{"product_id":"rethinking-friendship-9780691127422","title":"Rethinking Friendship","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom Aristotle to contemporary soap operas, friendship has always been a subject of fascination. This book describes the varied nature of personal relationships, and also locates friendship in contemporary debates about individualization and the supposed collapse of community.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"How many friends do you have? How important are friends in your life? How important is friendship to the health of a nation? These are the kind of questions that Liz Spencer (with colleague Ray Pahl) has been investigating. It's a subject that their discipline, sociology, has largely neglected, leaving it to the novelists and agony aunts. Their findings, as recorded in ... Rethinking Friendship, require us to do just that. Rethink.\"--John Sutherland, The Guardian \"Perceptive, thought-provoking and wholly accessible, this book contributes to broader debates about friendship and will appeal to a wide audience from general readers to academic scholars and students interested in the literary field of informal social networks. Unequivocally, this book delightfully delivers essentially what it promises to. It is an empirically grounded and methodologically sound exploration, which is rich in detail and convincingly uncovers the persistence of hidden solidarities where family members are considered to be friends and friends take on family-like status. Here, the everyday is rethought in a new light which shines on old solidarities and new forms of social cohesion, successfully debunking the myth of an alleged lack of commitment and trust in declining personal relationships.\"--Sharon Elly, Sociology\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eForeword ix  Acknowledgements xi  INTRODUCTION 1  CHAPTER ONE: The Fragmentation of Social Life? 9  CHAPTER TWO: Capturing Personal Communities 32  CHAPTER THREE: The Nature of Friendship 57  CHAPTER FOUR: Patterns of Friend-Making 87  CHAPTER FIVE: Friends and Family: The Case for Suffusion 108  CHAPTER SIX: Personal Communities Today 128  CHAPTER SEVEN: Micro-SocialWorlds in theMaking 156  CHAPTER EIGHT: Hidden Solidarities Revealed 190  APPENDIX: HowWe Carried Out Our Study 213  Notes 241  Index 293","brand":"Princeton University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49403744321879,"sku":"9780691127422","price":54.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780691127422.jpg?v=1730484420","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/rethinking-friendship-9780691127422","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}