The Benefits of Friends: Inside the Complicated World of Today's Sororities and Fraternities

Author/Contributor(s):	Mathews, Jana
Publisher:	University of North Carolina Press
Date:	09/06/2022
Binding:	Paperback
Condition:	NEW

"Combining firsthand observation with thoughtful analysis and research culled from sociology, cognitive psychology, biology, economics, and history, this thought-provoking book provides a clear-eyed look at contemporary Greek life on US college and university campuses. As higher education's most enduring and pervasive single-sex organizations, historically white fraternities and sororities emerge as powerful social influencers that privilege the same-sex platonic friend over other forms of relationship, at their best offering dynamic new relational possibilities along with social and economic security. At their worst, however, they exacerbate campus hookup culture, create fictive family bonds that hoard social and economic opportunity, and distort some of society's most foundational relationship categories, including friend, romantic partner, and family"--