social relationship.
Nonetheless, friendship has remained a rather nebulous social relationship. The ideal types of friendship outline by Aristotle have not really translated into contemporary life. The exception to this would be the rather flexible concept of ‘best friends’, although this has less of a moral overtone than Aristotle’s virtue friendship. For Aristotle, virtue friendship was the type of friendship he viewed as the closest and most beneficial; the most complete. Aristotle argued that this type of friendship was only possible between good and virtuous people. Baltzly and Eliopoulos summarise virtue friendship as encompassing “both affect and utility, neither are its object, instead it exists for the goodness of the other” (2009: 22). As virtue friendship is the most complete form of friendship, for Aristotle, it is necessarily restricted, as one cannot hope to have complete or perfect friendship with everyone they meet. Virtue friendship is intended to be long lasting and result in the betterment of those involved as well as encompassing the sharing of one’s emotional life.The centrality of a shared emotional life was central to participants’ understanding of friendship. Candace (F, 20) describes friends as people with which she can “connect and share. Like share problems and share happiness.” Bird (F, 29) also highlights shared emotional life as an important part of friendship, but argues that this type of sharing is accomplished by doing, that is, sharing experiences, and time together.
While affective connections may be initially present, capitalising on them requires work.
Shared experiences (for example, travelling together), spending time together, getting to know each other. Giving small "parcels" of personal information and seeing what the other person does with it (though this might not be as rational and controlled as it sounds). Of course, there are some bits you share with everyone, but there are certain things I would only share with certain people, either because I know I can tell them everything or because they have been in a similar situation or because they know (or in some cases because they do not know) the other people involved…