Friendship Matters: Communication, Dialectics, and the Life Course (Communication and Social Order)

In this volume, William K. Rawlins traces and investigates the varieties, tensions, and functions of friendship for males and females throughout the life course: how they are managed communicatively, and how they infl uence and refl ect their participants' continually evolving senses of self, relationships, and community. He argues that friendship inherently involves certain dialectical tensions within the larger culture, between friends, and within and across the stages of the life cycle. He also examines notions and meanings of friendship: ethical, civic, romantic, utilitarian, and mundane.