Mobilities of friendship: ICT and the personal communities of women in the their fifties Seminar

Growing individualism, solo living and greater residential mobility are said to be changing the relative importance of kin and non-kin relationships. And growing engagement with ICTs and quicker transport are claimed to release friendship from the constraints of distance and neighbourhood. This paper will explore how bodily mobilities and the exchange of voice, text, and pictures via ICTs are bound up with practices of friendship today. I will draw upon recently completed in-depth interviews in Swindon with 30 women aged between 50 and 60. They were asked to identify and discuss relationships with people ‘important to you now’, including family members and non-kin. The women recounted how they kept in touch with these people, where they lived, and the nature and activities involved in their friendships. I will discuss the role of ‘co-present activities’, how various forms of ICT are used and the changing practices of friendship.