Ian Townsend 201006611
Political Friendships
For the week on political friendships I have decided to do my response on your article,
“Friendship and Strangership: Rethinking Political Friendship through the Work of Adam Smith”,
as well as the article “Friendship and Politics” written by Heather Devere and Graham M. Smith.
The two articles are talking about two different types of political friendships. In your article you
use the term to describe the types of relationships we could have with strangers in our society
on an everyday basis that could be beneficial for the community as a whole. The other article
discusses political friendships and how they are descriptive, analytic and normative, as well as
the benefits that could come from studying political friendships.
Your article aims to find out why Smith never chose to talk about about political friendships
even when his book The Theory of Moral Sentiments he naturally arrives at the idea. Smith
decouples friendship from intimacy and suggests that sympathy between strangers is what
creates ‘strangership’. However, Smith fails to acknowledge the inequalities within the second
form of ‘strangership’ discussed later on. The political friendship clashes with the modern idea
of friendship which is considered private and personal. So, political friendships are the
“unnoticed bonds between strangers”. Goffman’s example of civil inattention is used here to
validate the previous statement. You go on to suggest that in sociology the ‘stranger’ has been
viewed as a “social type rather than as the result of a relationship.” The Idea of thinking about
our relationships with strangers can help us break down the institutions that reproduce
‘strangership’ allowing it to be better studied.
The section on Smith offers a unique critique of the limitations that are present within his
argument because he fails to acknowledge inequality as something that affects our friendships
as well as our ‘strangerships’. Smith’s version of friendship is more moderate than other
sociologists we have read and does not glamorize it but views it as two hearts in harmony; “The
distance between self and other may be bridged by sympathy, but never eliminated.” So,
friendship in Smith is understood by the notion of the ‘impartial spectator’ and its ties to
‘strangership’. Your definition of ‘strangership’ implies that it is how strangers relate in
commercial civil society where there “interactions are predictable, civil, calm and friendly.” The
unequal form of ‘strangership’ that Smith arrives at is based on “exclusion and the denial of
sympathy and recognition.” However, Smith fails to elaborate on this second form of
‘strangership’ that lies at the margins of society. Instead he chooses to see them as casualties of
capitalism and its hierarchical setup. You conclude that political friendships must be used to
reveal and change the infrastructure that supports inequality.
The second article was much less interesting. Like the first is brings up the issues that arise with
modern friendships being private and emotional. It suggests a broader view of friendship could
be used to help establish research between politics and friendship. The article suggests moving
away from the terminology such as ‘enemy’. I don’t know if I fully understood this article, at
times it seemed liked it is being used as a first draft. They cite a lot of past works and in some
ways it seems like the article is expected to be a springboard for other researchers who are
interesting in studying the benefits of dissecting the relationship between friendship and
politics.