RULETA AMERICANA

The literature presented thus far articulates kinship and friendship mostly through bounded communities that inadequately reflect the impact of globalization and thus does little to help explain the link between VFR and kinship and friendship. VFR mobility first emerged as a significant social phenomenon in early modern industrialism when erosion of centralized authority in kinship structures undermined norms that mobility should involve all kin (Janta et al., 2015; Litwak & Szelenyi, 1969). Increasingly, however, VFR is tied to intensifying global processes that incite the inter-articulation of political, cultural, social and economic spheres.

These spheres are being interwoven and respatialized through the increased mobility of people,

technology, money, media and ideas producing disjunctive effects on the local, and local relations (Appadurai, 1996). Social relationships, whether for those who are on the move or not, are no longer (and perhaps never were) articulated simply through the local but through tensions of both local and global forces. The rapid diffusion of ICTs and new media and the increasing number and form of mobile people is leading to subjectivities that are distanciated and embedded in and between multiple contexts.

Increased VFR is possible, in part, as a result of the respatialization of economies that spur multiple forms of migrant mobilities. As has been detailed in the previous chapter, it could also be argued that the fragmentation of social relationships (Bauman, 2003; Wittel, 2001) is generating socio-political and socio-cultural worlds that further enable migrant mobilities. It has been argued that fragmentation is tied to processes of individualization (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 2002) where selves are increasingly insulated and generated from idiosyncrasy. Yet, VFR has grown from a desire or expectation for kin and non-kin to remain in contact. As phenomena such as air travel, Facebook, and Skype have grown, both migrants and non-migrants daily lives become betwixt between local and global contexts. This does not however, mean that VFR is anything new. Circulating migrants have no doubt always attempted to keep in touch.

What maybe different is the form, frequency and means through which contact is kept.

3.3.4 Intimacy, Commitment and the Blurring of Friendship and Kinship

Research into VFR has not yet attempted to grasp the changing nature of social relations embroiled within VFR, and there is still little research into the forms of sociality emerging from the intersection of VFR and ICT’s and kinship and friendship. In addition to other drivers like urbanization (Amin & Thrift, 2002), there has been growing interest in the changing nature of the social bonds of kinship and friendship as a result of increased mobility, ubiquitous ICT’s, and the interconnectivity of locally situated subjects over varying distances in western contexts. An early voice on late modernity and relationships came from Anthony Giddens (1992) and his work that drew from Foucault’s books entitled the History of Sexuality. Giddens has argued that kin authority is diminishing, placing the quality of the relationship as the highest priority, with a stress upon intimacy replacing that of parental authoritativeness, and where sensitivity and understanding are asked for on both sides (ibid). He has termed these relationships the pure

relationship, a form of relationship that has come to dominate all of personal life. This is a promise of democracy, he argues:

The structural source of this promise is the emergence of the pure relationship, not only in the area of sexuality but also in those of parent-child relations, and other forms of kinship and friendship. We can envisage the development of an ethical framework for a democratic personal order, which in sexual relationships and other personal domains conforms to a model of confluent love (ibid, p.188).

The consequences of the pure relationship at a basic level are that kinship has begun to mirror friendship’s elective nature and capacity. In parallel, friendship has also opened to the possibility of developing higher levels of commitment. Understanding the ethical formations that give rise to different forms of commitment becomes paramount. In addition, Giddens has helped instigate a general interest in intimacy or a rise in intimacy over authority that has helped to decenter normative understandings of kinship and helped to highlight the almost impossible task of defining kinship (Holdsworth, 2013). Studies of intimacy as it pertains to kinship and friendship, in particular regarding distanciated relations, have been growing steadily over the past ten years (See for example Cronin, 2014; Germann Molz, 2012; Parrenas, 2005; Van Vleet, 2008).

In relation to kinship though, significant research has focused on ascertaining whether traditional kinship structures of obligation and reciprocity are subverted or stretched, changing or experiencing continuity. Many scholars have sought to downplay the extent of change by underscoring the persistence of family structures in shaping migrant mobility post-migration (Botterill, 2013), their emergence through VFR and ICT’s (Baldassar, 2008), and the continued effect on home and migrant contexts through both social and financial remittances (Levitt, 2001).

This work has helped to contribute to calls from research in VFR to follow previous understandings of friendship and kinship as separate entities (Janta et al., 2015; Seaton, 1994;

Seaton & Tie, 2015). It is no doubt important to pay close attention to the voluntary versus institutional and heteronormative division of friendship and kinship. Considering the plethora of relationships that make up both friendship and kinship, studies that separate the two have an analytical advantage of depth between different types of relations within either kinship or friendship, for example between mother and child. I argue however, that it is precisely because

of the high volume of relationships that exist and the social and cultural currents that underlay them, that it is equally important to compare the kinds of bonds that make up kin and non-kin. It is therefore, important to recognize the general rise in understanding intimacy, the implicit blurring of kinship and friendship and different inter-articulations of commiment and connection.

This thesis seeks to destabilize the borders between friendship and kinship that Wikan’s (1990) ethnographic study deemed artificial. This study will build on research that has argued for the importance of comparing friendship and kinship, as it better facilitates inquiry into the makeup of relationships and how they are negotiated (Graham, 1979). Both forms of relationships are imbricated in economies of normative expectation and the ambiguity of practice within particular contexts. For instance, being a true friend or fulfilling family obligations can blur borders between friendship and kinship. Indeed, some friends are loved and feel a family-like responsibility for each other while some family members are not always loved or do not provide the support that may be normatively expected of them (Pahl & Spencer, 2010).

Furthermore, while this thesis finds the theoretical dispositions purporting the individualization, democratization and fragmentation of social relations highly nostalgic, the impact of globalization on reshaping social relations renders comparison between kinship and friendship all the more relevant. This understanding also reflects broader changes that have been captured over the past twenty years within the literature on kinship and friendship. Since Bourdieu, stemming from critiques of kinship from feminism and queer theory and changes from assisted reproductive technology, the biological reproductive and heterosexual underpinnings of kinship are being decentered from research (Peletz, 1995). In anthropology, traditional understandings of kinship as the foundation of social relations are being questioned, with research using friendship as a means to interrogate and extend the multitude of relationships among tribal societies (Santos-Granero, 2007). Research into friendship is taking on increased importance, for example on the heightened importance of friendship from urbanization (Amin &

Thrift, 2002). Debates on the potential for real (Briggle, 2008) or unreal (Cocking & Mathews, 2000) forms of friendship on the internet are aslo growing in importance. Moreover, research into the role friendship plays in blurring tourism and migration with examples like backpacking (Allon & Anderson, 2009) or migrating (Conradson & Latham, 2010) is also becoming salient.

At a general theoretical level, assumptions on the divisions of different relationships, their

constitution, and the role generating different forms of sociality across a number of social places and spaces are being questioned (Carsten, 2004; Smart, 2007).

To a certain extent, there is fruitful insight that has shown the changes in social relations often associated with the pessimistic assumptions of individualization and fragmentation as built from tensions between traditional normative structures and de-traditionalization of social bonds that emerge heterogeneously. The shift to post-Fordist economies, while not entirely new, has equated to the formation of identities outside class structures and is leading to new understandings of lifestyle or the deepening of selves through processes of reflexive aestheticization (Lash & Urry, 1994). While this could be construed as individualization and fragmentation, recent research has demonstrated that the furthering of lifestyle identities, even at a distance, also includes the continued development of ties to friends and family and the sense of belonging through those bonds (Duncan et al., 2014). Thus, while there may be new forms of agency and choice in regard to personal relationships, this does not necessarily equate to the tired assertion that social bonds are losing quality. This thesis argues that we pay more attention to how the boundaries and importance of certain personal relations are re-drawn in a context of reflexive modernization and development of non-linear life courses (Budgeon, 2006). Care for example, certainly extends beyond the family (Roseneil & Budgeon, 2004), making visits and ICT’s sites for potential shifts in relations of care, enjoyment and identity. By comparing friendship and kinship as it pertains to VFR and ICT practices, this dissertation will be better able to delineate the micro-social worlds of personal communities (Pahl & Spencer, 2010) that will better facilitate an analysis of the kinds of bonds that are emerging from VFR and ICT practices.

3.4 Commitments of Friendship and Kinship as Politics, Performance and Personal