Practice Of Friendship Research Articles

Friendship and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): Correlation Between Friendships of Students with ASD High Function (AHF) and Educational Practices in the Context of Inclusion in Primary Education

Friendship contributes to mental well-being, is a protective factor in victimization and a challenge for children and adolescents with High Functioning Autism (HFA). The quantity and quality of their friendships depends on the quality of interventions in their environment. This study aims to investigate the quantity and quality of friendships between children with (AHF) and their peers in primary school, and the relationship between friendships and inclusive educational practices. The research sample consisted of 143 teachers of students with AHF in primary school. The qualitative approach used the Autism Inclusion Questionnaire (AIQ), while the quantitative approach used the Questionnaire on friendships between children with AHF and peers. Inferential statistics, i.e., the use of the x2 correlation test and Pearson's coefficient, was used to investigate the association and type of association between friendship practices with AHF and educational, behavioral practices. Results showed that 35% of teachers believed that children with ASD tended to have no friends and were surrounded by loneliness. Only one third of them had a good friend. However, these friendships could not be considered meaningful as they were not characterized by reciprocity and common interests. 19 out of 37 educational inclusion practices were linked to the development and improvement of friendships. They can be useful for educators, practitioners and families at this age stage.

‘Friends are those who can help you out’: unpacking the understanding and experiences of friendship among young migrant workers in China

Based on lengthy ethnographic fieldwork in Southwest China, this article unpacks how precarity and migration have deeply shaped young migrant workers’ understanding and experiences of friendship. The precarious work and living conditions compel young migrants to put more emphasis on the instrumental aspects of friendship, in which they deeply value friends’ help and practical support, which also intertwine closely with the emotional aspects of friendship. High mobility does not mean that migrants are not able to form and maintain ‘meaningful’ social relationships; rather, it is friends’ support and help which sustain migrants’ precarious and highly mobile ways of living. This article also discusses the burdens and risks that are associated with such friendship practices, and how, despite these ‘dark sides of friendship’, young migrant workers still largely rely on their friends to survive and keep going in the city.

Real Presence Amid the Shallows: Eucharist and Friendship in a Digital Age

This article contends that Christ’s eucharistic offer of friendship, and the habits of attentiveness such real presence demands, must shape the church’s mission in a digital milieu that tends to shallow attention and relationships. It makes this argument in dialogue principally with the theology of Bernard Lonergan and the pontificate of Pope Francis, while aided by the cultural commentary of Nicholas Carr, Sherry Turkle, and Marshall McLuhan. First, I consider how Lonergan’s focus on human knowing and choosing anticipates the recent turn in the Catholic magisterium under Pope Francis that considers the formative effects of digital communication technologies. Second, I show how Lonergan’s account of bias helps explain the shallowing effects of these technologies, for both cognition and community. Third, inspired by Lonergan and Pope Francis, I propose how practices of friendship—informed by Christ’s own friendship extended through Eucharistic presence—can foster habits of real presence able to counter the shallows of our digital age.

Mothers Doing Friendship in a Hostile Environment: Navigating Dialectical Tensions and Sharing Support

Increasingly hostile immigration policies in the UK produce insecure immigration statuses and exclusion from public services and mainstream welfare benefits. Little is known about how this precaritization affects racially minoritized mothers with insecure immigration statuses and ‘no recourse to public funds’. The ethnographic study on which this article is based explored the impact of hostile policies on mothering, and found that precaritization increases the significance of mothers’ informal support networks, including friendships. I show how hostile policies constrain mothers’ friendship practices, shaping access to support. I argue that while mothers share diverse forms of support through their everyday friendship practices, they have to navigate dialectical tensions (contradictions) that play out in ways specific to their precarious legal and financial positioning. Applying theories of friendship and relational dialectics, I highlight the importance of safe, sociable spaces and sustained ‘friendship work’ to navigate tensions and nurture friendships as sites of support.

The teaching apparatus: A material-discursive entanglement of tasks and friendship in the upper-secondary classroom

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the material complexity and relational emergence of ‘teaching’. Reporting on a video-based ethnographic study of an upper secondary classroom in Norway, the paper centres on the following research questions: Which material-discursive practices ‘matter’ in upper secondary teaching situations, and how are participants’ bodies shaping and being shaped by these practices? The paper combines sociomaterial practice theory with the agential realist concepts of material-discursivity and apparatus to trace the spatial and bodily enactment of a teaching situation. In the first part of the paper, I identify two material-discursive practices: the practice of tasks and the practice of friendship. Second, I examine the two practices’ material intertwinement, proposing that they entangle and coarticulate a larger material arrangement termed the teaching apparatus that regulates the possibilities and limitations for ‘doing’ in the classroom. The paper offers a perspective on teaching that increases our awareness of its interconnectedness and unpredictability, allowing for a more fine-grained understanding of the embodied liveliness and material complexity of everyday teaching encounters. Finally, I propose that thinking with a spatially, bodily and relationally produced teaching apparatus offers an affirmative and agential approach to discussing educational quality.

Friendship and Spiritual Learning: Seedbed for Synodality

In the literature about learning in general and also with regard to faith learning, the experience and practice of friendship has been neglected. In the early years of the church, and at various other times, social networks of Christians preserved and handed on the life of faith without the benefit of formal educational institutions or strong ecclesial structures. This article explores the potential of friendship to contribute to the kind of spiritual learning that underpins synodality. The experience of friendship plays an important role in how people access, interpret, welcome and embrace truth and in their paths towards transformation. Friendship is considered here as a form of peer ministry. There can be no social friendship, along the lines advocated by Pope Francis in Fratelli tutti, without the laboratory and engine room of everyday personal friendships. Key features of friendship are related to the implications of synodality and to the conditions that support spiritual learning.

Children’s digital friendship practices during the first Covid-19 lockdown

During the Covid-19 pandemic, digital technologies have come to the forefront of mostpeople’s social, professional, and educational lives, and children have, like everyone else, depended on digital media for remote schooling as well as informal communication with their peers. This article presents results from a qualitative interview study among 20 Danish children, aged 3–12, and their parents during the spring and summer of 2020. As would be expected, age predicted a certain level of proficiency with, and access to, digital media technologies. However, children across the age spectrum of our sample relied on adult facilitation of digital practices in similar ways during a time where these were foregrounded in unforeseen ways. We discuss these findings in relation to a triadic theoretical framework of distributed agency, dynamic affordances, and access-oriented aspects of children’s practices with communication technology.

Practices of Friendship: The Collective Memory of Twin Towns in Sverdlovsk Region of the USSR and the West Bohemian Region of Czechoslovakia

This article describes the experience of an interdisciplinary field study devoted to the examination of the collective memory of eyewitnesses of twinning ties of small towns of Sverdlovsk Region and the West Bohemian Region of Czechoslovakia in the 1960s–1990s. The study refers to five towns of the Middle Urals: Bogdanovich, Zarechny, Karpinsk, Pervouralsk, and Sysert. The theme of memory unites the efforts of historians and sociologists in the context of a general trend — the turn of society towards the local past, its assessment, and the formation of ideological positions for the present. The purpose of the article is to show the possibilities of historical and sociological understanding of twinning in the aspect of temporal dimensions. The choice and justification of methods for the applied study of the phenomenon of twinning ties is based on the methodology of collective memory: the category of “contextuality” of memory, described in the works of M. Halbwachs, J. Olick, is important for the authors; the study of memories of the recent past is carried out within the theory of the experience of the generation of K. Mannheim and M. Mead; the position of P. Hutton makes a significant basis about the measure of reproduction of the past; the “elaboration” of preliminary prejudices is built within the framework of the methodology of oral history. On the site of the Local History Museums of each of the five towns, round tables were held with participants of twinning ties. In addition, guests who had no such experience attended the events. The topic of interaction with residents of the Western Bohemian Region was proposed for discussion. It could be memories of trips to Czechoslovakia, or the arrival of the twin “brothers” in the Middle Urals. At the time of the events described, the participants of the round tables could perform various social roles.

Friendship dynamics of young men with non-exclusive sexual orientations: Group diversity, physical intimacy and emotionality

Non-exclusive sexuality identity labels such as “mostly straight” and “mostly gay” describe distinct sexualities. While research documents their existence and distinctiveness, little focus has been given to friendship dynamics with these groups and research on friendship has a heteronormative bias. In this study, we use data collected with 25 men with non-exclusive sexualities from a university in the northeastern United States to examine their friendship dynamics and intimacy practices in order to advance understanding of friendship beyond binary frameworks of straight and gay friendship groups. We document the friendship practices of men who are mostly straight, “bisexual-leaning,” and mostly gay, and develop understanding of bromance as a term that has extended to cross-sexuality and cross-gender friendships. We call for greater engagement with these sexuality labels and greater recognition of fluidity as a concept that extends beyond sexology and debates about heterosexual privilege to understand the complex dynamics of intimacy and friendship and a broader range of friendship practices among men that such understandings facilitate.

Social Justice, Social Friendship, and the Role of Trust as an Other-Oriented Emotion

This essay discusses the idea that trust is a pre-rational, other-oriented emotion and it is constitutive of friendship practices regardless of the type of friendship. In particular, what we call ‘social friendship’ refers to a distinctive set of loose but lasting and cohesive bonds both among citizens within society (horizontal dimension) and between them and the state (vertical dimension), triggering solidarity and altruism. The other-oriented emotion of trust underpinning these social bonds–social friendship–in turn, is necessary for social justice to be supported, legitimized, and furthermore demanded by society.

The Kind of Friend I Think I Am: Perceptions of Autistic and Non-autistic Young Adults.

Autistic people have different preferences for friendship than non-autistic people. The aims of the current project were to determine how autistic people prefer to behave in their friendships and how this compares to the friendship practices reported by non-autistic participants. Autistic (n = 102) and non-autistic (n = 107) young adults between the ages of 18 and 24years completed an online survey comprised of selected questions from the Friendship Questionnaire. Binary logistic regression and multivariate general linear modeling were used to analyze and compare the responses across the groups. Results identified differences in the preferred friendship practices between the participant groups, which may further confirm the Double Empathy Theory and provide a context for understanding the friendship normative practices of autistic people.

Nietzsche and Friendship

Nietzsche and Friendship

Friendship(philia) of Chilgeuk(七克)

판토하(Pantoja)의 『칠극(七克)』은 조선 후기 지식인들의 우정론을 논하는 데 매우 중요한 자료이다. 그러나 기존의 우정론과 서학(西學)의 관련성에 대한 연구는 마테오 리치(Matteo Ricci)의 『교우론(交友論)』을 중심으로 이루어졌다. 그러나 『칠극』은 후대에 저술되면서 『교우론』보다 더 깊고 발전된 논의를 펼쳤다. 조선 후기의 지식인들이 논한 우정은 단순히 생애 주기 중 시간과 공간을 공유하면서 만들어진 좁고 친밀한 관계에 대한 것이 아니다. 그들이 논의에서 다루는 관계는 폭넓은 사회적 관계이며, 우정을 실천하는 것은 ‘화합’하고 ‘사회적 책임’을 다하는 것으로 보았다. 즉 우정을 감정적 차원에서 윤리적 차원으로 전이하여 이해한 것이다. 이를 위해서는 자기애를 확장하여 평등한 관계를 형성해 나가야 하는데 그 기반에는 ‘공감’이 있다. 그리고 이러한 우정론의 지향성은 당시 지식인들에게 움트고 있던 근대성을 시사하고 있다. 『칠극』에 나타난 우정에 대한 논의는 이러한 조선 후기의 우정 담론의 근간에 영향을 미쳤다는 점에서 조선 후기 우정론 연구의 기초가 된다고 할 수 있다.Pantoja s 『Chilgeuk(七克)』 is a very important text for discussing the theory of friendship among intellectuals in the late Joseon Dynasty. However, research on the relationship between the existing theory of friendship and Seohak(西學) was centered on Matteo Ricci s 『Gyowooron(交友論)』. However, as 『Chilgeuk』 was written later, it developed a deeper and more advanced discussion than 『Gyowooron』. The friendship discussed by intellectuals in the late Joseon Dynasty is not simply about the narrow and intimate relationship created by sharing time and space during the life cycle. in their discussion. The relationships dealt with are broad social relationships, and the practice of friendship was seen as ‘harmony’ and fulfilling ‘social responsibility’. That is, friendship is understood by transferring it from an emotional level to an ethical level. To do this, we need to expand self-love to form an equal relationship, and the basis for this is ‘empathy’. And this orientation of friendship theory suggests the modernity that was growing in the intellectuals at the time. The discussion on friendship in 『Chilgeuk』 can be said to be the basis for the study of friendship theory in the late Joseon Dynasty in that it influenced the basis of this discourse on friendship in the late Joseon Dynasty.

“These are not just slogans”

Abstract The goal of this study is to capture the meaning of interstate friendship from the perspective of international actors and to underline the benefits of analyzing speech acts as a tool for revealing the relational scripts that guide interstate relations. Analysis of the discourse surrounding 215 assertions of friendship made by statespersons in a variety of diplomatic encounters and cultural contexts allows us to identify the factors that state actors articulate to develop friendly interstate relations, the practices expected from a friendly state, and the goals attributed to practices of friendship. In the Conclusion we discuss the differences between interpersonal and interstate friendships, and how the speech act of friendship plays a part in the construction of interstate relations.

The rediscovery of friendship in adult age in a time of pandemic

In recent decades we have witnessed the disruptive rise of an ultraliberalism which, by enhancing the autonomy of the individual, has given the collective dimension a primarily instrumental connotation; the affirmation of the “self-centered man” (Bertin’s definition), that pursues the experience of the world above all on the level of “possession”, has intertwined with the crisis, especially among adults, in the practice of friendship, understood as a relationship of voluntary, free interdependence, which continues over time through manifestations of sharing, complicity, intimacy, affection and mutual assistance. The social isolation resulting from the pandemic event has led to the reconsideration of the importance of friendships and to the search for new opportunities for meeting, online or face to face (possibly respecting the current restrictive rules for the containment of the epidemic), in which “being together” is predominant over “doing something together”.

Aftermath Friendship: an Indonesian Feminist Theological Perspective on Trauma and Interreligious Peace

Abstract This article offers an Indonesian Christian feminist theological voice on religion’s contribution to peace as a risky interreligious practice of friendship following religious violence—thus, an aftermath friendship. I argue that aftermath friendship is a relevant feminist theological metaphor for the capacity and the role of women in negotiating difference and practicing healing from within the wounded interreligious relationship caused by religious violence. It is a practice of simultaneously building and recovering interreligious friendships that have been ruptured, for example, by the trauma of a religiously related attack on a church building. This article brings into dialogue women’s aftermath narratives that are embedded in the ruptured interreligious landscape, the biblical concept of friendship, and feminist trauma theology to unveil the polyphonic features of interreligious peace, friendship, and healing.

Peirce, Bierstadt, and the Topographic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century North America

A passage in a letter serves as a starting point for an exploration of the relationship between the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce and the painter Albert Bierstadt, taking into account their extended friendship, business partnerships, and respective practices of visual representation. The letter contains Peirce’s description of a painting by Bierstadt that he possessed, which sets the stage for an investigation of his systematic philosophy and a comparison of his existential graphs with the oft-noted “effects” of Bierstadt’s grand canvases. The latter, finally, help to unpack the ethical role of visual art within Peirce’s thought.

Hooking up with friends: LGBTQ+ young people, dating apps, friendship and safety

Research exploring digital intimate publics tends to consider social media platforms and dating/hook-up apps separately, implying distance between social and sexual communication practices. This paper troubles that delineation by drawing on LGBTQ+ young people’s accounts of negotiating safety and risk in dating/hook-up apps, in which friendship practices are significant. We explore four key themes of friendship that arose in our analysis of interviews and workshop discussions: sharing mutuals (or friends-in-common) with potential dates/hook-ups; making friends through apps; friends supporting app negotiations; and friends’ involvement in safety strategies. Through analysis of these data, we firstly argue that friendship is often both an outcome and an organising force of LGBTQ+ young people’s uses of dating/hook-up apps, and secondly, that media sites commonly defined as social (e.g. Instagram) or sexual (e.g. Tinder) are imbricated, with friendship contouring queer sex and dating practices.

“Unspoken Affection”: Articulating Friendship in Gladys Ng’s <em>The Pursuit of a Happy Human Life</em>

Gladys Ng’s The Pursuit of a Happy Human Life (2016) has been described as a short film about the “unspoken affection and awkward conversations [that] fill the last day two best friends [Yokes and Steph] spend together.” Inasmuch as it is about goodbyes, it is also about the many ways to not say goodbye. Yokes pauses, digresses, and acts out, refusing to bid farewell to Steph who is leaving Singapore. Their friendship is characterised by an inexpression which is product of adolescence and discipline, as well as a strategy to circumvent normative practices of friendship. Drawing on the philosophies of Deleuze and Bergson, this article attempts to evince the unspoken affections through the acts of hesitating and acting out. With a discussion on friendship dynamics that are contingent on a renewed understanding of what it means to hesitate and act out, the article will frame inexpression as a strategic aporia, in which the lack of certainty and ineloquence enables a reconceptualisation of friendship. That is, inexpression becomes a means of reaching out, beyond the body and frame, to present a corporal assemblage in which meaning is no longer localised but dispersed, as if the characters are befriending the audience.

Care Experience and Friendship: Theory and International Evidence to Improve Practice and Future Research

AbstractDrawing on a review of recent international literature, this article argues for the first time that an understanding of, and engagement with, the theory and practice of friendship is essential to working alongside those who have care experience. Drawing on theory from philosophy, psychology and sociology, the care system is explored as a unique and challenging context for making and keeping the reciprocal, caring friendships which research suggests are important for a ‘happy, healthy life’. Our analysis shows how theories of friendship have failed to consider the friendship experiences of those in the care system. We suggest that including these experiences offers new opportunities to develop theory and practice in the field of friendship. We argue that friendship is an essential human need and, as such, should be placed centrally in assessment and intervention work, encouraging social workers to support positive and enduring friendships for the people they work with.