Miller, D;
(2017)
The ideology of friendship in the era of Facebook.
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
, 7
(1)
pp. 377-395.
10.14318/hau7.1.025.
Preview |
Text
Miller_Ideology_Friendship_Facebook_VoR.pdf - Published Version Download (241kB) | Preview |
Abstract
This article suggests that while anthropologists have developed a highly nuanced analysis of kinship and friendship under a more general comparative study of relationality, this emphasis upon practice needs to be complemented by an alternative focus on the use of these terms as ideology, where we find a more simplistic and dualistic usage. The rise of new social media and the verb friending highlights a more general shift from the idea of fictive kinship to that of fictive friendship, where it is the ideals represented by the supposed voluntarism and authenticity of friendship that has now come to dominate the way people view kin relations. Evidence is provided from ethnographies in the Philippines, Trinidad, and England that illustrate the prevalence of a practice where kin relations reposition themselves under the idiom of friendship with both negative and positive consequences. This incorporation of kinship within friendship can also bring back a sense of rule and obligation, which has led to a decline in the use of Facebook by the young.
Type: | Article |
---|---|
Title: | The ideology of friendship in the era of Facebook |
Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
DOI: | 10.14318/hau7.1.025 |
Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.14318/hau7.1.025 |
Language: | English |
Additional information: | This is the published version of record. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
Keywords: | friendship, social media, kinship, Facebook, England |
UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Anthropology |
URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1568326 |
Archive Staff Only
View Item |