Venue: Online & G.159 MacLaren Stuart Room, Old College

Registration: This is a hybrid event. If you register to attend online, you will be sent a joining link for Microsoft Teams before the event starts.

Abstract: Friendships are more or less intimate relationships and intimate relationships are always implicated in the making of selves and social worlds. In this lecture Lynn Jamieson will consider whether the social research evidence suggests hope concerning friendships’ impacts on uncertain futures. One positive strand of recent research claims that men’s friendships are advancing emotionally literate, empathetic forms of masculinity that is pro-feminist and has no place for ‘lad culture’ or homophobia. Some literature encourages optimism about cross-ethnic friendship. However not all research dealing with cross-class and racist ‘othering’ is so optimistic and, perhaps unsurprisingly, analysis of populist right wing movements is not so upbeat about the role of friendship. Research on activist and everyday responses to climate change and catastrophic loss of biodiversity offers a more mixed picture. All this points to how important it is for social scientists to systematically attend to friendships as both lived realities and ideals in the imagination.

Lynn Jamieson is Professor of Families and Relationships at the University of Edinburgh.

This lecture will be chaired by Sue Scott, Visiting Professor at Newcastle University.

Friendships as a lever of social change?