In brief: Introducing the sociology of friendship, the use of primary schools as a research site and the theoretical and methodological orientations of the research.
Introduction
I think somebodyâs social class or their ethnicity is very, very irrelevant to me and it is more about whether we can get along with each other and understand each other and can engage with each other and you know I donât have pre-conceived ideas about people and it stands me in quite good stead because I make friendships in unexpected places [âŠ] There is an administrator at the university [where I work] who is on a fixed term contract âŠ.and I always thought that she and I got on extremely well and she was very, very efficient and she would interrogate the data that I had requested from her to produce for me in ways that I found quite unexpected. And I thought, âooh here is somebody who pays attention to detailâ and so we went out for a drink, very, very kind of tentatively, you know about six months ago, and I discovered that she is South American, she is Colombian, but she spent a great deal of her life in Argentina and she is trained as a lawyer. I used to be lawyer in a previous life and that is how it is, I think, that Sammie and I get on really well. (Aarthi)
We begin with Aarthi, a middle-class, mixed South Asian heritage parent who was one of the participants in the research project on which the book is based. This is because Aarthiâs account of her approach to her friendships and the narrative of her friendship with Sammie powerfully captures some of the difficulties associated with the concept of friendship. It is a form of social relationship that seems to be shaped by the âfreestâ of individual choices (Blatterer 2014) and affective serendipityâas Aarthi puts it, who she is friends with is driven by her perception of âwhether we can get alongâ, âunderstand each otherâ, can âengageâ. But despite this sense of agency and an apparent absence of social formality, friendships tend to be socially and ethnically patterned.
In Aarthiâs example of Sammie, it is the surprise of their shared past professional identities as lawyers with which Aarthi identifies and on which she settles, as the explanation for their âgetting on really wellâ. In this way Aarthiâs account of her relationship with Sammie would seem to reflect the ways in which friendships can, in the words of Bunnell et al. (2012, p. 491), âform a meso-scale of analysis, between dyadic relations and broader structural categories (class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality etc.) The latter can be reproduced and strengthened through the work of friendship. As such friendship is not merely important in its own right but also plays a role in broader processes of social ordering and transformationâ.
With Bunnell and colleaguesâ argument in mind, this book explores what adultsâ and childrenâs friendships might reveal about the nature and extent of social divisions in socially and ethnically heterogeneous geographies. How do adults conceive of and respond to their own and their childrenâs friendship relations and the extent to which these are socially and ethnically diverse? To what extent do friendship relations cross (and thereby potentially transform) social and ethnic difference or remain within these boundaries (and thereby reproduce/affirm them)?
We set out to respond to these questions by examining the ways in which adultsâ and childrenâs friendship relationships and friendship practices work, within a localised, âthrowntogetherâ (Massey 2005) urban population who routinely experience social and ethnic difference through geographical proximity. We develop our analysis through a focus on the social interactions of those parents and children who live in diverse localities , but also meet through their collective use of a particular key social resourceâthe primary (elementary) school. The focus on the primary school is very deliberate in that it allows us to access a particularly affective social world that is populated by both children and adults. Primary schools often work as what Deborah Chambers (2006) has called the âhub and spokeâ of social networks; namely, they are particular social sites within localities and communities that radiate outwards, and are able to generate wider social connections. In this way primary schools are, as Collins and Coleman (2008, p. 296) observe , âplaces that matter to many peopleâ.
Through their collective, habitual and sustained use, primary schools are disposed to, and productive of, sociality and encounter with known and unknown others. Indeed, hypothetically, the nature of the unknown other is mediated by the shared use of the school so that the regular engagement with primary school worlds means that even unknown others become recognised strangers, with the potential for social interaction as well as the formation of closer relationships. From that perspective, primary schools can be understood as a form of âsocial commonsâ; that is, a space within which a series of shared cultural and other resources are available to those with access to it. The role of schools as places of friendship-making and the evidence that school-related friendships can have particular longevity in peopleâs lives is recognised, in Savage et al.âs (2005, p. 143) study of localised belonging and globalisation in the Northern English city of Manchester. They report that most of their participants described their closest friends as those that had been made in childhood or at their childrenâs schools. We explore some of this same ground in this book , considering the range of friendship formations that can emerge through and within primary schools, both for children and adults.
Assembling a research investigation through the simultaneous layering of personal life and friendship relations, the routine experience of proximate (and often radical) social and cultural difference, and âlived inâ localities and collectively used primary schools, allowed us first, to access the multi-scale, intersecting lifeworlds of individuals, school institutions and of place; second, to map the nature and extent of social division and cohesion in highly diverse areas; and third, to consider the ways in which intimate, spontaneous and micro-social interactions and networks are structured in relationship to power (Bottero 2009, p. 407). It is all too easy, as Sivamohan Valluvan (2016) has noted in relation to âthe orthodoxies of integrationâ, for discussions of friendship in particular, but also any informal, positive encounter in the context of multicultural urban populations, to be dominated by ânormative valuesâ which simply identify these optimistically, as progressive, without any acknowledgement of the possibility of more problematic assumptions and contradictionsâthe uneven power symmetries of who has to integrate, the uncertainties and instabilities of friendships and so on (Smart et al. 2012). In focusing on these overlapping issues as sites of attention and analysis we recognise some of the inherent dangers of making such assumptions and foreground Valluvanâs assertion (2016, p. 207) âthat ethnic differences do not require accommodation, remaking or respectful recognition vis-Ă -vis the White majority, but should simply cease to require scrutiny and evaluation in the first place.â
For these reasons, we would want to emphasise the unpredictable and socially stratified dynamics shaping friendship relations and exchanges across difference in the racialised contexts in which urban multiculture can still thrive, but may be also be diminished, contained and avoided. It is with this in mind that this chapter first considers the concept of friendship and develops the rationale for the development of a sociology of friendship, and begins to outline the conceptual resources on which we draw before then describing the broad contours of the research project and design, and outlining the structure of the book .
An Emergent Sociology of Friendship
Friendship as a Marginalised Sociological Concept?
Throughout this book we consider how peopleâs dispositions to think and act in their everyday social relations are affected by their living in a highly diverse environment. We explore the extent to which their relationships are shaped by homophily âthe idea that peopleâs networks and relationships are based on similarity, as described by the proverb âbirds of a feather fit togetherâ (McPherson et al. 2001). Homophily is often assumed to be the guiding principle in social relationships, both in terms of the networks to which people belong and their dyadic relationships. McPherson et al. ...