Call for papers
Gender, Sexuality and Adult friendship
2nd July 2010
Lancaster University
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/centres/gws/event/3197
Friendships are important relationships in people’s lives. They are a source of companionship; they form the basis of many social activities and play a role in creating peoples’ life expectations and aspirations. Friendships also help us form our identities and can be an important source of support, help and information. It has been argued that friendship has replaced traditional kin and community relationships in post-modern society (Giddens) as such friendship is often constructed as freely chosen informal relationship and this version has obscured the ways in which friendship interaction and friendship groups are imbued with socio-economic, gendered, classed and racialised processes.
During this conference we seek to bring together researchers who examine contemporary, empirical material on adult friendship, who view friendship as a social, temporal and cultural relationship with a specific focus on gender and sexuality. Depending on the outcome of the conference, there may be an opportunity to contribute to a publication on adult friendship.
In this conference we hope to address questions and issues around the topic of gender, sexuality and adult friendship, which may include the following:
How do gendered processes operate in friendship groups?
What are the relationships between friendship, sexual relations and romance?
Are friendships still seen as secondary to sexual relationships in adult life?
How are adult friendship and friendship opportunities created and maintained?
Have expressions or patterns of friendship changed?
What role does friendship play in queer communities?
What role do resources play in the creation and maintenance of friendships?
How can we best address the difficulties in conceptualising friendship, social networks and sociability?
What other types of friendship are there other than the best friend relationship?
Please send an abstract [150-250 words] to Lia Kinane l.kinane@lancaster.ac.uk by 30th of March.
