Importance Of Friends Research Articles

A Daring Life: A Biography of Eudora Welty by Carolyn J. Brown (review)

Reviewed by: A Daring Life: A Biography of Eudora Welty by Carolyn J. Brown Elizabeth Crews A Daring Life: A Biography of Eudora Welty. By Carolyn J. Brown. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2012. x, 124 pp. $20. Carolyn J. Brown’s biography of Eudora Welty is surprisingly short (84 pages of text, plus an afterword, five appendices, notes, bibliography, credits, and an index) for covering someone who lived such a long and full life. The length, however, is fitting since Brown’s biography is not for scholars or adults but for young readers who may be encountering Welty and her fiction for the first time, although this intended audience is noted only on the back cover and nowhere else in the marketing of the book. Welty’s and others’ photographs of her family, friends, and herself are featured throughout the biography. Each of the eight chapters begins with a quotation, all but one drawn from Welty’s writing. Brown relies heavily on Welty’s published nonfiction and on manuscripts and correspondence in the Eudora Welty Collection at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, and thus Welty’s voice contributes to the telling of her life story. Through all of this, Brown presents a well-written and informative biography of an author with whom twenty-first-century young adults can relate. Brown opens her biography by providing her readers with an understanding of the time and place in which Welty lived and wrote. The first chapter, “Life in Jackson: Eudora’s Early Years,” presents Welty’s parents and childhood through stories told by Welty in a variety of sources. In the second chapter, “Eudora’s Education,” Brown continues to rely on quotations from Welty, but in addition she provides an array of Welty’s poetry and drawings as examples of Welty’s creativity and varying interests. These first two chapters, which focus on Welty as a child and young adult, may especially appeal to young adult readers as they can relate to the author before she found her vocation. Young adult readers will understand the range of emotions Welty felt throughout the early years of her life, from childhood excitement about snow to feelings of not fitting in while at college in Wisconsin. Brown also offers carefree stories of young Welty going to baseball games and jokingly requesting Hershey candy bars from the president of the company. Instead of glossing over Welty’s young adult [End Page 171] years, Brown gives insight into the author’s life in the same age as the intended reader. Young Eudora Welty engages readers despite the fact that almost a century has passed since her youth. Chapters three through six (“The 1930s: Finding Her Eye and Her Voice,” “Before the War: Friends, Fellowship, and Early Success,” “World War II: A Promising Career Interrupted,” and “The 1960s: Personal and Political Unrest”) walk the reader through four decades of Welty’s life, covering the majority of her professional life. These chapters emphasize Welty’s photography, fiction, speaking engagements, and teaching. Brown contextualizes these important details with stories of Mississippi life during the depression, Welty’s life before and during World War II, and life during the Civil Rights Movement. Woven into the stories of her professional life are stories of personal loss, relationships with friends and family, travels, and political strife. While chapter six describes the declining health and deaths of Welty’s immediate family members, chapters seven and eight, titled “Grief and Recovery: The Optimist’s Daughter and One Writer’s Beginnings” and “The Importance of Friendship: Eudora’s Final Days,” respectively, point to the many positive occurrences in Welty’s life after such personal loss. Brown speaks of “the extremely autobiographical story,” The Optimist’s Daughter, “considered by many to be Welty’s masterpiece,” but in the final two chapters, she continues to draw attention to the importance of Welty’s many friends in her life. These chapters also highlight several honors bestowed on Welty at this time, including Eudora Welty Day in Mississippi—an event attended by many of Welty’s friends from all over the United States. Brown argues that friendships, not fiction writing, were of the most importance during Welty’s...

Perspectives on Schooling from Early Adolescent Video Diaries

The aim of this project was to gain the voice of the early adolescent (aged between 11 and 13 years) about the things that are genuinely important to them in their lives. Eight participants were asked to record a private video diary entry each night for one week. A number of thematic topics were identified including: their experiences and perspectives on school curriculum and assessment, opinions about schooling structures, and importance of friendship and family. Giving young adolescents the opportunity to voice their opinions has been valuable in gaining insight to the relative impacts of teaching and learning approaches in their school contexts and the issues they consider as the most important in their lives.

A Longitudinal Investigation of Perceived Friend Influence on Adolescent Girls' Body Dissatisfaction and Disordered Eating

Although major etiological models highlight the importance of friends in the development of adolescent body image and eating problems, longitudinal research that comprehensively investigates possible direct and mediational relationships between these variables is lacking. Thus, this study aimed to examine prospective interrelationships between perceived friend influence, body dissatisfaction, and disordered eating in early adolescent girls, and whether these relationships differed across levels of body mass. A large Australian community sample of female high school students (N = 1,094; Time 1 M age = 12.3 years) completed a battery of self-report questionnaires assessing perceived friend influence, body dissatisfaction, and disordered eating at 3 yearly intervals. Height and weight were also measured at each time point. Structural equation modeling was used to investigate two separate models, in which Time 2 body dissatisfaction was hypothesized to mediate the relationship between Time 1 perceived friend influence and Time 3 dieting and bulimic behaviors. No significant direct or indirect pathways were found between friend influence and disordered eating. Unexpectedly, however, body dissatisfaction was found to prospectively predict girls' perception of friend influence. These findings were remarkably similar in both healthy and overweight girls. The findings suggest that friends may be more influential for those adolescents who have higher levels of body image concern, rather than contributing directly to the development of body dissatisfaction. The peer environment represents an important consideration in adolescent prevention and intervention programs.

Exploring how social capital works for children who have experienced school turbulence: what is the role of friendship and trust for children in poverty?

This paper is concerned with the role of friendship in the construction of social capital within schools for students in poverty. It undertakes an analysis of friendship through the lens of students who have experienced turbulence. ‘Turbulence’ refers to a type of pupil mobility between schools (not to be confused with social mobility) understood as when a child enters or leaves school at a non-standard time. An examination of the ways in which ‘turbulent’ children seek to make friendships provides an opportunity to consider the ways in which different types of friendships affect the construction of social capital in school. This paper examines these processes for six ‘turbulent’ children from low-income families, and explores the different orientations to the construction of social capital between these children and their non-‘turbulent’ friends. This study extends our understanding of the role of friendship in the construction of social capital and may help to develop an agenda for considering the importance of friendship, social capital and education for children in poverty.

Friendship in College and Its Influence on Retention and Performance

Retention and success of students are influenced by many factors. One of them is friendship that the students experience and build inside and outside the college where they study. Some studies conducted in this area result consistent findings and held institutions or colleges in maintaining their students until they graduate. Many students go to college for the first time without quite good psychological readiness to face higher education environment. Students’ relationship with their parents and peers could strongly support the students when they face problems whether they are academic or social matters. The students’ good relationship with parents and peers, therefore, could influence their study retention and success. This research examined friendship and its influence in students’ retention and academic performance. In measuring the diversity of friendship groups and their effects, reseacher conducted a study of a fairly diverse batch of student. By employing Likert scale questionnaire the role of friendship measured and tested on student persistence and performance variables. One important finding of this study was that friends significantly influence in student decision to sustain their study in college and to finish it instead of the influence of their parents. Surprisingly, the result of this study showed the negative impact of friendship on student performance. However, this finding depicted the fact of the importance of friendship in positive academic environment. Further, from this study, an opportunity to improve campus friendship climates shown to make students sustain their study and encourage in gaining good academic performance. By communicating the actual nature of student interactions, campus communities can promote more friendships and give a good influence for student success.

Are friends overrated? A study for the social news aggregator Digg.com

The key feature of online social networks (OSN) is the ability of users to become active, make friends and interact via comments, videos or messages with those around them. This social interaction is typically perceived as critical to the proper functioning of these platforms; therefore, a significant share of OSN research in the recent past has investigated the characteristics and importance of these social links, studying the networks’ friendship relations through their topological properties, the structure of the resulting communities and identifying the role and importance of individual members within these networks.In this paper, we present results from a multi-year study of the online social network Digg.com, indicating that the importance of friends and the friend network in the propagation of information is less than originally perceived. While we do note that users form and maintain a social structure along which information is exchanged, the importance of these links and their contribution is very low: users with even a nearly identical overlap in interests react on average only with a probability of 2% to information propagated and received from friends. Furthermore, in only about 50% of stories that became popular from the entire body of 10 million news we find evidence that the social ties among users were a critical ingredient to the successful spread. Our findings indicate the presence of previously unconsidered factors, the temporal alignment between user activities and the existence of additional logical relationships beyond the topology of the social graph, that are able to drive and steer the dynamics of such OSNs.

A AMIZADE PARA NIETZSCHE: UMA ARENA DE MAL ENTENDIDOS

This article intended to show the importance of friendship in the context of reflection on the incomprehensibility of living wealth experienced as more intimate experience and how Nietzsche comes, with the relationship amicable, to formulating of a new dawn of thought, now situated in the field of experience which escapes of systems responsiveness. In this scenario, friendship appears as a ring for misunderstandings because it fosters the possibility of a relationship translated by the plural pronoun us - a sign of relationship that is effective as fearlessness, freedom and assert themselves, with a view to constant self-overcoming.

Ministering with and to Older People

In their discussion Madeline Light and Oonagh O'Brien share observations and reflections derived from years of being immersed in a community of older people. Then they review a qualitative exercise that explored the possible nurture of faith by the Alpha course. The reflections include the role of an Anglican priest, expectations of clerical and lay ministry, the importance of friendship, the need for affirmation, the desire for continual learning and changes in practical theology. The implications of the changes in practical theology are reflected upon in this planning for the proposal for the professional doctorate thesis.

Noodle & Lou by L. G. Scanlon

Scanlon, Liz G. Noodle & Lou. Illus. Arthur Howard. New York: Beach Lane Books, 2011. Print. In an unlikely animal pairing, Noodle, an earthworm who is having a bad day, turns to his buddy Lou, a perky blue jay, to cheer him up. While Noodle confides his feelings of envy about other worms living it up at Wiggly Field and catalogues all of his reasons for self-loathing, Lou counters with loyal support until finally Noodle cheers up. Lou’s patient, nurturing, and kind-hearted reassurance highlights the importance of friendship and self-acceptance. There are moments of entertaining weirdness in the book like when Noodle reasonably complains “My head has no eyes” but at times the text is clichéd and seems forced to fit into the rhyming scheme. The book does not stray from the author’s purposive, straightforward storyline and lessons—developing self-esteem, supporting friends, and appreciating who you are. Kids will pay attention to the thick-lined, colourful drawings and try to spot other bugs and birds found in the illustrations. The illustrations get progressively brighter and more detailed as Noodle’s mood brightens. Noodle is drawn as a ball-cap wearing, charming worm who expresses a surprising range of emotions through body language and his mouth. Noodle & Lou is an old-fashioned story about the importance of friendship. It is aimed at children ages 4-6. Recommended with reservations: 2 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Tami Oliphant

Capturing the peer context: Developmental issues, statistical methods, and new directions

The study of adolescents’ relationships with their peers has flourished over the past 30 years. At the same time, there have been marked shifts in the orientation of peer research. In the 1970s and 1980s, research tended to focus on the importance of friendship and the social status of children and adolescents within their group of peers. Key measurement techniques developed during these decades were based on selfas well as peer-reports about classmates. Since the early-1990s, however, there has been a surge of interest in dating and romantic relationships during adolescence and emerging adulthood, and this has become a significant area of developmental research by itself. By the late 1990s, renewed interest in Moreno’s (1934) framework, Sullivan’s (1953) conceptualizations, and Dunphy’s (1963) paradigmatic study, as well as many new theories of peer relationships and social development (e.g., Davila, 2008; Dishion, Spracklen, Andrews, & Patterson, 1996; Furman, Brown, & Feiring, 1999; for review, see Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 2006), resulted in further shifts in the focus of research. These shifts included an increasing emphasis on mapping social networks, as well as more efforts towards understanding how friendships and the peer group are related to and transform into romantic relationships (Connolly, Furman, & Konarski, 2000; Furman et al., 1999; Furman & Collins, 2009), how romantic relationships can be added and change existing friendships (Brown, 1999; Connolly et al., 2000; Connolly & Goldberg, 1999; Zimmer-Gembeck, 1999), how multiple peer-relational forms exist within peer networks, and how there are multiple ways to capture the important influential elements in even a single relational form (Collins, 2003; Connolly et al., 2000; Zimmer-Gembeck, Siebenbruner, & Collins, 2001). However, despite the broadened interests, it remains quite rare for studies of peer groups and friendships to sit side-by-side with studies of romantic relationships in a Special Issue on the peer context and peer influence. A central aim of this Special Issue was to include studies of the many aspects of adolescents’ peer relationships to show howwork in one domain adds to, and can be useful for work in another. Wewill address such synergies in our Epilogue at the end of this issue. Much of the research in this area also has undergone a transformation through the now widespread availability of statistical techniques that can capture and analyze individual factors at the same time as capturing complex group and dyad level phenomena. Such software is indispensible for researchers who need to test both group level and individual correlates of behaviors, emotions and cognitions (for a review, see Rubin et al., 2006; also see Card, Selig, & Little, 2009; Kenny, Kashy, & Cook, 2006). The sophistication of available analytical methods continues to challenge existing conceptualizations of peer relationships and contexts, and researchers may need to formulate theoretical and conceptual accounts to keep pace with the methodological developments. We include studies in this Special Issue that have used a range of established and newer techniques, while also inviting commentary to highlight the strengths, as well as the continuing limitations, of all of our methods (Laursen, 2010). Although rapid development in a field is exciting, there is a danger that conceptual integration may come to lag behind analytical advancement and that research areas continue to be split up into subspecialties that produce their own dynamics. One main goal of this Special Issue, Capturing the Peer Context, was to underscore common threads and to illustrate how current methodological developments permeate research on peer relationships at different ages and in different target

Coping with bullying in Australian schools: how children with disabilities experience support from friends, parents and teachers

Little research has been published investigating the experiences of physical and emotional support for children with disabilities in the Australian school context. The aim of this phenomenological study was to explore how children with disabilities experienced support when they were bullied at school. Qualitative interviews with 10 children, aged 8–10 years, were analysed. The children had a range of disabilities, including physical, visual and hearing impairments. The four themes that emerged were: (1) bullying experiences; (2) coping with bullying; (3) importance of friends; (4) adult responses to bullying. The implications of the contributions to this study for bullying research specific to the lives of children with disabilities are discussed, such as providing educational and health professionals with a knowledge of the support that children with disabilities draw on when they experience bullying.

“If you can walk down the street and recognise the difference between cast iron and wrought iron, the world is altogether a better place”: Being Enthusiastic about Industrial Archaeology

“If you can walk down the street and recognise the difference between cast iron and wrought iron, the world is altogether a better place”: Being Enthusiastic about Industrial Archaeology

On Receiving the Diagnosis of Cancer: The Adolescent Perspective

The adolescent life stage encompasses unique developmental challenges. Little is known about the experience of receiving a cancer diagnosis during this already demanding life stage. The aim of this study is to explore the lived experience of being diagnosed with cancer from the perspective of the adolescent. A phenomenological approach is used to perform semistructured interviews with 10 adolescents who have been diagnosed with cancer within the previous 4 to 6 months. Colaizzi's method of analysis is used to allow themes to emerge from these data. Six themes capture the essence of being diagnosed with cancer from the perspective of the adolescent: (1) the stunning loss of normalcy, (2) gaining information, (3) the importance of friends and their reactions, (4) getting used to it, (5) giving back, and (6) family support. The results of this study provide an emerging understanding of the unique perspective of the adolescent with cancer. Understanding this perspective is critical to meet the needs of this population.

The importance of friends among foster youth aging out of care: Cluster profiles of deviant peer affiliations

The importance of friends during the developmental periods of childhood and adolescence is widely accepted and there is reason to believe that deviant peers play an important role in influencing the experiences and outcomes of young people aging out of foster care. This article uses Latent Class Analysis to explore the role that deviant peers play in the lives of these young people by empirically examining the heterogeneity of deviant peer affiliations in a sample of youth aging out of care. A three class solution exhibited the best fit and the classes consisted of youth with low, medium, and high levels of deviant peer affiliations. Using a range of covariates to validate the classes, we found that youth exhibiting high levels of deviant peer affiliations were more likely to be fired from a job, to possess a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder, to report higher levels of substance use, and to report being arrested than youth in the other two classes. Youth in the low deviant peer affiliation class exhibited higher levels of family support and lower levels of neighborhood disorder than youth in the other two classes. The research, policy, and practice implications of these findings are discussed.

Democratic Citizenship, Education and Friendship Revisited: In Defence of Democratic Justice

Literature about the significance of cultivating democratic citizenship education in universities abounds. However, very little has been said about the importance of friendship in sustaining democratic communities. In this article I argue for a complementary view of friendship based on mutuality and love—with reference to the seminal ideas of Sherman and Derrida. My view is that teaching and learning ought to be used as pedagogical spaces to nurture forms of friendship which not only encourage mutuality but also love in order to make possible the taking of risks on the part of students and teachers. And, if teachers and students act with mutuality and love they would be more favourably positioned in their society to take risks and to enact democratic justice.

<i>Perfecting Friendship: Politics and Affiliation in Early American Literature</i> (review)

Reviewed by: Perfecting Friendship: Politics and Affiliation in Early American Literature Robert K. Nelson Perfecting Friendship: Politics and Affiliation in Early American Literature. By Ivy Schweitzer. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006. 276 pp. $49.95/$19.95 paper. In this intellectually intrepid study, Ivy Schweitzer explicates a long history of “friendship discourses” dating back to the classical world (6), arguing that early American authors drew upon and, to varying degrees, attempted to reshape those discourses. Excavating an ideal of friendship that held a much deeper political resonance prior to the twentieth century, Schweitzer offers thoughtful readings of four early American literary works. Schweitzer finds friendship to be at the thematic and political heart of “several [End Page 164] representative early American texts” (13): in the “familiar commerce” of John Winthrop’s “A Modell of Christian Charitie” (73), as an egalitarian alternative to marriage in Hannah Webster Foster’s The Coquette, and in the interracial relationships in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans and Catharine Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie. The importance of friendship in these works, she suggests, evidences something we have not fully appreciated: the pervasiveness and significance of friendship in Western literature. Schweitzer modestly calls her first chapter an “abbreviated history of friendship theory” (13). It is in fact an erudite and impressively researched analysis, charting the place of friendship in Western thought beginning with Aristotle, ending with Derrida, and treating Cicero, Montaigne, and Adam Smith, among others, in between. What she finds in classical, Christian, and early modern works on friendship is the assertion that sameness or similitude is prerequisite for friendship and equality. Friendship, she shows, simultaneously functioned as a model for egalitarian, lateral relations between elite men who shared the same sex and class, and as the justification for social and political hierarchy between those men and all others who differed from them in terms of sex, class, or race. In early American literature, Schweitzer finds a new, politically radical idea introduced into this two-thousand-year-old discursive tradition: Sameness might not necessarily be requisite for friendship and equality. Friendship might function, these American writers either hoped or feared, “as a way to imagine connection without hierarchy,” fostering egalitarian relationships across differences of sex, race, and circumstance (15). In “A Modell of Christian Charitie,” Schweitzer argues, John Winthrop worked to contain this democratic potential. He raised the semblance of an inclusive spiritual society that included men and women, rich and poor, only to undermine that portrait of ubiquitous friendship by rhetorically conflating it with hierarchical marriage. Conflict between egalitarian friendship and hierarchical marriage is the thematic center of Foster’s The Coquette. Foster’s heroine successfully resists the “tomb of marriage” in her pursuit of friendships (both same-sex and cross-gender), but that evasion costs her her life (103). Ultimately, she is not seduced by the rakish villain so much as by an ideal of personal liberty and egalitarian friendship that he both proffers her and, perversely, represents. Schweitzer’s final two chapters turn to interracial friendships in Cooper’s and Sedgwick’s novels. In both, Schweitzer finds the possibility of friendship functioning to expand American equality and republicanism beyond white males. In The Last of the Mohicans, Hawk-eye, Chingachgook, and Uncas “model a democratic ‘micropolity’” true to the inclusive and egalitarian spirit of American republicanism (146). Hope Leslie goes further, making the interracial bond between two women exemplary of America’s highest political ideals. Yet, [End Page 165] in both novels, this democratic potential of friendship is not realized. Much like “A Modell of Christian Charitie,” The Last of the Mohicans disarms the egalitarian implications of friendship, in this case through a “symbolic cannibalism” where Native Americans are not socially included alongside, but ideologically consumed by, whites (24). The “ethical failure of friendship” in Hope Leslie was not Sedgwick’s goal but rather her critique of the United States’ exclusion of women and people of color from the social and political body (197). If there is a weakness to Schweitzer’s study, it is that her analyses of texts are often distant, if not disconnected, from the world outside those texts. She opens Perfecting Friendship...

The Importance of Friends

In a study of new friendships and adjustment among 1st-year university students, students at six Canadian universities completed questionnaires that assessed the quality of new friendships and adjustment during their first academic year. In-depth, face-to-face interviews about students' new friendships were conducted with a subsample of these students. Results indicated a significant positive relation between quality of new friendships and adjustment to university; this association was stronger for students living in residence than for those commuting to university. The interview data provided insight into the processes through which the relation between quality of new friendships and adjustment occurs. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of new friendships in helping individuals to adjust to a new social environment.

Teaching and Learning Guide for: A Window on the ‘New’ Sociology of Childhood

Teaching and Learning Guide for: A Window on the ‘New’ Sociology of Childhood

Leadership and friendship: On the possibility of taking risks

Literature about the significance of cultivating democratic relationships in universities and schools abounds. However, very little has been said about the importance of friendship in engendering democratic relations. In this essay I argue for a complementary view of friendship based on mutuality and love - with reference to the seminal ideas of Nancy Sherman and Jacques Derrida. Our view is that human relations ought to be used as pedagogical spaces to nurture forms of friendship which not only encourage mutuality but also love in order to make possible the taking of risks on the part of leaders and their colleagues. And, if leaders and their colleagues act with mutuality and love they would be more favourably positioned in their society to take risks and to sustain democratic relationships. In this essay we shall show how both Nancy Sherman's (1997) and Jacques Derrida's (1997) ideas of friendship can be used to nurture human relations which involve taking risks. Our argument in defence of taking risks through friendships is hopefully a move away from fostering democratic interactions among leaders and colleagues, which could potentially ignore forms of action which involve challenging, undermining and disagreeing with one's friends.

Friends, There Are No Friends? An Intimate Reframing of the International

This article offers an attempt to insert `friendship' into the reading of international relations, a conception which has so far remained outside the analytical focus of IR theorists. It suggests that a major reason for this omission is the common assumption of survival and the state as an autonomy-seeking entity, and it is argued that a conceptualisation of friendship as an intimate relationship must be rooted in an understanding of the human condition different from Hobbes. The article puts forward such an alternative through Heidegger's notion of anxiety and shows that the paradigm most sympathetic to this assumption, constructivism, has failed to account for the friend as the `significant other' capable of controlling anxiety. Against this backdrop, the argument is made that in their attempt to combine the desire for moral authenticity with the desire for belonging/recognition, individuals seek intimate relations. The importance of friendship is substantiated by drawing on Aristotle, highlighting equality and a unique logic of reciprocity as key features of friendship. The conceptual insights are applied to IR through a discussion suggesting that intimate relations are nevertheless political as they contain significant power potentials.