The pragmatics of friendship: support and speculation among young street traders in Tanzania

This article examines the workings of friendship in the lives of young street traders in Tanzania, and focuses on the roles and meanings of the practices of support friends engage in. Arguing that an instrumental reading alone does not account for these practices, it builds on two case studies on conflicts among close friends to uncover a significant symbolic side to the pragmatics of friendship. The practical and moral support young people find among their friends engenders an interdependence that gives sense and direction to their everyday lives and shapes their perspective of the future, otherwise marked by a deep-rooted uncertainty. Conflicts, then, shed another light on this mutuality of being. In times like these, the latter no longer stands for certainty or direction, but gives rise to speculation on lives, friendships and futures. Here, the pragmatics of friendship are put to use in the process of deconstructing and reconstructing the mutuality of being.