Introduction: Friendship and Emotions

Abstract

1.1 There has been an increase in sociological literature concerned with friendship in modern societies, although it was neglected until recently (Allan 1977, 1986, 1989, 1996, 1998, 2007, 2008, Adams, Allan 1989, Alberoni 1990, Allan 1977, 1997, Bidart 1997, Bosisio 2006 , Di Nicola 2002, 2003, Duck 1991, 1993, Eve 2002, Ghisleni 2006, Ghisleni, Rebughini 2006, Kao, Joyner 2005, Jamieson 1999, 2002, Jamieson et al. 2006, Mancdich 2003, Nedelmann 1991, Oliker 1998, Pahl 2000, 2002, Rebughini 2006, Rebughini et al. 2011, Silver 1989, 1990, Spencer, Pahl 2006, Yager 2004, Walker 1994). Sociologists have neglected friendships in the past because they have been understood as personal choices rather than as allied to the public matters that were the subject of most sociological interrogation (Di Nicola 2002, p. 11). The idea of friendship as an intimate relationship which belongs only to the private sphere of social actors has been rejected in recent years by scholars. One reason for the change was that many social theorists turned their attention to the process of individualization and in particular institutionalized individualism (Beck, BeckGernsheim, 2002, p. xxi), which arguably characterizes contemporary society (Bauman 2003; Giddens 1992). As a result social thinkers began to interrogate the role of friendship in modern life not only in the private but also in the public sphere. Ancient wisdom has its part in this new interrogation. Friendship is not only a ’virtue’, according to the Greek philosopher Aristotle (1983), but a social practice: a social relationship between two individuals who freely choose and mutually trust each other. Trusting a person permits you to rely on him/her in order to receive advice, support, aid, affection but also in order to confide to him/her the ‘backstage’ of one’s self. A friend is a person to whom you can show your dreams, delusions, fears and certainties, strengths and weaknesses (Di Nicola 2002, p. 71). The social norm that regulates friendship is reciprocity. Friendship also has to be understood also as a feeling and emotion which arises between the two persons involved in the relationship (Di Nicola 2002, Alberoni 1999). As is well known emotions and feelings have been strongly marginalized in sociological discourse (Flam 2002).

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