By Wayne Mellinger

Instructor, Antioch University

Casual connections might be some of the most consequential
relations in our lives, helping us to land jobs, deal with our personal issues,
and providing us with a sense of identity and belonging.  And in our world of social media, such as
Facebook, modern humans probably have more casual acquaintances than most
humans ever have had before.

An “acquaintance” is someone who falls between a stranger
and an intimate.  They lie outside one’s
inner circle of close friends and family, but are not totally unknown as a
stranger might be.

Acquaintances might include people we routinely encounter in
our everyday lives—people we see daily at the coffee shop, people we take a
class with at our local community college, and even people with whom we share
intimate details of our personal lives at self-help group meeting, such as
Alcoholic Anonymous.  They might be the
people who care for our children every day, the people we know from social
movement activism, or the elderly neighbors who live down the street.

Unlike intimates, acquaintances have particular (and
limited) types of knowledge about one another. 
We might simply know another person’s first name and that they sell
pomegranates and oranges at the farmer’s market. 

The difference between acquaintances and intimates has to do
with, for example, the length of time of the relationship, the amount of
intimacy, its emotional intensity, and the level of reciprocity.  Obviously, there is a fluidity in our
relationships, with people moving in and out of our inner circles.

In one of the most widely cited articles in social science
research, Mark Granovetter’s 1973 study,
explores “the strength of weak ties”. 
Acquaintances can play crucial roles in our lives.  Specifically, he demonstrated that employment
opportunities were more likely to derive from less intimate community ties than
from close family and intimate friends.

Subsequent research on social networks demonstrates that
resources, information and new connections—which generates “social capital”—are
the outcome of weak ties in all spheres of social life, not just employment.

Because we have weak ties with our acquaintances, they tend
to be much more diverse than our intimates. 
By contrast, close friends are often limited to people who are very
similar to ourselves in essential ways.

Acquaintances are responsible for the flow of much new
information to us because they know people we do not.  They connect us with a broader set of social
networks than do our close friends and families, who often know the same people
as we do.  In our increasingly urban
lives, acquaintances play important roles such as anchoring individuals to the
larger community. 

Walking through my neighborhood, greeting joggers, chatting
with people walking their dogs, and waving to people sitting on their porches,
I feel at home and connected to my community.

Higher status people typically have a wider variety of
acquaintances.  Having varied connections
improves one’s chances of having useful contacts, including people who might be
hiring, or who might help us in other innumerable other ways.

Acquaintances can help us deal with our personal issues in
various ways.  They are the fellow
members are in support groups, whether it be Weight Watchers, Twelve Step
meetings, or church groups.  Chances are
that if you see a helping professional of any kind–therapist, social worker,
or case manager—you might consider these people with whom you might disclose
your most private concerns as one of your acquaintances.

If self- identities are formed, in part, by placing
ourselves into another’s shoes and imagining how they judge our behavior, a
process symbolic interactionists refer to as “role-taking”
, then my sense of self as a student, a yoga practitioner, or as a Starbucks
barista comes from doing role-taking with people who are probably acquaintances.

One of the central ways in which we “do” acquaintanceship
has to do with the norms of etiquette in public places.  When their eyes meet on a busy street or in a
crowded department store, acquaintances are able to show that they recognize
each other.  By contrast, strangers
typically avoid extended eye contact and refrain from engaging in conversation,
a ritual sociologist Erving Goffman refers to as “civil
inattention” .

Depending on the social context and the quality of the
relationship, norms of civility might require that acquaintances briefly
exchange greetings and pleasantries. 

When we say “it takes a village,” we are acknowledging the
role that acquaintances might play in very important aspects of our everyday
lives, such as teaching our children, watching over the safety of our homes, or
attending a religious service with us.

Indeed, the very moral character of a community and the
health of its democratic polity, are often reflected through the liveliness of
these subtle and ephemeral encounters in public.