I am 'doing ethnography' in an online community (from a Social Anthropological viewpoint) and my data is driving me to
look at friendship as perhaps a more flexible bond than kinship. In some
cases friendship seems to be the precursor to the adoption of familial
roles' as in ..."she's my cybermom". Strong friendship ties appear to be a
major part of the social relations that are being negotiated in this
particular online community. I didn't want to lose myself in trawling
through all the kinship literature.