Everyday and eternal acts: exploring children’s friendships in the primary school

Mellor, David James 2006. Everyday and eternal acts: exploring children’s friendships in the primary school. [Working Paper]. School of Social Sciences Working Papers Series, vol. 88. Cardiff: Cardiff University.

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Abstract

This paper looks at the different ways that children practice, understand and invest in friendship during the last year of primary school. Drawing on ethnographic data gathered at 3 primary schools, it explores how children in Year 6 (aged 10-11) organised and understood their friendships by looking at the salient aspects of these relationships: how friends were determined and defined with reference to the everyday practices and symbolic culture of friendship; the way that discourses of gender and heterosexuality governed who could be friends with whom; and, how certain ‘best friendships’ were romanticised, allowing the children to accomplish what I call ‘friendship escapes,’ where they created symbolic bonds that provided security against their everyday and transitional anxieties.

Item Type:	Monograph (Working Paper)
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
Publisher:	Cardiff University
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	30 March 2016
Last Modified:	11 Nov 2016 09:52
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/78162

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