Ways of friendship anthropological perspectives

"Originally presented at a workshop entitled 'The anthropology of friendship', held at the London School of Economics in June 2006"--Acknowledgements.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Evan Killick -- 1. On 'Same-Year Siblings' in Rural South China / Amit Desai -- 2. Ayompari, Compadre, Amigo: Forms of Fellowship in Peruvian Amazonia / Gonzalo D. Santos -- 3. Friendship, Distance and Kinship-Talk Amongst Mozambican Refugees in South Africa / Evan Killick -- 4. Friendship, Kinship and Sociality in a Lebanese Town / Graeme Rodgers -- 5. A Matter of Affection: Ritual Friendship in Central India / Michelle Obeid -- 6. Close Friends: The Importance of Proximity in Children's Peer Relations in Chhattisgarh, Central India / Amit Desai -- 7. Making Friends, Making Oneself: Friendship and the Maputhe Person / Peggy Proffer -- 8. The Value of Friendship: Subject/Object Transformations in the Economy of Becoming a Person (Bermondsey, Southeast London) / Magnus Course and Gillian Evans.

"Friendship is an essential part of human experience, involving ideas of love and morality as well as material and pragmatic concerns. Making and having friends is a central aspect of everyday life in all human societies. Yet friendship is often considered of secondary significance in comparison to domains such as kinship, economics and politics. How important are friends in different cultural contexts? What would a study of society viewed through the lens of friendship look like? Does friendship affect the shape of society as much as society moulds friendship? Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Europe, this volume offers answers to these questions and examines the ideology and practice of friendship as it is embedded in wider social contexts and transformations." "Amit Desai is Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research explores the connections between Hindu religious experience and nationalist identification among people in central India, and this has led him to consider questions of religious subjectivity, moral practice, power and transformations in personhood and sociality." "Evan Killick is Nuffield Foundation New Career Development Fellow and Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Sussex, specialising in the study of Lowland South American societies. Working with both indigenous and mixed-heritage peoples in Peru and Brazil his work considers issues of race, indigeneity, land rights and development"--BOOK JACKET.