Everyday Friendships Intimacy as Freedom in a Complex World

Everyday Friendship conceptualises the lived experience of intimacy in a world in which the terms and conditions of love and friendship are increasingly unclear. Drawing on writing on friendship, love, and intimacy by such thinkers as Simmel and Kracauer, Elias, Goffman, Luhmann and Honneth, the book charts the modern meaning of intimacy and the freedoms it offers, as well as the continued challenges of entrenched gendered assumptions in everyday relations of affection, trust and respect. It shows that the analysis of the 'small world' of dyads can give important clues about society, and in this case about its gendered makeup. Everyday Friendship seeks to reintegrate into sociology the study of friendship and the analysis of dyads.