(1979). Social Networks and Psychology. Connections, 2 - INSNA

- 100 -THESIS SUMMARIESTHE CONTENT AND STRUCTURE OF FRIENDSHIP : AN ANALYSIS OF THE FRIENDSHIPS OF URBAN CAMEROONIANSMaureen FitzGeraZd (Ph .D . Thesis, 1978, Anthropology, Northwestern U .)The systematic study of friendship has been improved by the use of the concepts and methods of networkanalysis . However the precision of network methodology for such studies is not useful in and of itself .The understanding of friendship, its processes and implications necessitates placing such friendship networksin a larger social context and considering them in light of the major social forces of a particularsocial system .The data for this dissertation were collected in 1970 from interviews with 135 individuals living inYaounde, Cameroon, West Africa . They were asked to list all those they considered as friends, to orderand rank their friends, to talk about the history of the friendships, and to give information on which oftheir friends knew each other .The method of path analysis from graph theory was used to describe the structural properties of thesefriendship networks . Close friends tend to be connected friends in the sense that close friends, more thandistant friends, are tied into ego's other friends independently of ego . This is shown to be true usingtwo indicators of connectivity : (1) the number of direct connections (defined as knowing) that a particularfriend of ego has with ego's other friends . (2) the position of a particular friends within a network offriends using shortest path analysis .There are two major types of networks . In type I (42% of all networks) each person in the networkis "reachable" by every other person in the network independently of the connection with ego . In type II(44% of all networks) most people are "reachable" but there were in addition, a number of isolated friends .Density, calculated by using only the direct connections of a network exclusive of ego's connection, wasalso calculated for each network . Independent business owners and lower level civil servants were thecategories of people who most frequently have connected networks with high density . The most extremelydisconnected networks (neither type I or type II) are confined to workers (especially the marginallyemployed and the unemployed) women and students . Thus there appears to be a relationship between the needsand resources of ones' work and the morphology of ones' friendship network .I suggest that the absence of regular access to resources makes it difficult to maintain tight networks .Indeed, a recurring point made in the analysis is that there is an important material component that underliesfriendship . The main emphasis in peoples' concept of friendship is that friendship functions to maintainand strengthen a person's material well being as opposed to moral or psychological well being . Thismay or may not be recognized in their ideology about friendship . In the context of Cameroon, rapid socialand economic change differentiates the population and many people live in precarious and limited materialcircumstances . Tensions in friendships occur around this resource shortage and the exchange of goods andservices is a highly salient and recognized component of friendship .Affect, in the sense of a "liked quality" of the person, is deemphasized in peoples' ideology offriendship . However, affect, as "feelings of closeness", is demonstrated by informants by the ease withwhich they rank friends according to this criterion . Close friends tend to be old friends or at leastfriendships that have developed out of a long acquaintance . Over time relationships accumulate roles sothat close friendships are also more multiplex . Friends are derived out of the contexts of social life .Friends in this context were also workmates, neighbours, kin, schoolmates, team mates or attendants of thesame church . Friendships may involve multiple contexts of association and interaction . Work is animportant locus of friendship although seldom so for close friends . Higher civil servants, professionals,managers and entrepreneurs tend to have work as a locus in their friendships . It is concluded thatstability of the job was the most important factor in explaining how friendships that were initiated viathe work locus were maintained and developed through time and often over distance .It is important to understand the way in which work situations mould different patterns of friendship .Barnes used the term "network" to describe ties between "persons who accord approximately equal status toone another, and it is these ties that constitute the class system" . These particular eogcentric networksfrom Cameroon also demonstrate status homogeneity, defined by occupational status, that I maintain constitutesan indicator of an emerging class system . The networks also tend to be ethnically homogeneous .Thus in this urban African context, the arena of friendship is segmented and friendship choices are limitedby both the ethnic and occupational structure of the society .