New Social Ties

This book explores new social ties and forms of intimate bonding. Social and personal relationships are being profoundly transformed by changing lifestyles triggered by perceived crises in family, community, work and leisure, and by developments in global media technologies. Are friendships now being authenticated as non-hierarchical and flexible? Deborah Chambers draws on debates in social, feminist and queer theory to assess emerging practice, values and representations about friendship as relations of power, identity and resistance. The book recenters personal relationships within social and cultural theory.