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Through an intensive ethnographic fieldwork, this project explores rural Chinese children's understandings and experiences of peer friendships at school. When talking about 'friend' and 'friendship', children tended to brag that they were friends with many peers, but at the same time to particularly highlight a very small number of peers as the most intimate friends, in other words, their 'best friends'. Inspired by Finch's concept of 'display', this article explores how these Chinese children used different approaches to highlight their intimate friends' particularity in intimate friendship displays at school. This article, first, unpacks three commonly used approaches in these children's displays of intimate friendships: 1) building up an exclusionary 'intimate friends only' policy; 2) imparting to certain objects, actions and language sentimental and specific meanings as 'tokens' of their friendship; and 3) giving 'priority' to intimate friends. Second, it discusses the importance of audiences and cooperation between actors in intimate friendship displays.

AbstractFriendship, an important type of interpersonal relationship, has been studied in various disciplines. When studying friendship, sociologists highlight the importance of placing friendships in context to build up a connection between friendship, a type of interpersonal relationship between individuals, and the surrounding social and cultural environment. In sociological studies of friendship, children's friendships in the Chinese context have not been explored thoroughly. To contribute to closing this gap, this article places children's peer friendships in a rural Chinese primary boarding school context and focuses on exploring Chinese Confucian–collectivist sociocultural values that emerged in these children's daily practices of peer friendships.

Based on lengthy ethnographic fieldwork in Southwest China, this article unpacks how precarity and migration have deeply shaped young migrant workers' understanding and experiences of friendship. The precarious work and living conditions compel young migrants to put more emphasis on the instrumental aspects of friendship, in which they deeply value friends' help and practical support, which also intertwine closely with the emotional aspects of friendship. High mobility does not mean that migrants are not able to form and maintain 'meaningful' social relationships; rather, it is friends' support and help which sustain migrants' precarious and highly mobile ways of living. This article also discusses the burdens and risks that are associated with such friendship practices, and how, despite these 'dark sides of friendship', young migrant workers still largely rely on their friends to survive and keep going in the city.

Young people's heterosexual romantic relationships is often a popular topic in youth studies and sexuality education. However, the importance of class and educational stratification and the institutional influence is rarely mentioned. Through this article, considering the differentiated expectation of young people in different high school categories and the discussion about sexuality education, young people are understanding and experiencing heterosexual romantic relationships beyond their individual level. Drawing on the fieldwork with 28 student participants and 7 schoolteachers in total at an academic high school and a vocational high school in Tianjin, China, this article unearths young people's considerations, decisions, and doubts concerning their experiences of heterosexual romantic relationships. It argues that young people's perceptions and experiences of heterosexual romantic relationships are highly diverse and complex. It calls for the awareness of intersectional factors, such as social class and gender, in the process of understanding such diversity and complexity.

PurposeLive streaming commerce enhances shopping experience and reduces uncertainty. However, with increasingly fierce competitions, it has become a challenging task for live streaming commerce platforms to retain existing customers. The purpose of this study to explore factors affecting customers' stickiness intention toward live streaming commerce platforms.Design/methodology/approachA research model was developed by modifying e-commerce system success model (ES success model) based on the context of live streaming commerce and meanwhile integrating serendipity and flow into the model. Using the data collected from 380 customers who have live streaming shopping experience, the established model was empirically assessed by partial least squares based structural equation model.FindingsThe results show that vividness, real-time interaction and diagnosticity are antecedents of perceived value and customer satisfaction toward a live streaming commerce platform which in turn influence customers' stickiness intention. Besides, as new factors introducing into the ES success model, serendipity and flow are two important motivators of satisfaction and stickiness.Originality/valueThis study establishes a well-organized framework to understand the mechanism regarding why customers stick with a live streaming commerce platform. It provides a socio-technical approach to analyze how the stickiness intention can be influenced.

It has been reported that a suit of plant traits can regulate the ant-seed interaction and subsequently affect the seed dispersal. However, the role of plant volatiles in attracting the ants for seed dispersal remains little examined. We used a Y-tube olfactometer to test behavior response of a keystone seed-dispersing ant (Pristomyrmex pungens Mayr) to leaves and seeds of five co-occurring myrmecochorous Corydalis species (C. wilfordii Regel, C. racemosa (Thunberg) Persoon, C. sheareri S. Moore, C. balansae Prain and C. incisa (Thunberg) Persoon). Of the five species, only C. wilfordii and C. racemosa leaves emits heavily volatiles. We also performed seed cafeteria experiments to assess the effect of leaf volatiles from C. racemosa on seed retrieval by presenting simultaneously the seeds near the fresh leaf and the leaf immersed by diethyl ether both in the field and lab. The experiment using Y-tube showed that the ants were only significantly attracted by the fresh leaves of two species, C. wilfordii and C. racemosa. The cafeteria experiments showed that ants spent less time to detect the C. racemosa seeds which were near the fresh leaf, and transported these seeds more quickly. This indicated that the leaf volatiles can function as an attractant for the dispersing ants, and ant preference in turn enhance the seed retrieval. The findings reveal that leaf volatiles can play na important but underestimated role in shaping the ant-seed dispersing interactions.