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ISA Handbook in Contemporary Sociology

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Personal Communities: Not Simply Families of ‘Fate’ or ‘Choice’

Ray Pahl

Liz Spencer

Starting from a simple model of personal relationships based on degrees of commitment and degrees of choice, the authors explore the relative importance of repertoires (the range of friendship types in which people engage), friendship modes (the way in which people make, retain or lose friends throughout the life course) and patterns of suffusion (the extent to which friends and family play overlapping or specialized roles), and these concepts form the basis of a typology of personal communities. Analysis of ‘suffusion’ between ‘friends’ and ‘family’ showed considerable blurring of boundaries. The authors challenge assumptions about familial and non-familial ties. Empirical findings demonstrate the diversity and significance of contemporary personal communities and rebut the postmodernist thesis that people are isolated, individualized and lacking in strong and enduring personal relationships.

Key Words: families • friends • friendship modes • friendship repertoires • personal communities

Current Sociology, Vol. 52, No. 2, 199-221 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/0011392104041808
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