Brothers, friends, and enemies: averting intimacy on Facebook in western India

Abstract

Anthropological studies of the internet have traced the emergence of new forms of intimacy in various arenas of life, including friendship. Drawing upon an ethnography of Facebook and its use among young lower-middle-class men in Pune, Maharashtra, western India, the article investigates the discourse of friendship young men deploy on the platform. Although moulded in the image of their intimate friendships, their interactions with one another on-screen function to perform the ties of kinship. The distinctions young men draw between Facebook and their friendships off-screen reveal the particular forms male friendships take, the egalitarian ideal they contain, the privacy they require, and the care taken to foster them. Through examining the tensions between local articulations of intimacy and the publicity Facebook affords, I show how possibilities for online friendship, rather than being propelled by their freedom from external social conditions, are limited by the constraints of kinship.