Conceptualising Friendship in Time and Place: Its Meaning and Practice in Time and Place

The concept of friendship is more easily valued than it is described: this volume brings together reflections on its meaning and practice in a variety of social and cultural settings in history and in the present time, focusing on Asia and the Western, Euro-American world.
The extension of the group in which friendship is recognized, and degrees of intimacy (whether or not involving an erotic dimension) and genuine appreciation may vary widely. Friendship may simply include kinship bonds―solidarity being one of its more general characteristics. In various contexts of travelling, migration, and a dearth of offspring, friendship may take over roles of kinship, also in terms of care.

Carla Risseeuw, anthropologist (PhD Nijmegen, 1988), emeritus Professor Gender Studies, Leiden University. She published on British colonial history in Sri Lanka, and, with Indian colleagues, on the Dutch welfare state and on Ageing in South Asia and Western Europe. She studied the social consequences of contracting leprosy in East Africa, and made several ethnographic films.

Marlein van Raalte (PhD Leiden, 1986) is lecturer in Ancient Greek Language and Literature at Leiden University. She published on Greek metre, wrote a commentary on Theophrastus¹ Metaphysics and co-edited the volume Protagoras of Abdera: The Man, His Measure (Brill, 2013).