Flashback to 2007 from Bryan Waterman’s Blog: I’ve spent a lot of time over the last seven or eight years thinking about the history of friendship. Writing a book about a friendship circle — a group that even named itself the “Friendly Club” — took me into an extensive (and still growing), multidisciplinary body of literature that explains why and how the category of “friendship” emerged to supplement familial and governmental relationships, how friendship has depended on varying philosophical underpinnings (some basing friendship on likeness, some on difference), and how it relates to various historical transformations, from the emergence of commercial culture to the spread of participatory, democratic politics. Continue reading at The Great Whats It..

