Narratives of Loneliness: Multidisciplinary Perspectives from the 21st Century

ISBN-13: 9781138183827 / Angielski / Twarda / 2017 / 242 str.

Olivia Sagan; Eric Miller

Opis

This book explores loneliness; the experience of it, the discourse surrounding it and what, if anything in these considerations, is specific to today. This book aims to explore the subject of loneliness as we move deeper into a century which faces the paradox of greater and faster connectedness and yet more intensely experienced isolation. Drawing on multidisciplinary thinking and empirical research, the book explores:

• How the human experience of loneliness is being reconfigured through subtle changes in western and western-influenced discourses of loneliness
• How the 'loneliness epidemic' is narrated and expressed by those who feel it most acutely and how the post-developed reflexive being is making meaning of such experience
• What a multidisciplinary approach to the study of what some claim is a fundamental human condition can add to our understanding of loneliness in the 21^st century.

The chapters in this book, coming from diverse writers in a range of disciplines, explore loneliness from a variety of angles - what it is for different people who live or work with it, what it is thought to have been, what it might possibly become. The book presents a range of voices from science and humanities on the texture, damages and possible respites of loneliness, as we move further into post-developed society where the distances between the human being and her natural environment are expanding; the space between the rich and the poor increasing; the gulf between competing ideologies widening and the fences between us and our neighbours being fortified. Are we lonelier that ever, the more internetted and connected we become? If so, is that a problem, and what are the specifics of the experience?

Spis treści

Foreword by Professor John Harvey  Introduction by the Editors  Part 1. Inter and Intrapersonal Loneliness  1. Loneliness: an Overview (Philip S. Morrison and Rebekah Smith)  2. Loneliness and Relatedness: A Philosophical and Psychotherapeutic Account (Roger Frie)  3. The Lonely Side of War's Aftermath: Traumatization and Isolation among Veterans (Jacob Y. Stein and Zahava Solomon)  4. Sensemaking and Shared Grief in the Social Media Age (Peter Gloviczki)  5. Cyberloneliness: the Curse of the Cursor? (Eric D. Miller)  6. Loneliness in Lithuanian Transnational Families: ‘I am happy if my children are happy’? (Margarita Gedvilaite-Kordusiene)  7. Disconnections: Loneliness in the Lives of Mobile Singles (Maude Gauthier)  8. Narratives of Loneliness and Mental Ill Health in a Time of Neoliberalism (Olivia Sagan)  9. Adoption and Loneliness (Helen E. Lees)  10. Loneliness in Education: The Agony and the Enstasy (Julian Stern)  Part 2. Loneliness: Place, Space and Identity  11. From Lonely Cities to Prosocial Places: How Evidence-Informed Urban Design Can Reduce the Experience of Loneliness (Rhiannon Corcoran and Graham Marshall)  12. ‘The Lonely City’: Urban Infrastructure and the Problem of Loneliness (Rob Imrie)  13. Homelessness and Modern Urban Loneliness (Sandra Costa Santos)  14. Loneliness in an Era of Mass Extinctions (Alette Willis)  15. Loneliness as an Occupational Hazard: Academic Identities and the Neoliberal Work Ethic (Yvonne Hill)  16. Isolated and Suicidal: Critically Assessing the Persistent Stereotype of Queer Youth as Isolated and Lonely on a Pathway to the Big City (Rob Cover)  17. The Possibilities of Loneliness in a Changing World: Performing Place in Withdrawn (Stuart Andrews)  18. The New Gay Loneliness? Desire and Urban Gay Male Cultures (Nicholas Manganas)  19. Loneliness in Cinema: A Pharmacological Approach (Angie Voela)  Concluding Remarks by the Editors