Placing Friendship in Context (Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences)

Personal relationships have long been of central interest to social scientists, but the subject of friendship has been relatively neglected. Moreover, most studies of friendship have been social psychological. Placing Friendship in Context is a unique collection bridging social psychological and social structural research to advance understanding of this important subject. In it, some of the world's leading researchers explore the social and historical contexts in which friendships and other similar informal ties develop and how it is that these contexts shape the form and substance the relationships assume. Together, they demonstrate that friendship cannot be understood from individualistic or dyadic perspectives alone, but is a relationship significantly influenced by the environment in which it is generated. By analysing the ways in which friendships articulate with the social structures in which they are embedded, Placing Friendship in Context redescribes such personal relationships at both the macro and the micro level.