When I was in graduate school, studying all things Tamil, I read one of Tamil literature’s classic works by one of its most revered poets - Tiruvalluvar. The book was a modern English translation of his classical Tamil aphorisms. I made it cheerfully to p.100 and section 80, after which I gulped at the following line -
Broadly what you say about male friendships rings true-- for college educated white upper middle class folks. I suspect there is a significant amount of reciprocal obligations that define friendships among especially non college educated whites and non-whites. Also, intimate male friendships are highly correlated with male control of public space. Historians and anthropologists who have studied male friendship have noted how its decline is strongly correlated with women entering the public sphere-- this appears to be true across cultures.
See, for example, Daphne Spain’s “The Spatial Foundations of Men’s Friendships and Men’s Power” from the edited volume by Peter Nardi Men’s Friendships.
Spain explores the hypotheses- 1) that male friendships are strongest in societies with a high degree of gender segregation and 2) this reinforces men’s power advantage relative to women.
What this line of thinking suggests is that the withering of robust male friendship-- at least among college educated upper middle class whites--is a casualty of greater gender equality between men and women in this group.
A casualty of greater gender equity? — or of the decline of male homosocial public spaces apart, say, from the gym? Go back to Alexander et al.’s A PATTERN LANGUAGE (1968?) — where are the spaces they describe as knitting together community life today?
Late in life, J. B. Jackson started digging into this too — looking at how front yards and garages figure as spaces of socialization — not to say skills reproduction — in Hispanic communities in the Southwest in a way that was already then, thirty+ years ago, no longer the case in the Anglo community. I seem to recall a couple of the essays in A SENSE OF PLACE, A SENSE OF TIME (1996) deal with this.
In INTO THE RIP (2021), Damien Cave, the inaugural NYT Sydney bureau chief, describes how uncomfortable he was made, initially, by the obligations of mateship when he moved with his family to Sydney. Even in affluent urban professional white communities there, it’s still a strong component of community life, and, from Cave’s pov as an introverted New Yorker (albeit one who had worked as a foreign correspondent in Iraq etc), the presumption of participation had a coercive tang not so dissimilar to what urban migrants from village societies describe of home life. Diffuse reciprocal indebtedness ›is‹ a powerful form of social glue. But it often shades into demand sharing in ways that even those raised in communities that place great emphasis on nurturing (and testing) relatedness find wearing.
John Cheever, who as a closeted bisexual man had, I can imagine, an especially fraught relationship with male friendship, was a careful observer of it. If you read through his collected stories (arranged chronologically) you can kind of see how it declines between the 1940s and 1980s. One way to read FARRAGUT, his last novel, is as a lament for male friendship — something that by the late 1970s, he could be saying, was only possible, for a man such as Farragut, in prison, and in the context of ambiguously transactional sex.
I think that finding friends who "mainly become a source of entertainment" is definitely one of the most popular methods, but these friends *can* become close, and we can form caring relationships with them if we invest time—spend time together—which is really what makes all the difference.
Well done my friend. Very true. We can all exist almost without moving. Work from home. Get groceries delivered. Do everything online. Who needs friends? I feel lucky to have some very close friends. But I’m sober--I have a close 12-step community. Not everyone is so lucky. I like your writing. Glad I found you!
This is so interesting. I live in the UK and can really relate to this. The transactional aspect has been all but taken out of friendships, like you said, because we don't really need help with things - everything we need to do day to day has been streamlined for convenience. There is, however, still an exchange going on. I don't think meaningful friendships are all but gone; we just don't trust people as much, as the exchange is emotional. I have found myself slightly alienated from my usual group of friends as I had kids before anyone else. My problems became difficult for my friends to relate to, so even in my closest oldest friendships I can feel a little lonely. That's because with growing distance between friends more than just entertainment is lost - it's also the support and sharing of thoughts and ideas.
Sure, those are difficult friends to find but they're not superficial and not just for fun.
I don't know about male friendships to be honest. I'm sure what you say about those is much more true.
Think of arranged marriage as a sort of forced friendship. This is why matrimonial ads in India often have more information about the prospective spouse's family than about the spouse themselves.
That is because these are the people who will owe you favors, and whom you and your family will owe favors to.
I do a lot of work around community building. Organizing workshops and events. Working on projects with friends. Facilitating a lot of special and frequent moments.
I'm fortunate to have a lot of high quality relationships (a rarity these days for a 40 year old man) and owe it to a lot of intentional work. I've talked about it on a few podcasts and have started to write about it a little.
Figured I'd reach out in case you might have use for the content as a data point to reference, or have interest in a chat.
Ah, this brought to mind for me Margaret Trawick's, 'love in a Tamil family' and the discussions of what familial love, obligation, affection and entanglement looks like. There's a problematic Subject : Object dichotomy at work in anthropolgy's classical model of doing fieldwork, and a load of colonial baggage too. But I still think that the work of talking back to euro-american capitalist societies via counter examples is worth doing. Thanks for this!
As an introverted woman from a dysfunctional family, I thank my lucky stars to have been born in a place and time where I can live an independent life, and not have to depend on family or husband for my livelihood.
I am not so sure that Tamil type relationships is such a good thing. This seems more like the culture of poverty we see in the lives of some of our former foster kids and their children. The live in homes like rabbit warrens with people moving in and out as they get kicked out of one place where they have exhausted their welcome into another. It's no way to live in my view.
Broadly what you say about male friendships rings true-- for college educated white upper middle class folks. I suspect there is a significant amount of reciprocal obligations that define friendships among especially non college educated whites and non-whites. Also, intimate male friendships are highly correlated with male control of public space. Historians and anthropologists who have studied male friendship have noted how its decline is strongly correlated with women entering the public sphere-- this appears to be true across cultures.
See, for example, Daphne Spain’s “The Spatial Foundations of Men’s Friendships and Men’s Power” from the edited volume by Peter Nardi Men’s Friendships.
Spain explores the hypotheses- 1) that male friendships are strongest in societies with a high degree of gender segregation and 2) this reinforces men’s power advantage relative to women.
What this line of thinking suggests is that the withering of robust male friendship-- at least among college educated upper middle class whites--is a casualty of greater gender equality between men and women in this group.
A casualty of greater gender equity? — or of the decline of male homosocial public spaces apart, say, from the gym? Go back to Alexander et al.’s A PATTERN LANGUAGE (1968?) — where are the spaces they describe as knitting together community life today?
Late in life, J. B. Jackson started digging into this too — looking at how front yards and garages figure as spaces of socialization — not to say skills reproduction — in Hispanic communities in the Southwest in a way that was already then, thirty+ years ago, no longer the case in the Anglo community. I seem to recall a couple of the essays in A SENSE OF PLACE, A SENSE OF TIME (1996) deal with this.
In INTO THE RIP (2021), Damien Cave, the inaugural NYT Sydney bureau chief, describes how uncomfortable he was made, initially, by the obligations of mateship when he moved with his family to Sydney. Even in affluent urban professional white communities there, it’s still a strong component of community life, and, from Cave’s pov as an introverted New Yorker (albeit one who had worked as a foreign correspondent in Iraq etc), the presumption of participation had a coercive tang not so dissimilar to what urban migrants from village societies describe of home life. Diffuse reciprocal indebtedness ›is‹ a powerful form of social glue. But it often shades into demand sharing in ways that even those raised in communities that place great emphasis on nurturing (and testing) relatedness find wearing.
John Cheever, who as a closeted bisexual man had, I can imagine, an especially fraught relationship with male friendship, was a careful observer of it. If you read through his collected stories (arranged chronologically) you can kind of see how it declines between the 1940s and 1980s. One way to read FARRAGUT, his last novel, is as a lament for male friendship — something that by the late 1970s, he could be saying, was only possible, for a man such as Farragut, in prison, and in the context of ambiguously transactional sex.
I gathered some advice from movies on how to make friends in this post:
Movie Wisdom On Making Friends: 10 Movies For The Lonely And Misunderstood
https://moviewise.substack.com/p/movie-wisdom-on-making-friends
I think that finding friends who "mainly become a source of entertainment" is definitely one of the most popular methods, but these friends *can* become close, and we can form caring relationships with them if we invest time—spend time together—which is really what makes all the difference.
This is a bit off topic but I'm very curious as to what drew you to studying the Tamil community. Why there?
Well done my friend. Very true. We can all exist almost without moving. Work from home. Get groceries delivered. Do everything online. Who needs friends? I feel lucky to have some very close friends. But I’m sober--I have a close 12-step community. Not everyone is so lucky. I like your writing. Glad I found you!
Michael Mohr
‘Sincere American Writing’
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
This is so interesting. I live in the UK and can really relate to this. The transactional aspect has been all but taken out of friendships, like you said, because we don't really need help with things - everything we need to do day to day has been streamlined for convenience. There is, however, still an exchange going on. I don't think meaningful friendships are all but gone; we just don't trust people as much, as the exchange is emotional. I have found myself slightly alienated from my usual group of friends as I had kids before anyone else. My problems became difficult for my friends to relate to, so even in my closest oldest friendships I can feel a little lonely. That's because with growing distance between friends more than just entertainment is lost - it's also the support and sharing of thoughts and ideas.
Sure, those are difficult friends to find but they're not superficial and not just for fun.
I don't know about male friendships to be honest. I'm sure what you say about those is much more true.
Think of arranged marriage as a sort of forced friendship. This is why matrimonial ads in India often have more information about the prospective spouse's family than about the spouse themselves.
That is because these are the people who will owe you favors, and whom you and your family will owe favors to.
I do a lot of work around community building. Organizing workshops and events. Working on projects with friends. Facilitating a lot of special and frequent moments.
I'm fortunate to have a lot of high quality relationships (a rarity these days for a 40 year old man) and owe it to a lot of intentional work. I've talked about it on a few podcasts and have started to write about it a little.
Figured I'd reach out in case you might have use for the content as a data point to reference, or have interest in a chat.
https://www.elevatedspaces.ca/pages/about-us
https://jeffwaldman.substack.com/p/who-are-all-these-friends-scheduled
https://jeffwaldman.substack.com/p/whats-up-with-all-these-workshops
I have no friends and I'm better for it. There are people I love but they have a low bar for what they believe makes them a friend.
What were the friendships like amongst women in Tamil Nadu?
Ah, this brought to mind for me Margaret Trawick's, 'love in a Tamil family' and the discussions of what familial love, obligation, affection and entanglement looks like. There's a problematic Subject : Object dichotomy at work in anthropolgy's classical model of doing fieldwork, and a load of colonial baggage too. But I still think that the work of talking back to euro-american capitalist societies via counter examples is worth doing. Thanks for this!
As an introverted woman from a dysfunctional family, I thank my lucky stars to have been born in a place and time where I can live an independent life, and not have to depend on family or husband for my livelihood.
I am not so sure that Tamil type relationships is such a good thing. This seems more like the culture of poverty we see in the lives of some of our former foster kids and their children. The live in homes like rabbit warrens with people moving in and out as they get kicked out of one place where they have exhausted their welcome into another. It's no way to live in my view.