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This article is based on interviews with Dutch, mainly urban, respondents on the issue of changing trajectories of family and friendship in their lives, during the early years of 2000—one of the first periods of a retraction of the welfare state. The major question centered on the issues of family and friendship. As the (nuclear) families were becoming smaller in numbers over time, would friends take a larger share of their social life in future? Most informants assumed they would.
Nevertheless, giving shape to such life-transitions at times proved more challenging than was initially realized. Although families were becoming smaller, family bonds remained influential, irrespective of how they were evaluated. One could not be cut off from family as one could from friends. Noticeably, one could have a friend for a substantial period of time without meeting his or her family, due to the urban Dutch tendency to compartmentalize relations of of family and friendship.
This introduction reflects on the different meanings of ‘friendship’ in diverse social and cultural settings as well as historical periods. It provides a sketch of the research on the topic in various fields of scholarship, and presents an overview of the several articles included in this volume. The review attached illustrates the scale on which friendship applies in different contexts, and summarizes some of the most common characteristics and values associated with the concept.