Loneliness in a globalised world

Loneliness Awareness Week takes place from 14 – 18 June and acts as a focal point to raise awareness of loneliness and get people talking about it. Through her research, Dr Alison Hulme, Senior Lecturer in International Development at the University of Northampton, is exploring resilience, friendship, and conviviality in a globalised world.

To mark loneliness awareness week, Alison shares her thoughts:

“Loneliness is a much more modern phenomenon than you might think. Well into the 17th century, the words loneliness and lonely rarely appeared in writing. In 1674, the naturalist John Ray compiled a glossary of infrequently used words – it included loneliness.

“Fast forward to today and we’re in the midst of a loneliness pandemic. When we think about loneliness, you could be forgiven for conjuring an image of an older person living in solitude. However, modern loneliness isn’t just about being physically removed from other people – it’s an emotional state of feeling apart from others – without necessarily being so.

“We humans are biologically wired for social contact and interaction. To some degree, we all need others, but it’s also importantly about the quality of these social interactions. You don’t have to be on your own to feel lonely – you might feel lonely while surrounded by people. We all experience feeling lonely at times, it is our signal that we need more of the social contact we value.

“In recent years, the health impacts of loneliness have begun to be acknowledged by health professionals and government ministers, former Prime Minister, Theresa May, ramped up government work to combat loneliness and even appointed a Minister of Loneliness in 2018.

“Globalisation has been taking place for hundreds of years, even while John Ray compiled his thoughts on the need for the words to describe feeling lonely, but it has sped up enormously over the last half-century. Our lives are being increasingly interconnected as a result of the movement of people, technology, trade, and cultural exchange. For many, the technology that led to globalisation in the first place has since created loneliness and alienation. Remember those Luddites? They weren’t purely and simply against technology; they were concerned for their livelihoods and crucially for how they felt the new technology would destroy communities. Perhaps they foresaw this loneliness pandemic?

“In the last months, this loneliness pandemic has been coupled with a global health pandemic. Multiple lockdowns, social distancing, and restrictions on the norms of social contact and interaction, and, indeed the general fear of this virus, have created new layers of isolation, exacerbating the loneliness that was already happening. It has had a devastating effect on our collective mental health and wellbeing, how as humans we recover from this, is yet to be seen.

“I don’t blame globalisation for loneliness. For those who have deep connections and quality social interactions, our modern connectivity has aided our conviviality. We can be social beings, regardless of the miles and time zones between us, at the push of a button, or by dialling into a zoom call. But for many, the urbanisation that has come about as a result of globalisation is linked to a failed cosmopolitanism. Feeling lonely can be fluid, and it’s always deeply rooted in personal experiences. This, of course, makes it harder to properly understand, and even more difficult to tackle.

“What I think is interesting is the potential to harness the power of conviviality as an antidote to the aspects of globalisation that tend to cause loneliness. All our favourite TV Shows use some sort of community focal point, think the coffee bar in Friends, the pub at the centre of a British soap opera… why are these so appealing? Do they speak to a desire to live more convivially? Yet, in appealing to that urge they show characters whose conviviality is based on interacting with those they are relatively similar to and have things in common with. I think conviviality is about accepting the company of a wider variety of others, it’s about re-learning how to really be with other people.“