Boundaries of friendship and beyond. Analysing the notions of love within friendships (PDF)

Project Report from the year 2014 in the subject Ethnology / Cultural Anthropology, grade: 1.0, Queen's University Belfast (School of History and Anthropology), course: Social Anthropology, language: English, abstract: First-hand ethnographic research delving into the complex notion of love within friendships. Specifically, this project seeks to outline the boundaries which frame such relationships and the consequences which may arise from their neglect.

In deciding our research project, we were to choose between two main themes: "love" or "grief". In our first group meeting in class, we decided that we would choose the broad theme of love for a several reasons. It is generally a more positive subject than grief, and so, was simply preferred by the group; it is something almost everyone can personally relate to; and there are many different types of love and so we could approach the project in various ways. For these main reasons, we agreed that love would be our favored theme.

The next course of action was choosing our specific research title. From the suggestions given, there were many different angles we could take. One of these suggestions was "love between friends". We felt this was a strong idea because it is outside the topic of romantic love, and we were also intrigued to discover more about it ourselves. At first, some within the group, including myself, were concerned that we may struggle to find a unique idea that no one else in the class had chosen, but this was fortunately not the case.

In our next meeting we decided on the main research questions for the topic and the title itself. When we brainstormed as a group we had several ideas, below are the ones we felt were most feasible and most interesting to investigate:

- Boundaries between acquaintance and friend

- Boundaries within friendship

- Boundaries beyond friendship

- Maintenance of friendship

- The "Friendzone"