Geographies of Loneliness: Understanding the Spatiality of Feeling Disconnected

Abstract

Loneliness increasingly features in public discourse as a pressing health issue. Loneliness manifests as a feeling of being separate, distanced or isolated, and it is therefore a profoundly spatial phenomenon. Yet, engagement with experiences of loneliness has been sporadic in the discipline of geography. This paper develops the concept of loneliness geographically as a way to research the places, relationships, routines, infrastructures and mobilities that deepen or soften experiences of loneliness. In pulling together isolated strands of inquiry within and beyond human geography, it highlights three avenues of spatial inquiry into loneliness that will strengthen research efforts in this field: the structural and political causes of emotions; the spatial and temporal dimensions of social infrastructures; and the affordances of differently situated social relationships. A geographical approach to the study of loneliness as a feeling of connection that is situated in place offers social scientists new avenues for understanding how loneliness is enabled and experienced, and how it might be prevented and abated.