cultures
Looking for a socio-cultural definition of friendship, it is very difficult to find a concise description true in all cultures. Our friend can be one of our relatives, our love, a partner of the same age, our older mentor or even our boss. Friendship, like all other social rela-tionships, is influenced by cultural background, at the same time, friendship can alter the norms of social rules, although, common social position is not enough criterion in itself to make a friendship work.
In general, it can be said that friendship in all cultures includes strong feelings of loyalty to one another and the existence of mutual support. However, the forms and frameworks of the manifestation of friendship are diverse in the different cultures.
We can read in Man and Woman, the book by Margaret Mead, if we were born as a boy in Samoa, our friend will be called Soa, which means companion in circumcision and a communicator in the arrangements of love affairs. Boys in Samoa get circumcised in pairs. They choose their companion for the shared experience; this shared experience cre-ates bond, a lifelong, close friendship between them. Friends spend as much time together as it is possible, even sleep together often. After adolescence, they help each other in choos-ing a mate, when the boys send their friends in their place to the chosen girl to court her, to praise them to the girl, and to convince her to fulfill the desire of their Soas. To do this, a very deep trust is needed...
Successful courting is a reciprocal gesture, as the suitor can also count on his friend when he looks for his prospective partner. Friends are not only engaged in the matter of courting the girls, but they do work on the taro fields together, go fishing, and in general, become allies in the matter of community and political affairs of the Samoan society.
Friendships of Samoan girls are not as close as that are of the boys. They also have confidants with whom they take care of the younger children or work together later, but long-term alliances formed only for the time of their first love adventure. However, after
some time and a few adventures, they all turn their attention toward finding the “ideal”
mate, as they are occupied with the idea of marriage, while they make all efforts to exclude others from their love affairs as fully as possible. In addition, from then on, the activity of young girls become more and more individualized, so girls do not develop such close and lasting friendships as boys do. (MEAD 2003: 7–86)
Reciprocity of friendship challenges and forces people to choose. When, how and for how long should my solidarity last? From Evans-Pritchard’s research we learned that this issue may be particularly dramatic for African Nuers. Young boys of Nuers collectively go through a painful initiation process, during which the skin on their their foreheads get cut deep to the bone with razor. The six parallel horizontal lines thus created will be a visible sign of their shared experience for the rest of their lives. Among those initiated together, strong friendship, cooperative work relation, and alliance emerges. Those of the same age form a common group within the Nuer society. The age group, the friendly relations have many responsibilities, and many manifestations of solidarity. But there are several such close knit groups exist in the Nuer society. In addition to his friends, he also belongs to a complicated system of family relations, to a new kinship “inherited” through marriage, a network of commercial partners, as well as to the village community... Therefore, if a conflict explodes between people or groups, it will most likely affect the friendships that have developed over the years. Where does one stand, aligns with whom, his friend, his uncle or his neighbor, against the other? No wonder the Nuers, as long as they have a chance, try to avoid conflicts or at least quickly put an end to the clashes.
Initiation alliances and age groups have decisive importance in other African cultures, as well. At Kenya’s Nandis, after being born, the child becomes part of a group with a specific name in order to learn and practice along peers the activities assigned to his/her gender. As adolescents, the boys move to a separate camp and come back to their family only when they are ready to start their own family. Shared experiences, feelings, and newly gained knowledge entwines the lives of young people with unbreakable threads. This bonding and solidarity is also exemplified by the peculiarity of Nandi guest hospitality, when male peers offer their visiting guest their own wives. (EVANS-PRITCARD 1963)
In other African tribes, the status of women is quite different from the above example.
For example, at the Ila-Tongas, an ethnic group in West-Africa, girlfriends can publicly and legally acquire a lover with whom they can live and for whose “services” the husband even has to pay. Maternal lineage is being traced in these communities, thus women have more rights and much more opportunities to engage in friendship or open love-relationship.
We can read about an exciting approach to friendship in the Bible as well. David, the shepherd became a warrior, carried on a deep friendship with Jonathan, son of the king.
Hardship of their relationship, related to their different social status, is further aggravated by Saul’s jealousy of David, whom the king ultimately wants to have killed, and who, because of that, has to flee then fight the king. Nevertheless, in Samuel’s books, it is written that the relationship between the two friends is stronger than a brotherly or even a love relationship.
The biblical story suggests that, in some cases, friendship can mean more than a blood relationship.
From these examples, we can conclude that friendship and biological bondage may clash, result in a dilemma and it may forces us to choose.
Which means more?
The answer is depending on the given culture, and within it on the circumstances and life situations.
In addition to enjoying the gift of friendship, it is no harm to know who will never be our friend. Ralph Linton cites an exciting example of it from the life of the American Comanche culture. The young Comanche warriors are highly ambitious and live in constant rivalry. Nonetheless, contemporaries are not the greatest threat to each other. Their real enemies, with whom it is better to avoid any contact, are the older men. The elderly men are expected to be kind and wise, to smooth out conflicts, to work for peace in the society.
At the same time, the majority of “old folks” do not want to play this role, they still want to live the lives of young warriors, want to fight and have many women to sleep with.
So, as a man becomes older at the Comanches, he gains greater and greater magic power with which the older ones either weaken or even kill more young men. No wonder young people have to pay close attention to tribal myths and tales that teach that while the good medicine men can be of any age, evil actors are always “old”. (LINTON 1997)