Feelings of Friendship. A reconstruction of late modern, gendered feeling rules in friendships

In the face of increasing isolation, friendship appears to be a growing beacon of hopes for social stability and psychological well-being. This doctoral project examines friendship as a late modern form of relationship in the tension between individualization and intimacy, with a particular focus on gender relations. The project approaches the phenomenon of friendship, which has been treated as marginal up to now, from an emotional sociological perspective. Friendship is understood as a socially structured emotional order in which intimacy and gender are exemplarily intertwined. Given this background, the work uses reflexive grounded theory to examine which emotional patterns of interpretation, negotiations, and conflicts arise in friendships and to what extent these are shaped by gender-specific expectations and late modern ideals. The aim is to analyze friendship as a social space for emotional regulation, subjectification, and the potential reproduction of inequalities.