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Argues that the institution of friendship deserves the same legal protection & recognition as families, households, & professional relationships. A definition of a friend is provided, delineating several core characteristics of friendship. It is contended that the centrality of friendship to people's lives requires that law take notice. Further, laws, legal institutions, & public policy agendas should be oriented toward promoting & facilitating friendship. D. Edelman

After having achieved a major status reform, the grand corps of the Ponts et Chaussees was led to conceive a new training to management intended for his new recruits. The "managerial identity" they aim to perform created a serious conflict within the grand corps. Indeed, some of these high civil servants value & promote public management to reinforce the public sector whilst others use it as a means to encourage their peers to transfer from the public to the private sector. The apparent consensus & the current trend towards hightened managerial control conceals a series of issues concerning the Ponts et Chaussees' identity & control. Analyzing management through its training enables us to deconstruct its imagery by trying to grasp to which extent the relationships between high civil servants & French administration are here at stake. Adapted from the source document.

Women entered government public health institutions in China in large numbers in the 2000s, thanks to a national professionalization project prioritizing meritocratic recruitment. To their disappointment, one of the consequences of their new professional involvement was that they were expected to drink heavily alongside men at frequent guanxi-building banquets. They responded by redefining heavy alcohol consumption as a morally deficient act that should have no place in government institutions. Their growing numbers and higher levels of educational achievement, ability to draw upon gendered norms to prioritize familial relationships and individual responsibilities, investment in disentangling individual professional development from drinking capabilities and ability to demonstrate the possibility of building networks without mutual intoxication allowed them to push this critique forward in ways that men could not. Their efforts met with limited success. Alcohol's role in building guanxi was diminished, but the women did not manage to eliminate the perceived necessity of banqueting. (China J/GIGA)