FRIENDSHIP, SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL-STRUCTURE

This article is concerned with the contribution that sociology has mad e to our understanding of the ways in which friendships are socially p atterned. Rather than treating these ties as individual or dyadic cons tructions, it examines how the social and economic contexts in which t hey develop influence their form. It focuses particularly on the impac t that social location has on friendship, arguing that both class and status divisions are important for understanding the character of info rmal solidarities. However, both of these must be seen as dynamic, for neither class nor status characteristics are fixed; both alter biogra phically and historically, and as they alter they pattern the friendsh ips individuals sustain. The final section of the article attempts to explicate how structural change at the end of the 20th century will af fect friendship. While some theories of privatization imply that infor mal relationships are becoming less significant socially, the argument developed here is that the transformations of late modernity are like ly to result in informal solidarities of friendship becoming more cent ral.