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Cover -- Contents -- List of Tables, Figures, and Boxes -- Notes on the contributors -- 1 Introducing a Sociology of Personal Life -- What is 'personal life'? -- What is sociological about personal life? -- Some illustrations of personal life in sociology -- The 'personal' is relational -- Personal life is socially constructed -- The chapters -- 2 Conceptualising the Personal -- Introduction -- The 'social construction' of 'the personal' -- Persons and selves -- Personal practices -- Social distinctions and inequalities -- Concluding remarks -- 3 Couple Relationships -- Introduction -- Gender, sexuality and intimate life -- 'Doing' couple relationships -- To what extent have couple relationships changed? -- Concluding remarks -- 4 Kinship: How Being Related Matters in Personal Life -- Introduction -- What does it mean to be related? -- Kinship in everyday life -- Is kinship a special connection between people? -- New technologies, new families, new kinship -- Concluding remarks -- 5 Friendship and Personal Life -- Introduction -- What is a friend? -- Friendship and technology -- Social change and the significance of friendship -- The social patterning of friendship and the limits of choice -- Friendship as the ideal relationship? -- Concluding remarks: Friends versus family? -- 6 Material Cultures -- Introduction -- What is material culture and how can we understand it? -- Material practices: Keeping, using, sorting, and disposing -- Love and loss -- Personal and global connections -- Concluding remarks -- 7 Personal Life across the Life Course -- Introduction -- The life course: Stages and transitions -- Temporal scripts -- Personal life and the life course -- Childhood -- Adulthood -- Later life -- Concluding remarks -- 8 Consumer Culture -- Introduction -- The emergence of consumer culture -- Consumer culture: The corrosion of personal life.

Personal relationships have long been of central interest to social scientists, but the subject of friendship has been relatively neglected. Moreover, most studies of friendship have been social psychological. Placing Friendship in Context, first published in 1999, is a unique collection bridging social psychological and social structural research to advance understanding of this important subject. In it, some of the world's leading researchers explore the social and historical contexts in which friendships and other similar informal ties develop and how it is that these contexts shape the form and substance the relationships assume. Together, they demonstrate that friendship cannot be understood from individualistic or dyadic perspectives alone, but is a relationship significantly influenced by the environment in which it is generated. By analysing the ways in which friendships articulate with the social structures in which they are embedded, Placing Friendship in Context redescribes such personal relationships at both the macro and the micro level

The first three sessions of this Symposium would, I think, lead one to say that if one tried to arrange man on the basis of biological characteristics one would get a continuum; the papers given in this fourth session have shown the ineradicable, or so far ineradicable, tendency of mankind to split themselves up into discontinuous groups.I personally believe the study of race relations should always be directed to a practical result, that is to enable one to get over this simple human tendency, and to enable us to live together.

The article analyzes the essence of volunteering from the point of view of relations and processes considered at the level of society as a whole. The essence of the concept of "volunteering" in sociological discourse is revealed, the main aspects of volunteering are noted, the importance and necessity of volunteer work in modern society are shown. The dynamics of volunteering as a community and social institution is considered, the types of volunteer activities, the functions of the external and internal orientation of the social community of volunteers are highlighted. The transformations of the nature and content of different types of volunteer activities are revealed.

Contents: Leisure and technological civilization, by Georges Friedmann; Current problems of the sociology of leisure, by Joffre Dumazedier; Popular culture: a humanistic and sociological concept, by Leo Lowenthal; Work, careers, and social integration, by Harold L. Wilensky; Leisure, social participation and political activity, by Renate Mayntz; The social planning of leisure, by Ahtik Vitomir.

Attribution theory, the study of the causal interpretations that persons give to events in their environment, has recently been a major emphasis in psychological social psychology. This paper explores the utility of the classic theoretical statements in attribution for sociological problems, and reviews the efforts of sociologists to apply attribution concepts in their research. The theory has been criticized regarding its limited applicability to attribution occurring in interaction or in natural contexts. These criticisms are reviewed, as well as arguments for synthesizing attribution theory with symbolic interactionism, and efforts to apply such a synthesis in the areas of labeling, impression management, and accounts. Future research and conceptualization agendas are suggested, along with a research strategy for accomplishing these.

Intro -- Contents -- Preface -- Chapter 1 -- Literature Review of Theoretical Assumptions Regarding Friendship and Previous Research Findings -- Features of Friendships -- Gender Differences in Friendships -- Peculiarities of Greek Friendships from Antiquity to Nowadays -- Attributes of University Students' Friendships -- Friendships and Social Network Analysis: Why and How They Relate to Social Justice and Social Problems? -- Social Networks Analysis of Friendships -- Chapter 2 -- Hypotheses -- Chapter 3 -- Method -- Procedure -- Sample -- Instrument -- Data Analysis -- Social Network Analysis -- Data Mining for Studying Friendship Relationships -- Chapter 4 -- Results -- Network Patterns of Greek Students' Friendships -- Attributes of the Social Network of Greek Students' Friendships -- Data Mining of Greek Students' Friendships -- Chapter 5 -- Discussion -- Chapter 6 -- Conclusion -- Chapter 7 -- Summary -- References -- Appendix: Name Generator and Name Interpreter for Studying the Friendship Networks -- Index -- Blank Page