The Benefits of Friends
Inside the Complicated World of Today's Sororities and Fraternities
By Jana Mathews
344 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, notes, bibl., index
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Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4696-7210-6
Published: September 2022 -
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4696-6964-9
Published: September 2022 -
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4696-6965-6
Published: August 2022
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- Hardcover $99.00
- E-Book $22.99
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Mathews illuminates how organizations manipulate campus sex ratios to foster hookup culture, broker romantic relationships, transfer intimacy to straight same-sex friends, and create fictive family units that hoard social and economic opportunity for their members. In their idealized form, sororities and fraternities function as familial surrogates that tether their members together in economically and socially productive ways. In their most warped manifestations, however, these fictive familial bonds reinforce insularity, entrench privilege, and—at times—threaten physical safety.
About the Author
Jana Mathews is professor of English at Rollins College.
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Reviews
"Engrossing and smart, Mathews's fresh insights on contemporary, white, Greek letter organizations left me thinking even after I had put aside the book."—Diana B. Turk, author of Bound by a Mighty Vow
"Mathews's engaging book will appeal to the Greek system's biggest critics and fans. Astute and persuasive, Mathews helps outsiders understand fraternities and sororities' perennial appeal; she also shows how they can mend their ways."—Nicholas L. Syrett, author of The Company He Keeps: A History of White College Fraternities