Change in social and personal relationships

Deborah Chambers draws on the metaphor of friendship as a strategy for exploring contemporary changes in informal social ties.

She traces the shift from fixed and permanent ties of family, neighbourhood and community to fluid and transient ties typified by computer mediated communication.

Focusing on relations of gender, she argues that friendship is a resource that maintains relations of power and reshapes identities through patterns of association ranging from gendered work and leisure networks, virtual communities, Internet dating and mobile phone use.

These changes raise critical questions about care and responsibility for the Other.