Conclusion: A Relational Examination of Distance, Meanings and Practices

Abstract

Today the sociological inquiry on friendship is of great interest because it holds forth the promise of understanding the ways in which individualisation processes are experienced. As investigated in this book, Giddens (1991, 1992), Beck (2002) and Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002) pointed out the ways in which central processes of power in our era are now increasingly organised through the lens of the individual. According to that proposition, active individuals are the main organising unit of societies. Many of the fundamental realms by which people had previously identified their lives, such as education, employment, marital status, interpersonal relationships and living space, have unequivocally become matters of choice. All those realms have become de-traditionalised. In other words, they do not emerge from normative behaviours and practices, but rather become a component of the progressively complex, fluid and reflexive project of constructing an individual biography, a self-portrait. Against this background, one can revisit the questions raised by Durkheim more than a century ago: “How does it come about that the individual, whilst becoming more autonomous, depends ever more closely on society? How can he become at the same time more of an individual and yet more linked to society?” (Durkheim 1893: xxx).