In Peter Nardi, ed. Men Fricndships. Sage, 1992 Newbury Park, CA: 5 Men in Networks Private Communities, Domestic Friendships! BARRY WELLMAN Friends i Community Networks Has the movement of North American friendships from public spaces to private homes affected the nature of friendship? My approach to this Question is to see how friendships among men fit within a man’s Personal community network of active relationships, including his ties with kinfolk, neighbors, workmates, and women friends. Instead of assum- ing that men belong to communities that are traditional solidary groups —such as neighborhoods, kinship groups, or cliques of buddies —T treat cach man as the center of his own Ptolemaic universe (see Figure 5.1), ‘Tosetin perspective the analysis of friendships between men, l compare them with other community ties, such as women's friendships, friendships between men and women, and ties with kin, neighbors, and workmates. 1 suspect that the current situation of men’s friendship is linked to transformations inthe nature of community. Work and community have separated, and cars, phones, and planes have liberated community ties from being bound up in neighborhood, kinship, and work groups. One result has been that men’s friendships now operate out of households rather than in public places, Husbands and wives now have more integrated friendships, men do not routinely rely on their friends to accomplish AUTHOR'S NOTE: This chapter was writen with the collaboration of Milena Gali avid Tindall, and Karen Ramsay Vince Salazar, Cristina Tahoces, 4 BARRY WELLMAN 75 ‘an Figure $.1. Typical Personal Network important tasks outside of the household, and the intellectual climate ‘now treats friendship as a relationship in which women excel My findings come from analyzing the accounts Toronto men and women give about their active relations with kith and kin. We interviewed 29 Torontonians (14 men and 15 women) for 10 to 15 hours in 1977-1978. Although the sample is small, we gained much more detail about many ‘more ties than large-scale survey research usually elicits, Moreover, the congruence of our findings with those from large surveys gives us confi-76 Men in Networks ence in the general usefulness of studying this small sample (Wellman, 1982, 1988, 1990, 1992). ‘The respondents are predominantly British-Canadian, married (with children), working-class and lower middle-class. The men are variously employed as electricians, laboratory technicians, truck drivers, and in other skilled and semiskilled positions. The women hold white-collar and service jobs such as secretaries, insurance claims examiners, and waitresses. Hence these data cannot tell much about the friendships of the rich, the poor, the unmarried, segregated minorities. “These Torontonians told us about the 343 active members of their personal community networks: socially close intimates and the somewhat less intimate but still significant network members with whom they are in active contact (for details, see Wellman, 1982; Wellman & Wortley, 19892, 1990)2 Although these relationships comprise only a small fraction ofthe 1,500 or so informal ties that most North Americans prob- ably maintain (Killworth, Johnsen, Bernard, Shelley, & McCarthy, 1990), they comprise most of a person’s actively supportive ties (Erickson, Radkewyez, & Nosanchuk, 1988). Hence we have information about the strong ties that supply most resources and we ignore the many weaker ties important for obtaining information and integrating social systems.* Public and Private Communities ‘The Privatization of Community Men's Public Communities: My arguments about changes in men's friendships since earlier eras are speculative. They are my initial attempt to make some sense out of what I have found when studying contempo- rary male friendships. My findings made me wonder why intellectual discourse in North America now thinks that men’s friendships are infe- rior to women’s friendships, and whether changes in the nature of com- munity since preindustrial times have fostered changes in men’s friend- ships. To address these matters adequately would take many books. In this chapter, [can only begin the debate by sketching a preliminary account, ‘which skips lightly over continents and centuries. Urban men customarily have gathered in communal, quasi-public networks Although a popular metaphor has been the “old-boy networks,” which allegedly run Britain, such male bonds have not just been elite shows (Cohen, 1974). Work groups spilled over into pubs after hours BARRY WELLMAN 77 (Kornblum, 1974; Wadel, 1969). Sports teams, even atthe highest profes- sional levels, often fostered supportive male friendships (Kramer, 1968; ‘Messner, 1987; Pronger, 1990). Even casual street comers had their regular crowds of male buddies (Gans, 1962; Liebow, 1967; Useem, Useem, & Gibson, 1960; Whyte, 1943). Such gathering places are what Oldenburg (1989) calls “the third place” in men's lives, along with home and work. They are “parochial settings, nether private nor public (Hunter, 1985; Lofland, 1989). More accessible than private homes, they drew their clienteles from fluid net- works of regular habitués with similar social backgrounds (Clawson, 1989; Kingsdale, 1973; Lofland, 1973; Oldenburg, 1989; Pleck & Pleck, 1980; ‘Sennett, 1977; Wireman, 1984). Men could drop into the pub, cafe, fraternal club, or street corner “to eat well, drink wine, play cards and ‘escape from the boredom of home life” (Tristan, 1991, p. 93). The high density of the city meant that they were likely to find many other men to talk with. In eighteenth-century Paris, vie de quarter animated public places, with men gathering at wine shops, taverns, cafes, and barber- shops (Garrioch, 1986). [T]he whole neighborhood overflowed [into the street] from nearby houses, ‘workshops, shops and taverns. Around every inhabitant a quartier took on its shape, make up of daily contacts and changing reputations. Individuals worked round the corner from where they lived ... (Roche, 1981, p. 246) Communities focused around these places have been instrumental as ‘well as communal, Although men went there to enjoy themselves, the ‘communities controlled resources and accomplished work. In Colonial New England, “neighbors . .. assumed not only the right but the duty to supervise one another's lives” (Wall, 1990, p. 134). Men used their communities to organize politically, to accomplish collective tasks, and to deal with larger organizations. Women’s Private Communities: Such public community was a man’s game.°““A woman going to a wine shop alone risked being taken for a Prostitute, and to say that she was ‘courait les cafes” (ran around the cafes) ‘was tantamount to calling her a whore” (Garrioch, 1986; see also Roche, 1981). Women stayed at home to tend the hearths and do paid work (Duby, 1985; Roncire, 1985). When women did go out todo paid work, they either did domestic work in someone else’s home, or they returned directly to their own home after work (Elshiain, 1981; Mackenzie 1988; Shorter 1975; Tilly & Scott, 1978).78 Menin Networks Consequently, women's communities were more private than men's, ‘Women visited each other's homes in small numbers to provide compat jonship and domestic support (Duby, 1985; Garrioch, 1986: Gullestad, 1984; Mackenzie, 1988; Roche, 1981; Roncitre, 1985; Sharma, 1986, Vicinus, 1985), In the nineteenth century, this separation of the men’s public world and the woman's private world became even more pronounced in North America and Europe. The “cult of domesticity... [preached thet While] men took on the care of business and politics, women devoted themselves tothe life of the home" (Wall, 1990, p. 144-145; see also Cott, 1977). Many women stopped working for wages inside and outside of the home and concentrated on making their homes their castles, The continuing evidence of supportive women’s friendships is enough to refute any Tigerish (1969) belief that men have uniquely innate propen- sities to form friendship groups.’ Long-standing divisions of labor between ‘men and women, together with te availability of public gathering places only to men, has encouraged men to form more permeable, more public, and less domestically oriented bonds. Where the recurrent public gath, rings of men often led to somewhat corporate groups, women's friend. ships were more informally organized networks. ‘The Liberation of Community The Separation of Work and Community: The reorganization of work in the Industrial Revolution has helped move friendships from shops (and nearby pubs) to homes. Zoning segregates big plants and offices from residential neighborhoods. Co-workers commute from many dif. ferent neighborhoods and no longer come home together after work. The nature of work also discourages many workers from forming friendly ties. Some workers are isolated from others, as the truck driver who told us: | generally keep problems to myself unless itis a problem that I can share with ‘he wife. I don’t ty to give advice to anybody; they have their own lives to live, ‘Supervisors do not become friends with subordinates. For example, while 8 production manager formed a close patron-client relationship with an ‘older manager who taught him the ropes, his position cut him off from friendships with other work: ‘My work is « manager's work. You have to get your work done through other People. You never hear anything good from them. You never sce them if there's BARRY WELLMAN 79. ot problems. There's obviously problems. Therefore you see them, and you don’t like to see them! Although co-workers continue to use informal ties to accomplish their work and get through the day (Halle, 1984), few relation co-workers continue after hours. Thus Toronto businessmen, making virtue out of reality, pride themselves on keeping their work and domes. tic lives separate (Erickson, 1991). “I try to keep my own circle of friends ‘part from work,” says an accountant, Work is one world, community is another. Moving Beyond Local Communities: Since World Wat I, telephones and cars have enabled people to maintain active community ties over long distances. Communities have been liberated from the constraints of space and the claims of neighborhood, work, and kinship groups. Each Person (and each household) is at the center of a unique personal com. ‘munity, usually consisting of kin, friends, neighbors, and workmates; loc regional, and long-distance ties. It is fairly easy for people to maneuver through their networks, interacting more with compatible people and avoiding disagreeable neighbors, kinfolk, co-workers, and acquaintances (Wellman, 1988; Wellman & Leighton, 1979). A Toronto accountant asserts: | would rather have nobody than somebody who doesn't have much in com- ‘mon with me, And an upholsterer warns: Family tes are great as long as they are just ties and not stranglables {sic} Don’t drive it into me that because we're elated you've got to come see me Rather than gathering in public places where they may have to deal With all comers, Toronto men now have selective encounters with dis- persed network members who live an average of 9 miles away. Compared {0 those of Toronto women, more of the men’s tes are to people living Outside of their neighborhoods (73% versus 50%). Most of the men's ties are with friends and relatives living outside of the neighborhood but still in the metropolitan area. Friendships depend more on accessibility than do kinship ties. Friends comprise only one-quarter of the men’s active ties with network members living more than 150 miles away, The other three-quarters of these long-distance ties are with kin whose normative obligations and network density help them to stay together,