Peter Mallory
Biographic Data
| ID | 269389 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Peter Mallory |
| GIVEN NAMES | Peter |
| FAMILY NAME | Mallory |
| SIGNATURE | MALLORY P |
| AFFILIATIONS | St. Francis Xavier University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 42 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Critical Friendship in the Modern World
Friendship is a critically important aspect of our lives, but is it always an unassailably 'good thing'? This book begins with the innovative premise that friendship is inherently complex and characterized by opposing qualities: it is both pleasurable and fraught, private and public, and inclusive and exclusionary. Rather than simply celebrating friendship as universally beneficial or worrying about its decline amid rising social disconnection, L…
Accounting for Friendlessness
How do people who identify as friendless make sense of their condition in a moment when friendship is extolled for the support and satisfaction it offers? This article draws on interviews with 21 adults in an Atlantic Canadian city. We argue that our interviewees were rarely at ease with their friendlessness and were at pains to recover an honorable self as people who felt looked down upon. We identify six types of interpretations of friendlessne…
Friendlessness and loneliness
This article is based on 21 interviews in an Atlantic Canadian city with people who identified as having few or no friends. With all the talk of a modern loneliness epidemic, we might easily assume friendless people are lonely, yet here we take an interpretive approach to analyze how they alternately claim to experience and not experience loneliness. We argue that claims to loneliness or its absence are never merely personal stories or problems o…
Friendship, Intimacy, and the Contradictions of Therapy Culture
While therapy culture has long been a part of the repertoires through which people think about and practice their romantic relationships, it has been less prominent in how they envision friendship. However, based on our interviews on experiences of friendlessness in an Atlantic Canadian city, we show that therapeutic styles increasingly shape how people orient to friendship, even as friends rarely seek formal therapy to manage their conflicts. Th…
Inequality, Rules of Irrelevance, and Recognition in Broken Friendships
Friendship depends on equality, yet friends are seldom fully equal. In this article, we investigate failed and difficult friendships through attention to the relationship between (in)equality, recognition, and 'rules of irrelevance.' Based on interviews in an Atlantic Canadian city, we argue that since friendship offers the chance to develop an identity and be recognized as a whole person, it encounters difficulty when friends will not or cannot …
Unclear endings
Social scientists typically treat friendship as a positive part of people’s lives, but what happens when friendships fall apart, often with little explanation? Based on interviews in an Atlantic Canadian city, this article focuses on two key themes in people’s experiences of disappointing friendships: first, unintelligibility with regard to why friends exited their lives; and second, people’s interpretations of failed friendships as personal fail…
Friendship and the social self in business success literature
What can we learn about the cultural meanings of friendship and personal bonds by turning to popular business success literature? Can it help to make sense of the new social spirit of capitalism? Social theory still takes as its object of criticism the bounded, autonomous, liberal subject, yet in the new business success literature, one finds instead a social conception of the person and a celebration of values like community, trust and reciproci…
The Two Durkheims
For contemporary Durkheim scholars, the presentation of Durkheimian sociology in introductory textbooks is notoriously flawed. In this article, we examine the presentation of Durkheim's work in popular English-language Canadian sociology textbooks. We show that textbooks present two distinct 'Durkheims.' First, they characterize him as a founder of the discipline and the sociological project of challenging common-sense explanations of social life…
Blatterer, Harry, Everyday Friendships
Rethinking personal and political friendship with Durkheim
This article addresses the contribution that Durkheim's sociology can make to recent scholarship on the public and political significance of friendship. The concept of political friendship deals with the problem of how anonymous strangers can feel a principled solidarity, such that they recognize each other as moral equals and show a willingness to act in each other's interests. Because the new scholarship on political friendship aims to reveal t…
Friendship and Strangership
This article considers the contribution that Adam Smith's work can make to current scholarship on the political significance of friendship. Smith's approach to friendship is important because he decouples it from intimacy and uses friendship to theorise solidarity and mutual identification between strangers. He theorises not only the friend, but also the stranger, and furthermore, their interrelationship. So closely are the friend and the strange…
Political friendship in the era of 'the social
This article examines the contribution Tocqueville's work can make to recent scholarly debates on political friendship in modernity. Tocqueville, unlike most modern classical social theorists, does not treat friendship as a private bond devoid of political significance. For him, political friendship contributes to the success of democracy and is so crucial that its absence leads to despotism. The reason Tocqueville is attuned to the political sig…
Friendship and Strangership
This article considers the contribution that Adam Smith's work can make to current scholarship on the political significance of friendship. Smith's approach to friendship is important because he decouples it from intimacy and uses friendship to theorise solidarity and mutual identification between strangers. He theorises not only the friend, but also the stranger, and furthermore, their interrelationship. So closely are the friend and the strange…
Unclear endings
Social scientists typically treat friendship as a positive part of people’s lives, but what happens when friendships fall apart, often with little explanation? Based on interviews in an Atlantic Canadian city, this article focuses on two key themes in people’s experiences of disappointing friendships: first, unintelligibility with regard to why friends exited their lives; and second, people’s interpretations of failed friendships as personal fail…
Friendship and the social self in business success literature
What can we learn about the cultural meanings of friendship and personal bonds by turning to popular business success literature? Can it help to make sense of the new social spirit of capitalism? Social theory still takes as its object of criticism the bounded, autonomous, liberal subject, yet in the new business success literature, one finds instead a social conception of the person and a celebration of values like community, trust and reciproci…
Rethinking personal and political friendship with Durkheim
This article addresses the contribution that Durkheim's sociology can make to recent scholarship on the public and political significance of friendship. The concept of political friendship deals with the problem of how anonymous strangers can feel a principled solidarity, such that they recognize each other as moral equals and show a willingness to act in each other's interests. Because the new scholarship on political friendship aims to reveal t…
Inequality, Rules of Irrelevance, and Recognition in Broken Friendships
Friendship depends on equality, yet friends are seldom fully equal. In this article, we investigate failed and difficult friendships through attention to the relationship between (in)equality, recognition, and 'rules of irrelevance.' Based on interviews in an Atlantic Canadian city, we argue that since friendship offers the chance to develop an identity and be recognized as a whole person, it encounters difficulty when friends will not or cannot …
The Two Durkheims
For contemporary Durkheim scholars, the presentation of Durkheimian sociology in introductory textbooks is notoriously flawed. In this article, we examine the presentation of Durkheim's work in popular English-language Canadian sociology textbooks. We show that textbooks present two distinct 'Durkheims.' First, they characterize him as a founder of the discipline and the sociological project of challenging common-sense explanations of social life…
Political friendship in the era of 'the social
This article examines the contribution Tocqueville's work can make to recent scholarly debates on political friendship in modernity. Tocqueville, unlike most modern classical social theorists, does not treat friendship as a private bond devoid of political significance. For him, political friendship contributes to the success of democracy and is so crucial that its absence leads to despotism. The reason Tocqueville is attuned to the political sig…
Friendship, Intimacy, and the Contradictions of Therapy Culture
While therapy culture has long been a part of the repertoires through which people think about and practice their romantic relationships, it has been less prominent in how they envision friendship. However, based on our interviews on experiences of friendlessness in an Atlantic Canadian city, we show that therapeutic styles increasingly shape how people orient to friendship, even as friends rarely seek formal therapy to manage their conflicts. Th…
Accounting for Friendlessness
How do people who identify as friendless make sense of their condition in a moment when friendship is extolled for the support and satisfaction it offers? This article draws on interviews with 21 adults in an Atlantic Canadian city. We argue that our interviewees were rarely at ease with their friendlessness and were at pains to recover an honorable self as people who felt looked down upon. We identify six types of interpretations of friendlessne…
Friendlessness and loneliness
This article is based on 21 interviews in an Atlantic Canadian city with people who identified as having few or no friends. With all the talk of a modern loneliness epidemic, we might easily assume friendless people are lonely, yet here we take an interpretive approach to analyze how they alternately claim to experience and not experience loneliness. We argue that claims to loneliness or its absence are never merely personal stories or problems o…
Friendship and Strangership
This article considers the contribution that Adam Smith's work can make to current scholarship on the political significance of friendship. Smith's approach to friendship is important because he decouples it from intimacy and uses friendship to theorise solidarity and mutual identification between strangers. He theorises not only the friend, but also the stranger, and furthermore, their interrelationship. So closely are the friend and the strange…
Political friendship in the era of 'the social
This article examines the contribution Tocqueville's work can make to recent scholarly debates on political friendship in modernity. Tocqueville, unlike most modern classical social theorists, does not treat friendship as a private bond devoid of political significance. For him, political friendship contributes to the success of democracy and is so crucial that its absence leads to despotism. The reason Tocqueville is attuned to the political sig…
Rethinking personal and political friendship with Durkheim
This article addresses the contribution that Durkheim's sociology can make to recent scholarship on the public and political significance of friendship. The concept of political friendship deals with the problem of how anonymous strangers can feel a principled solidarity, such that they recognize each other as moral equals and show a willingness to act in each other's interests. Because the new scholarship on political friendship aims to reveal t…
Blatterer, Harry, Everyday Friendships
The Two Durkheims
For contemporary Durkheim scholars, the presentation of Durkheimian sociology in introductory textbooks is notoriously flawed. In this article, we examine the presentation of Durkheim's work in popular English-language Canadian sociology textbooks. We show that textbooks present two distinct 'Durkheims.' First, they characterize him as a founder of the discipline and the sociological project of challenging common-sense explanations of social life…
Friendship and the social self in business success literature
What can we learn about the cultural meanings of friendship and personal bonds by turning to popular business success literature? Can it help to make sense of the new social spirit of capitalism? Social theory still takes as its object of criticism the bounded, autonomous, liberal subject, yet in the new business success literature, one finds instead a social conception of the person and a celebration of values like community, trust and reciproci…
Unclear endings
Social scientists typically treat friendship as a positive part of people’s lives, but what happens when friendships fall apart, often with little explanation? Based on interviews in an Atlantic Canadian city, this article focuses on two key themes in people’s experiences of disappointing friendships: first, unintelligibility with regard to why friends exited their lives; and second, people’s interpretations of failed friendships as personal fail…
Inequality, Rules of Irrelevance, and Recognition in Broken Friendships
Friendship depends on equality, yet friends are seldom fully equal. In this article, we investigate failed and difficult friendships through attention to the relationship between (in)equality, recognition, and 'rules of irrelevance.' Based on interviews in an Atlantic Canadian city, we argue that since friendship offers the chance to develop an identity and be recognized as a whole person, it encounters difficulty when friends will not or cannot …
Friendlessness and loneliness
This article is based on 21 interviews in an Atlantic Canadian city with people who identified as having few or no friends. With all the talk of a modern loneliness epidemic, we might easily assume friendless people are lonely, yet here we take an interpretive approach to analyze how they alternately claim to experience and not experience loneliness. We argue that claims to loneliness or its absence are never merely personal stories or problems o…
Friendship, Intimacy, and the Contradictions of Therapy Culture
While therapy culture has long been a part of the repertoires through which people think about and practice their romantic relationships, it has been less prominent in how they envision friendship. However, based on our interviews on experiences of friendlessness in an Atlantic Canadian city, we show that therapeutic styles increasingly shape how people orient to friendship, even as friends rarely seek formal therapy to manage their conflicts. Th…
Accounting for Friendlessness
How do people who identify as friendless make sense of their condition in a moment when friendship is extolled for the support and satisfaction it offers? This article draws on interviews with 21 adults in an Atlantic Canadian city. We argue that our interviewees were rarely at ease with their friendlessness and were at pains to recover an honorable self as people who felt looked down upon. We identify six types of interpretations of friendlessne…
Critical Friendship in the Modern World
Friendship is a critically important aspect of our lives, but is it always an unassailably 'good thing'? This book begins with the innovative premise that friendship is inherently complex and characterized by opposing qualities: it is both pleasurable and fraught, private and public, and inclusive and exclusionary. Rather than simply celebrating friendship as universally beneficial or worrying about its decline amid rising social disconnection, L…
Sociology (10 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Friendship (8 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Social and Cultural Dynamics (6 works) · Social science (6 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Political science (5 works)