Freundschaftsprozesse in Afrika aus sozialanthropologischer Perspektive. Eine Einführung

The essay focuses on central dimensions of friendship in anthropology and on related problems of definition and methodology with respect to African societies. The paper recalls relevant classical contributions and advances the debates on the relations of friendship to kinship, friendship to patron-client relations and friendship in ritualised and institutionalised structures. Furthermore, it addresses recent studies dealing with friendship against the backgrounds of interethnic relations, migration, politics and urban spaces as well as in relation to gender and age. Friendship is understood as a cluster of social practices, comprising both emotional and functional aspects and differing in its degree of intimacy. We discuss friendship as a universal feature of social life, embedded in cultural, economical, political and moral contexts, thus varying in its local practices and meanings. We argue in favour of innovative methodological approaches, addressing both the divergence of analytical terms and emic perceptions as well as the ambivalences of friendship as a precarious social relationship. A social anthropology of friendship should aim at describing and analysing local logics of friendship relations in contemporary African societies. Researchers should follow its dynamics in changing social situations, look at the interplay between individual agency and structural constraints and compare different friendship patterns.