Section A provides a literature review of transgender people and their friendships. The first part of the literature review explores the historical context of transgenderism and its relation to medical and psychiatric diagnosis. The following part concentrates on biopsychsocial issues of transgender identity formation highlighting the need for support in light of interpersonal losses and societal discrimination. The final part reviews the friendship literature more generally, then specifically in relation to transgender persons. The review concludes by identifying an absence of friendship research with transgender individuals and suggesting directions for future research. Section B describes a study carried out with seven trans men, which investigates discourses they use to construct friendships and negotiate intimacy within friendships. While research focusing on friendships of sexual minority individuals has increased over the last two decades, studies of transgender persons’ friendships have been largely absent. Given that trans individuals are vulnerable to a range of psychological stressors in the context of societal lack of understanding and discrimination, friendships may be particularly important. This study explored the gap in the friendship literature and drew on creative methodologies (drawing of systems maps) that offered empowering strategies to facilitate trans men’s stories of friendships. Foucauldian Discourse Analysis was applied to analyse discourses of friendship and gender identity. Dominant discourses identified included ‘friends as family’, ‘romantic love’, ‘equality and reciprocity’, ‘change in lesbian friendships’ and ‘disowning male privilege’. The results indicate that trans men elevate the status of friends to those of other culturally dominant relationships (e.g. biological family or sexual partner). Furthermore, their friendships, in particular lesbian friendships, can become complex platforms from which to contest privilege and power associated with their (trans) masculinities. Implications for further research and clinical practice are discussed. Section C provides a critical appraisal of the study and offers the researcher’s reflections on research skills developed, what she would do differently if she could do the project again, how the research may impact her clinically and what further research she would like to carry out.

A considerable body of research shows that network structure can either assist or hinder one's access to social capital. Though the effects of particular structural arrangements of relationships are well known, there is comparatively little research on how a person might come to have one structural arrangement of ties over another. This study asks: What structures network structure? What cultural templates guide persons in their practice of friendship and in managing, maintaining, and adapting their personal communities over time? What contextual factors influence the duration and intensity of social relationships? Respondents were asked to make a list of "people who are important to you" and to describe the relationships individually while labeling each person on a social map. Interviews were coded using content analysis software in order to assess emergent cultural themes and the settings from which social relationships were drawn. Interview data confirmed respondents' use of cultural templates in the practice of friendship, which may affect one's ability to acquire and/or lose social capital. Interview data demonstrated how material resources may impact the vigor with which persons engage with social settings. Finally, some respondents reported important voluntary relationships that are at once high-commitment and low-contact. Frequently this type of tie arose when a relationship had outlived its original social context. This finding challenges the idea that contact and commitment usually go together in voluntary relationships.

"Elizabeth Carter's Legacy: Friendship and Ethics" examines the written evidence about the relationships between Elizabeth Carter and her father, Dr. Nocolas Carte; Catherine Talbot; Sir William Pulteney (Lord Bath); and Samuel Johnson to explain how intellectual and personal relationships may become the principal ethical sdource of human happiness. Based on their own set of moral values, such as intellectual and individual liberty and equality, the relationships between Carter and her friends challenged eighteenth-century traditional norms of human relationships. The primary source of this study, Carter's poetry and prose, including her letters, present the poet's experience of intellectual and individual friendship, reflecting Aristotle's ethics, specifically his moral teaching that views friendship as a human good contributing to human happiness--to the chief human good. Carter's poems devoted to her friends, such as Dr. Carter, Talbot, Montagu, Lord Bath, as well as her "A Dialogue" between Body and Mind, demonstrate her ethical legacy, her specific moral principles that elevated human relationships and human life. Carter's discussion of human relationships introduces the moral necessity of ethics in human life.

The Canadian urban cultural mosaic is made up of many different ethnic groups. These groups came to Canadian cities over time and used different means to help themselves in the adaptation process, to a new way of life. These groups included not only those from around the world, but those who migrated within the borders of Canada, seeking new and better lives in urban locales. This paper will explore the issue of urban migration in the years following the Second World War and the concomitant means used in the adaptation process. Although the experience of overseas immigrants will be examined for issues of contrast and comparison, this paper will specifically explore the experience of Canadian Aboriginal people. As natives moved to Canadian cities in the decades after 1945, Aboriginal friendship centres sprung up across Canada to assist them in adapting to, what was to them, a totally alien culture. This paper will explore the friendship centre phenomenon, particularly the role of the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre - the largest of its kind in North America. How and when the friendship centre grew, who was involved in its formation and growth, and what import it had on incoming native people to Vancouver, will be the main issues considered in this work. Although some primary and secondary sources were used in research, the lack of such sources has led me to rely on oral interviews for information for this project. Since the interviews were conducted with surviving founders of the Vancouver Friendship Centre, the use of such first hand information has proved most valuable and insightful. The Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre played a key role in the adaptation of the native to big city life. The centre started small, grew, changed with the times, and provided much valuable assistance to natives seeking help at a time when they often had no place else to go.

Friendship matters. Practical support, caring, moral guidance, enjoyment, improved health and greater life expectancy are but a few of its benefits. Despite living in a stigmatizing social environment where isolation is common among disabled youth, some disabled teens establish strong friendships. A nuanced understanding of these meaningful friendships from the perspective of disabled teens was constructed through this qualitative study. Teens aged 15 to 20 who self-identified as experiencing stigma due to disability were recruited from urban, suburban and rural areas of Nova Scotia, Canada. Each teen was involved in a friendship of at least six months’ duration and had a close friend (with or without a disability) who was also willing to participate. Seven boys and seven girls, all but one of whom were disabled teens, took part in the study. These seven sets of friends engaged in research interviews and participant observation sessions. Nine adults who witnessed the friendships develop over time were also interviewed. Preliminary coding was completed using Atlas.ti. This was followed by a deeper, critical approach to analysis which generated three inter-connected themes. The first theme outlines how stigma disrupts the friendships of disabled youth though a range of processes (labeling, stereotyping, status loss, separation) that arise from and contribute to ableism – discrimination against disabled people. The second theme, finding a balance between adult support and surveillance, emphasizes the crucial role adults play in facilitating the friendships of disabled youth. The final theme, disrupting oppression to create enduring friendship, highlights the strategies used by these disabled teens to make and keep friends in a stigmatizing society. Strategies most often used that appeared to be effective for participants were disrupting norms about friendship, coming out as disabled, connecting through stigma, and choosing self-exclusion. Two strategies – horizontal hostility and passing as nondisabled – were potentially harmful to disabled youth and in some ways limited friendship opportunities. Ideas to counter the harmful effects of ableism while creating lasting friendships are addressed to disabled teens, to their families, to allies in the education system, and to the broader community.

Note: / The present research examined incidents of social stress in the lives of young adults. The goal was to determine the role that friendships might play when young adults engage in social support and conflict resolution to deal with such stress. Three studies examined young adults' friendships in terms of how they fulfill various functions or provide interpersonal resources. Study 1 established that social stressors were common, that a variety of stressful transactions with peers were upsetting to young adults, and that young adults tended to use more approach than avoidance coping. Effective coping in response to social stress was related to perceptions of support from a friend, particularly if young adults felt that their friend was an enjoyable companion and was reliable.[...] / La présente étude examinait la fréquence de stress social dans la vie de jeunes adultes. Le but était de déterminer le rôle que peut jouer l'amitié lorsque de jeunes adultes sont en situation de soutien social ou de résolution de conflits pour faire face a ces stress. Trois études examinent comment les amitiés de jeunes adultes remplissent différentes fonctions ou apportent du soutien interpersonnel. Étude 1 établie la fréquence de stress social, que plusieurs transactions stressantes avec leurs paires étaient bouleversantes pour les jeunes adultes, et que les jeunes adultes avaient plutôt tendances a utiliser des techniques d'approche que d'évitement afin de résoudre ces stress. L'utilité de stratégies de négociation efficaces étaient associées a la perception de soutien d'une amie, surtout si les jeunes adultes croyaient que leur amie était une campagne plaisante et fiable.[...]

An interpersonal model of depression (Coyne, 1976b) was investigated using college student subjects and their friends. Coyne described an interpersonal process in which the depressed person elicits a negative response from significant others that serves to maintain the depression. Depressed, test anxious, and normal female college students interacted with a close same-sex friend; the dependent variables included measures of mood, perceptions, and behavior. Subject pairs were given several self-report measures before and after a 15-minute interaction with their friend. This interaction was videotaped and coded for several verbal and nonverbal behaviors. Depressed subjects reported lower levels of perceived social support, less satisfaction with the friendship, and more negative perceptions of their friend than did nondepressed subjects. No differences were found between the three groups of friends on any of the self-report measures. As well, none of the verbal or nonverbal behaviors were found to differentiate subjects or friends. The results are viewed as generally inconsistent with Coyne's model.

The contract of mandatum in Roman law, unlike its namesake in modern civil law legal systems, was not a contract of representation or agency. It was a contract of gratuitous performance of services for others. According to Corpus luris Civilis it was a contract which drew its origin from the duties of friendship. This paper examines certain rules of mandatum and compares them with a similar legal institution known as procuratio and concludes that friendship must indeed have been the origin of the contract. The paper then examines various aspects of friendship in Roman society, and concludes that social custom cannot have been the sole basis for the creation of the contract. The philosophical and ethical views of Cicero and Seneca are then considered. From the works of these two authors two lines of thought regarding friendship are deduced: friendships are to be entered into for their own sake, or friendships are to be entered into for the benefits that will ensue. The former is the 'noble' view of friendship, the latter the 'utilitarian'. The author concludes after a reexamination of the rules of mandatum that the 'noble' view provides a better answer to the question of why mandatum was created by the Roman jurists.

This thesis is concerned with the nature of the peer group experience and friendship patterns amongst a sample of 3rd, 4th and 5th year secondary school pupils. The thesis has four parts and a General Introduction in which the need for more sociological research in the area of the peer group and friendship is asserted. Certain themes are developed in relation to the peer group and friendship, and arguments for the research established. In the final part of the General Introduction consideration is given to the nature of the sociology of youth in relation to social class and age grading in society. Part One has three Chapters. The first deals with recent research into the peer group, most of which is American in origin with the exception of certain ethnographic studies which have been published in this country over the last few years. In Chapter Two research into friendship is considered with Chapter Three providing a critical evaluation of the research presented. A general schema is provided, drawing on the literature review which provides the basis for the development of research methods and the subsequent research programme. Part Two establishes the basis for the thesis research and has one chapter. Four objectives are explored. The first concerns the importance of friendship to young people, the second with levels of friendship, the third with deriving definitions of friendship. The final objective examines the effects of age and sex on friendship and is compared with the findings from four significant studies undertaken in this area. Sociometry is considered in relation to "mapping" a group, a self esteem inventory is developed and the Higher Schools Personality Questionnaire evaluated with a view to measuring a number of personality traits. In Chapter Five of Part Three a research design for quantitative and qualitative research is presented. The data are presented in Chapters Six and Seven. 371 young people completed a questionnaire into their friendship and peer relations and two peer groups were intensively involved in group discussion in an endeavour to provide more detailed information on friendship and peer activities. The final part, Chapter Eight, is devoted to a detailed consideration of the findings from the research in the light of the established objectives. An appraisal is undertaken of the extent to which new knowledge has been provided in the social sciences regarding the peer group and friendship.

<p>Using a mix of quantitative and qualitative measures, the current study examines how jealousy is experienced and expressed in close peer relationships during emerging adulthood. 193 college student participants (94 males, 99 females) described actual jealousy experiences, answered questions from a newly developed jealousy questionnaire, and completed questionnaires assessing individual characteristics. To better understand the phenomenon of jealousy, descriptive data are presented regarding a variety of jealousy features. An interest in the role of gender and relationship context prompted an examination of the association between gender, relationship context, and jealousy variables. Additionally, a number of hypotheses are tested regarding factors that affect jealousy intensity and frequency. Results suggest jealousy experiences during college are normative and similarly experienced by males and females. However, friendship jealousy has qualities that differ markedly from romantic relationship jealousy. Implications of these findings are discussed. Study limitations and ideas for future research are also addressed.</p> / Dissertation