The importance of everyday encounters and experiences started with sociologist and psychologist in academia with a handful of forward-thinking reserachers, like my collaborator. And now, David Morgan, a British sociologist, brings us “Acquaintances: The Space Between Strangers and Intimates.” I haven’t read the book yet, but from this review by community development consultant Kevin Harris, I can see that we cover a lot of similar ground. Harris writes in his Neighbourhoods blog:
Giving acquaintanceship due recognition seems to have had to wait for the relatively recent development of a sociology of the everyday, and the author explains how acquaintances ‘are part of the process of “building up a sense of the everyday in time, space, practices and orientations to the world.” He’s concerned to get us thinking more positively about the role that acquaintances play in our lives, especially in the cosmopolitan context; and to assert that they are necessary for social life to exist at all. “It would be difficult,” he writes, “to describe or account for social life without them.”
Harris also provides a link to very interesting program (although he would call it a “programme”) produced by the BBC Radio 4 series with Laurie Taylor, Thinking Allowed. It features David Morgan along with Henrietta Moore, a professor of social anthropology, discussing the importance, historical precedents, and special benefits of acquaintances–the type of relationship Karen Fingerman dubbed “consequential strangers.” Happily (for me at least), Harris provides a link to this blog at the end of his!
