Friendships

On of the core ideas of hospitality exchange and CouchSurfing is to create deep and meaningful connections, short: friendships. To meet people from other cultures we can increase intercultural understanding and strengthen the peace on our planet, as Hospitality Club states. But what does it mean? How does it change next YOUR world THE world? Does it make sense at all?

Sure, we can just bring people into contact, make them travel and the rest will follow. But is it just done with connecting people? What make sense and what is fun, what creates real meaningful connections (keyword: cultural differences) and what doesn't? It looks like that that process of friendship-building in CS has a instant nature, the way friendship is regarded as a commodity, how it becomes fluid and very temporary. (Paula Bialska). Are those than real deep and meaningful connections? Or is CS just a cool travel tool? A nice illusion.

Links

• http://www.infed.org/biblio/friendship.htm - friendship theory: some philosophical and sociological themes
• http://www.hydra.umn.edu/derrida/pol+fr.html - Politics and Friendship
• http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8311.html - Rethinking Friendship: Hidden Solidarities Today (Book)
• opendemocracy.net/globalization-vision_reflections - The politics of friendship
• The life of the child: being friends, being good by Mark Vernon
• http://intimatetourism.wordpress.com/ - Couchsurfing & 'FastFood' Friends?

Misc

• http://www.jigsaw.org/about.htm - Reducing prejudice
• http://www.altruists.org/about/altruism/ - extending the 'in-group'
• Not to forget the theories from Durkheim about Anomie and Deviant behavior, this can also be used for trust en social networks.