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  • 标题:A lonely society? Loneliness and liquid modernity in Australia.
  • 作者:Franklin, Adrian
  • 期刊名称:Australian Journal of Social Issues
  • 印刷版ISSN:0157-6321
  • 出版年度:2012
  • 期号:September
  • 语种:English
  • 出版社:Australian Council of Social Service
  • 摘要:Recent studies of loneliness suggest that it has become more prevalent in contemporary societies (Franklin & Tranter 2008; Baker 2012). This trend has important social costs and policy significance, since loneliness has been linked to corrosive impacts on physical and mental health, the functionality of communities and city life, and overall levels of happiness and satisfaction (Mellor et al. 2008; Franklin 2010). Despite this, the phenomenon of loneliness is still barely visible or talked about, with few policies in place to specifically address its structural causes. Perhaps our experience of it as an ambiguous and little understood emotion means that it has failed to attract the same sympathy and policy attention as phenomena such as social isolation, social cohesion, community building and social inclusion. We lack a causal framework for linking individual, aged-related and life cycle loneliness to social structural and cultural change. Certainly, there is much evidence that when people suffer from loneliness they are more likely to think of it as a mental, personal disorder and to seek help from mental health specialists, than to appreciate its complex origins in the social and cultural fabric of the societies they live in (Andersson 1998; Franklin & Tranter 2008). Indeed, why should they make such a connection when it has so far eluded most sociologists and social theorists?
  • 关键词:Australian culture;Interpersonal relations;Loneliness;Sex role;Sex roles;Social networks;Stress (Psychology)

A lonely society? Loneliness and liquid modernity in Australia.


Franklin, Adrian


Introduction

Recent studies of loneliness suggest that it has become more prevalent in contemporary societies (Franklin & Tranter 2008; Baker 2012). This trend has important social costs and policy significance, since loneliness has been linked to corrosive impacts on physical and mental health, the functionality of communities and city life, and overall levels of happiness and satisfaction (Mellor et al. 2008; Franklin 2010). Despite this, the phenomenon of loneliness is still barely visible or talked about, with few policies in place to specifically address its structural causes. Perhaps our experience of it as an ambiguous and little understood emotion means that it has failed to attract the same sympathy and policy attention as phenomena such as social isolation, social cohesion, community building and social inclusion. We lack a causal framework for linking individual, aged-related and life cycle loneliness to social structural and cultural change. Certainly, there is much evidence that when people suffer from loneliness they are more likely to think of it as a mental, personal disorder and to seek help from mental health specialists, than to appreciate its complex origins in the social and cultural fabric of the societies they live in (Andersson 1998; Franklin & Tranter 2008). Indeed, why should they make such a connection when it has so far eluded most sociologists and social theorists?

Drawing on robust data obtained from several recent surveys in Australia (Flood 2005; Mellor et al. 2008; Franklin & Tranter 2008, 2011; Baker 2012), this paper considers the hypothesis that Australia may have become a society prone to loneliness; and that loneliness may already be endemic through the reproduction of multiple and overlapping features of modern Australian society and social structure. It asks new questions: is Australia especially prone to loneliness, and has Australia now become a 'lonely society'? It aims therefore to open up discussion and research on loneliness into its wider social and economic contexts, because this is where social theory suggests many of the solutions may lie. In order to do that, it builds on the theoretical work of Zygmunt Bauman, particularly a recent series of books developing his concept of liquid modernity and liquid life (Bauman 2000, 2003, 2005). It will be argued that contemporary loneliness is not reducible to changes in the distribution and pattern of social relationships and social networks so much as the nature of social relationships themselves. To all intents and purposes, recognisable forms of social relationships persist into the present time, but no longer function in the way they once did. They no longer deliver or sustain the same emotional qualities or intensities that make people feel they belong, they matter, and that they are cared for (Mellor et al. 2008).

The paper generates connections between the pattern of loneliness in Australia and Bauman's broad description of liquid modernity. It also argues that the pattern and experience of loneliness in Australia emerging through recent surveys exposes some problems that cannot be explained by the liquid modernity thesis alone. Bauman's thesis is largely gender neutral in its ascription of loneliness, its description of loosening social bonds, and how people might address loneliness as a problem. In this paper, I offer new evidence suggesting that awareness of the gendering of loneliness is critical knowledge for the many caring professions who are trying to help lonely people. However, I also offer new arguments that point to the possibility of quite different national and cultural patterns to contemporary loneliness, and why Australia in particular might have experienced a profound growth in loneliness.

What is loneliness?

The socially churning nature of the postwar economic restructuring began to generate the first concerns for loneliness in the 1960s and 1970s, with the break up of longstanding industrial communities and their redistribution into largely experimental forms of architecture and urban/residential design (Franklin & Tranter 2011). A new emotional sociology of the modern city emerged, ranging from the exuberant freedom, mobility and expressiveness of new youth sub-cultures, to 'change orientated' baby boomer revolutionaries and their social movements, through to the social isolation, boredom and domestic tyrannies of the suburb (Franklin 2010). Loneliness was a noted risk factor for both those who were left behind by outward migrations from the de-industrialising city centres (particularly the elderly), and those scattered to the emerging social margins of new estates, new towns and suburbs, among whom women were particularly well-represented (Tunstall 1963; Bryson & Thompson 1972; Townsend 1973; Young & Willmott 1973; Raban 1974). These studies emphasised the negative impact of changes in the physical/spatial redistribution of social networks, their impact on levels and types of social support, and the relatively new spectre of people who, like prisoners, were forced to spend long periods of their life apart from their formerly vibrant social worlds. They paint a picture of people who do not so much lack social support as lack a mechanism for coping with social deprivation.

Concern for these two groups was reflected in the way loneliness came to be viewed in Weiss's study of 1973. He distinguished between emotional loneliness (which derives from the absence of an intimate figure or figures, such as a partner), and social loneliness (which relates to the absence of social support in the form of a broader network of friends and others, often a result of physical relocation) (de Jong Gierveld & Havens 2004). While this distinction might point to important social processes, it is not at all clear why the absence of social support should necessarily involve feeling lonely. It is entirely possible that one might be well supported socially (for example by the state, kindly neighbours etcetera) and still feel lonely. Equally, one might lack the social support one properly needs in terms of dense and complex ties and obligations, and yet not be lonely at all (for example because one has strong social bonds that ameliorate it). Strong social bonds can therefore be distinguished from social support in that the former deliver a sense of belonging to an enduring social relation, often enshrined in customary obligations, whereas the latter is an artefact of social scientific surveying that sought to measure types of social services exchanged in communities, whether emanating from customary, state or voluntary sources (often surveys were responding to a putative decline of custom and community). The former emanate from ethnographic contexts, while the latter is a taxonomic form of social accounting associated with state social policy planning in particular.

Sociological research has shown that tangible emotional experiences of loneliness are not linked to the net sum or type of social contacts a person has, but to normative expectations; that loneliness is influenced by cultural norms and such things as 'feeling rules' (Hochschild 1979; Mellor et al. 2008). In conjunction with social support, the measured number of social contacts a person has is often combined into a scale and taken as a proxy measure for loneliness, for example, in such measures as the UCLA Loneliness Scale (Russell 1996). However, several studies confirm a widespread discrepancy between an individual's loneliness and the measured number of connections in their social network (Berscheid & Reis 1998; de Jong Gierveld & Havens 2004; Perlman 2004; Rokach 2004; Franklin & Tranter 2008; Mellor et al. 2008; Cacioppo et al. 2009). Social psychologists such as Mellor and colleagues (2008) argue that most people need a minimum number of lasting, positive and significant interpersonal relationships that provide a sense of belonging. When these needs remain unmet, a person descends into loneliness and 'a failure to have belongingness needs met [which] may lead to feelings of social isolation, alienation, and loneliness' (Mellor et al. 2008: 213). Worryingly, their research has shown that 'people living with others have just as many unmet belonging needs and are just as lonely as people living alone' (Mellor et al. 2008: 217). In other words, what is missing in a widespread sense is a depth of qualitatively/emotionally satisfying relationships, rather than a number of relationships per se. Other studies show that loneliness commonly existed within marriages (Kiley 1989; Stack 1998). Mellor and colleagues thus see cultural expectations and associated psychological variation as drivers of the way people report and account for loneliness.

Ettema and colleagues (2010) argue that 'existential loneliness' [EL] coexists alongside social bonds everywhere as a universal feature of the human condition. Through their systematic literature review of loneliness studies (mostly dating from the 1970s) they argue that EL represents an apparently acknowledged fact that we all come into the world and exit it on our own. In positioning loneliness is a universal element of the 'human condition' they recognise a fundamental ontological separability of each individual from all others throughout every stage of the life course, and especially during moments of danger and the onset of death. They conclude that EL is,

'an intrinsic aspect of being human and an omnipresent feeling of alone, against which one defends oneself for much of the time but for which there is no permanent remedy. Although one may, distract oneself with love relationships, tasks, or vacations, one's defenses may prove inadequate in the face of certain disruptive events such as death or separation' (Ettema et al. 2010: 144).

However, this notion of EL is abstract and philosophical rather sociological, and does not constitute a fair summary of the anthropological record which asserts that almost all human beings are 'always-already' locked into a complex ties of ascribed relationships, duties and obligations that define people's lives. It suggests that most human beings have not, in fact, gone to their death feeling it was any kind of departure from their kin.

The figure of the EL-prone individual then, whose life project is to defend himself against the fact of his inevitable existential aloneness, could only exist in the ethnographic sense in a society where the multiple and cross cutting ties that bound them to others had been severed. The very fact of their conjuring up 'defensive strategies' to keep this unwelcome unpleasantness at bay seems to suggest that the severance may have been recent, and that the social institutions and practices they seek to maintain may be lingering on, but perhaps only just; one is reminded here of Beck and Beck-Gernsheim's (2002) term 'zombie institutions'. If loneliness has become less tied to the absence of specific kinds of relationship and a more distributed feature of the contemporary human condition, how can we account for it?

Loneliness and liquid modernity

Accounts of changes in the family, marriage, partnerships, neighbourhood and locality in the period after the 1970s have all charted, in one way or another, major transformations in those relationships that are implicated in loneliness. However, few of these mention loneliness and even fewer identify loneliness as a growing feature of social life in Western societies (Elias 1985; Lasch 1985; Giddens 1991; Sennett 1992, 1998; Castells 1996; Putnam 2000; Beck & Beck-Gernsheim 2002; Elliott & Lemert 2008; Illouz 2008). Putnam's (2000) metaphoric book title Bowling Alone observes trends in the social constitution of ten-pin bowling in the United States, and draws a general conclusion about the decline of American social life in general. Whereas in the 1960s ten-pin bowling was invariably a family or a social game, by the late 1990s a significant number of games were played by just one person. The book shows in a convincing way that this pattern is repeated across the length and breadth of American social life, tracing a revolutionary general transformation in social life. But what was this change and what had promoted it? More than anyone else, Bauman has sought to explicate this transformation.

Zygmunt Bauman's series of books that put forward and elaborate on his concept 'liquid modernity' describe the emergence of a new social figure in contemporary societies. He pictures an individual who wishes to avoid creating social bonds that are too binding, too tight, too demanding of obligations and duties, too enduring, too inflexible, too final, or in other words, too solid. This individual and their concern to avoid commitment is not merely a lover or a spouse; it is a friend, a person from the neighbourhood, an employer, a bank manager, a local or national politician, a daughter son or grandchild. Relationships in general, but perhaps social bonds in particular, have become 'until further notice,' in that there is greater scope and willingness for any party to terminate them, or not enter into them in the first place.

According to Bauman (2000, 2001, 2005, 2007), this state of affairs is not the result of the arrival of a nightmarish inhumanity so much as the accretion of multiple elaborations of the twin principles of freedom and choice. Many freedoms have been wrested from tyrannies that emanated from overly tight, one-sided and unequal bonds. Greater legal freedom to divorce has given all people the right (subject to economic constraints) to choose not just their partner, but also their living conditions, where they live, how they live and how often they make changes to their life. Loneliness is interesting here, because sociologically we might say it is an emotionally intense residue emanating from the absence of bonds of belonging, even though, ironically, those bonds have been willingly broken.

Bauman's sense of loneliness here is more than just the greater likelihood of people becoming lonely under new conditions. It is a sense of loneliness emanating from a fully distributed principle that few can escape; that few want to escape from. The implication of Bauman's analysis is that loneliness cannot be theorised as an exceptional experience of modern social change impacting significantly but selectively on a number of vulnerable at-risk groups. Rather, it is a dominant emotional feature that originates from the social structural nature of a radically new form of modernity which impacts upon everybody. It is precisely because few relationships embody the solidity and enduring nature of earlier social bonds--as they are not actually bonds at all, but flexible, alterable arrangements--that they cannot provide the ontological security that is implied by the certainty of belonging, nor meet belongingness needs (Giddens 1981, 1991; Mellor et al. 2008).

The question now arises as to what the basis is for making and negotiating of social relations in liquid modernity. According to Bauman (2001), contemporary forms of individualism are increasingly structured by the criteria of markets and consumerism. Neo-liberal forms of governance create markets and commodities, and substitute the logic of markets where relationships were once characterised by bonds formed through local, familial, collegial, craft, or industrial ties, or through professional regimes of organisation and management. Equally, consumerism has ushered in the logic of choice as a principle that can guide more than just the selection of fridges, cars and hair dryers. According to Bauman (2005), consumerism has been extended into the realm of human relationships so that they too can be reduced to the same criteria. Consumerism now organises our individual stance to things in general; everything, including relationships, is aestheticised and evaluated in terms of their capability to offer beauty, desire and pleasure Everything and consequently everybody becomes disposable (or exchangeable), and the experience of being disposed of (or exchanged), the ever-present fear of immanent disposal (or replacement), and the background steady state of disposability all serve to undermine, erode and ultimately destroy human bonds. We now live in a constant state of potential loneliness, and we enter into states and periods of loneliness more frequently and suffer the emotional condition of loneliness, more often alone (Franklin 2009: 345).

The unintended consequences of such changes have been to detach individual biographies and life paths from specific and relatively fixed social and cultural contexts. What began with the baby boomer generation in the 1960s as social mobility through education became a dynamic state of self-remaking in the 1990s, one that has led to what Ben Thompson (2004: 25) calls 'the disorientation of a world in which all doors seem to be open'. Specifically, two related changes liquefied known and knowable life paths: i) those wrought by economic and labour market restructuring and flexibilisation such that retraining, redeployment, relocation and career-change created unpredictable and volatile career paths, and, consequently ii) the destruction of stable, mappable social identities that had once been anchored by social class and occupational cultures. They gave rise to an increasing lack of satisfaction with current iterations of self and a more or less steady state of reinvention and self-improvement. New and multiple opportunities to pursue different life courses opened up alongside the new culture industries of reinvention, fashion makeovers, therapies for dynamic personalities, new lifestyle niches, age and culture related life-worlds, and a multiplicity of leisure and consumption based identity options. As such, there were many factors other than family and community breakdown that left people feeling they were a) drifting away from the social bases of past social bonds and yet b) not yet adequately (that is, substantially) connected with others. The often-missed corollary of this is that individuals began to spin highly specific and specialised sets of interests and identities around the uniqueness of their own life paths. Access to greater resources, texts, culture industries and globally available information on associational options produced for generation X and Y in particular, very rich and exclusive micro-cultures of belonging, such that it became increasingly unlikely that anyone in their physical world would be fully a part of their 'scene'. Whereas youth culture options in the mid-20th century were restricted in number, territorialized and essentially local, by the 1990s the cultural aspirations and possibilities for identity had become infinite, global and most fully realizable in virtual reality.

Bauman sees loneliness as the emotionally blighting force behind 'networking' and the burgeoning field of online relationship-making. New technologies of friendship, community, sexuality and social networking have extended our connectivity with others, and done much to reduce the tyrannies of distance and physical immobility. Nonetheless, according to Bauman (2005) we should not confuse this intensity of connectivity and quantity of social connections with the social bonds they seek to replace, nor can it serve as any kind of panacea for our loneliness. For Bauman, these technologies, including mobile phones, make it even easier to be in control of and determine our connection, or, conversely, to be included or rejected by others, at will. Such flexibility frees us from commitment and obligation, and even the tedium of listening to or sharing with others when we do not feel like it.

Bauman writes of loneliness as the existential and social structural human condition of liquid modernity, but his influential writing in the sociological hermeneutics style does not draw on any empirical studies of loneliness, for there has been little systematic or longitudinal data created for loneliness in most national social trend surveys. Bauman's books of the early 21st century have also drawn little substantial or empirical criticism, which is remarkable given their breadth and scope. In trying to account for key trends in human behaviour and the social conditions that give rise to them, he is intellectually inclusive yet avoids the search or the apparent need for theoretical synthesis (Davis 2008). Rather, he encourages a constant return to 'reappraise' and to 'leave interpretations open to further scrutiny' (Davis 2008: 5) and this should apply to his concept of loneliness.

Results from those few surveys of loneliness that have been conducted are telling. Summaries by Andersson (1998: 266-70) show the pattern of loneliness throughout the life course can be expressed as a shallow 'dish-like' curve. Loneliness was accentuated in early adulthood as individuals left the security of their family and embarked on a new life elsewhere; it lessened in middle age 'prime of life', and then increased again in later old age when lifetime partners died, friendship circles dwindled, and as mobility and social ability began to fail. Such findings run counter to Bauman's theories, in that the extra turbulence created for those in liquid modernity impacts most strongly upon the middle years of life, and should result in higher rates of loneliness amongst persons of this age. This is, after all, the period of life when commitments and bonds are required and are so crucial for the longer-term purpose of family building, but when most people negotiate flexible and multiple journeys through work and associational careers, and when leisure lives and consumption peak.

In liquid modernity, we would expect to see loneliness being expressed by more people already within intimate and ongoing relationships as well as by normatively sociable people, since the emotional chill of loneliness is a function of the quality of their social connections rather than their connectedness. We might expect to see those who opted for looser de facto relationships to be more prone to loneliness, since in many cases their relationships are based on less formalised and flexible bonds. We would also expect to see the net quantum of loneliness increasing, since more people would be caught in multiple, compounding and perhaps serial relationships that do not extend clear, unambiguous invitations to belong. In addition, if Bauman and Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (see Bauman 2000: 6; Beck & Beck-Gernsheim 2002) are correct in their diagnosis of family and other relationships as 'zombie-like'--still here but barely alive, still entered into but not delivering what was hoped for--then we would expect there to be considerable confusion in the attribution of the cause of loneliness. After all, it emanates as much from the lonely as from those who eschew making bonds with them.

Loneliness in Australia--a review of survey evidence

The empirical study of loneliness in 21st century Australia began with Flood's (2005) detailed study of loneliness among young adults, which was prompted by de Vaus's observation that single person households were one of the greatest changes in the familial fabric of Australia in the previous 30 years. Although there had been numerous mentions of loneliness in the past (for example, Bryson & Thomson 1973; Richards 1991), Flood (2005) began with the observation that 'longitudinal data with which to trace changes in perceptions of loneliness and social support over time is not available' for Australia.

Franklin and Tranter (2008, 2011) were the first to report surveys for representative samples of Australians of all adult age bands allowing analysis across the life-course. Several questions were developed to examine loneliness in Australia and were included as a module in the 2007 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes (AuSSA). Using mail-out, mail-back questionnaires, they asked if people were ever lonely, how often they were lonely, how seriously they were lonely and a range of questions about the causes of their loneliness and what they did about it. Similar questions were included in the 2009 AuSSA survey, and connections between loneliness, housing and health were explored (Franklin & Tranter 2011). Together with Flood's useful analysis of loneliness among 25-44 year old Australians using HILDA (Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia) data from 2001-3, and Baker's analysis of longitudinal HILDA data, these form the main source of nationally representative data on loneliness in Australia. There are other smaller surveys that have examined features of loneliness within smaller sub-samples (for example, Mellor et al. 2008), but these can make no claim to represent the situation of Australians as a whole.

Social causes, distribution and trends

Results from Franklin and Tranter (2008) showed that trigger events of the sort widely associated with loneliness such as relationship breakdown, death of a loved one, geographical migration of self or friend only accounted for less than half (45 per cent) of reported causes of loneliness, while vaguer categories of 'Other' (34 per cent) and 'Don't know' (21 per cent) accounted for more than half of all cases (55 per cent). Since the trigger causes must account for most of the forms of loneliness (emotional and social loneliness) identified by Weiss in the 1970s, this leaves a great deal of unexplained variation in the data on loneliness, which is consistent with Bauman's ideas on socially derived, generalised and multiple causes of loneliness, and with the difficulty for individuals in liquid modernity to pinpoint the causes of their loneliness. Clearly, this finding needs to be followed by in-depth qualitative research that reaches back into the detailed biographies of individual loneliness to explore how loneliness is attributed in causal terms, but this evidence is not inconsistent with the liquid modernity thesis.

Franklin and Tranter (2008) also show that the frequency and seriousness of loneliness in Australia was not particular to those groups (the very old and very young adults) who have always featured as the most at-risk in previous international studies (Andersson 1998). Franklin and Tranter showed that the highest proportion of Australians experiencing loneliness at least once a week were actually those aged between 25 and 44. Multivariate analysis expressed as odds ratios showed that Australians aged 35-44 were almost 3.5 times more likely to experience loneliness as a serious problem than those aged 65 or older while those aged 25-34 were 3.67 times more likely. By contrast those in the younger 'home leaving' group aged 18-24 were only 1.77 times more likely. Similar results were also found for frequency of loneliness (see Franklin & Tranter 2008: 16). These results were not consistent with the older view of loneliness as lifecycle related, which is to say related in modern societies with life events commonly perceived to create problematic disruptions to social networks and important relationships. Loneliness of such severity in this middle-age group today is consistent with Bauman's prognosis for liquid modernity. It is precisely among this age cohort that many of the social trends he seeks to identify and explain are most evident or elaborated, particularly with regard to consumerism, mobility, the proliferation of choice, avoidance of relationship commitments, and seeking to live alone (Bauman 2007).

It is for the latter two reasons that Flood (2005) chose to investigate loneliness among this age cohort (in his case, 25-44 year olds). In the 30 years prior to Flood's study, the number of men living along rose by 224 per cent while the number of women living alone rose by 264 per cent (de Vaus 2004). As a proportion of all households, single person households in Australia increased from 18.8 per cent in 1986 to 24 per cent in 2001, and currently range from between one-third to half of all households in metropolitan areas and outnumber households with children (ABS 2004). Surprisingly, two-thirds of the people living alone in Flood's sample were men who had never lived long term with an intimate partner, while three-quarters of 25-44 year olds who live alone had never married or been in de facto relationships.

This age redistribution of loneliness gives a very different shape to its place in society, and suggests that Australia may be different from other nations, a point not suggested or implied by Bauman's universal claims for liquid modernity. For example, Franklin and Tranter have shown how the intensity of loneliness falls away on either side of the 25-44 year old age group, giving Australia a shallow dome-like curve across the life course as opposed to the shallow dish-like curve reported in older studies of other nations for the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, France and the Netherlands (Andersson 1998).

Because Flood's study was based on a single wave of HILDA data (Wave 1), he was unable to gain a sense of whether loneliness in Australia was increasing, even though there were grounds to suspect that it was. Whereas in 2001 Flood found that 16 per cent of his sample agreed with the statement, 'I often feel lonely', by 2007 Franklin and Tranter found that 22 per cent claimed to be lonely 'at least once a week' and 34 per cent who reported their loneliness to be 'a serious problem at times'. Repeat surveys by Franklin and Tranter (2008, 2011) showed that more age groups, particularly those around mid-life with families were contributing to the numbers claiming to be lonely in society. Given corresponding higher rates of relationship breakdown, separation and divorce compared to previous generations, these figures not only point to substantial and sustained rates of loneliness, but also fit Bauman's claim that they are based on marital/familial relationships that have become increasingly difficult to maintain.

Using longitudinal HILDA data that had not been available to Flood in 2001, Baker (2012) was able to look for patterns of loneliness over the 10 year time period 2001-2012. He measured how long episodes of loneliness last and how they relate to life events. Critically, he was able to measure a transition rate comprising those entering and those exiting episodes of loneliness in any year. He concluded that '[T]hat transition rate is increasing, so more people are moving into loneliness' (Baker, quoted in Short, 2012: 9). Further, Baker (2012: 6) argued that 'the increasing numbers of people moving into and out of loneliness points to a growing social problem' but the scale of its impact on society are not yet clear.

Based on the HILDA data, Baker suggests the total number of Australians becoming lonely each year has almost doubled from 2.2 per cent in 2002-03 to 4.3 per cent in 2007-08. His methodology showed that the proportion of lonely Australians may have risen to only nine per cent of the population, but he notes that all other empirical surveys use different survey questions, such as Lauder and colleagues' study in Central Queensland, and Franklin and Tranter's two national surveys found substantially more (over 30 per cent in all cases). A 2010 Australia Institute survey (Baker 2012: 5) found significantly more lonely Australians than the HILDA data (17 per cent), which suggests that the HILDA measure may be inherently conservative in ascertaining levels of loneliness in Australia. The discrepancies seem most likely to relate to two important methodological differences. First, as Baker (2012: 6) acknowledges, his methodology only assigned loneliness to an individual if 'a survey respondent reported a negative response to each of the ten questions used to calculate a loneliness score'. In retrospect he felt that 'this approach to determining loneliness may have contributed to the finding of a lower incidence of loneliness', and it is easy to see why. Only one of these questions asked about the respondent's loneliness, while most of the others used measuring different things. Assembling a variety of measures (for example, numbers of social contacts, degree of social support) to produce a putative proxy measure of loneliness (historically justified because it was felt that to use the word loneliness in surveys would result in under reporting) may not have been measuring loneliness at all.

By contrast, Franklin and Tranter asked an entire battery of questions about a respondent's loneliness if they answered yes to the question: 'Have you ever been lonely?' These included how often, for how long and whether loneliness had been a serious problem for them at times. Their 2007 national of survey of 2,672 Australians found that only 44 per cent said they never felt lonely; 20 per cent said they were lonely at least once a year, 17 per cent said they were lonely at least once a month, 13 per cent once a week and six per cent at least once a day. Between 73 and 77 per cent of those separated or divorced, and 79 per cent of the single or never married, reported feeling lonely at some point in the past year. Consistent with Bauman's claims,, they also found that 34 per cent of 24 to 44 year olds reported that loneliness was a serious problem for them at times (Franklin & Tranter 2008:10).

Discrepancies in loneliness estimates are due in no small part to the different research instruments used, but there may also be an issue with when the surveys were administered. The HILDA surveys have all been fielded during the Australian spring and summer months while Franklin and Tranter's questions were included in the 2007 AuSSA that was fielded during the autumn and winter months. On the face of it, loneliness may be affected by the season, as is the case with depression, with heightened symptoms experienced during winter (Harmatz et al. 2000). This may explain the lower rates of loneliness found in Franklin and Tranter's 2009 survey, for which fieldwork was conducted through the AuSSA during the summer of 2008 and 2009.

Loneliness and sociability

There are others reasons to suspect that loneliness has changed since it was first studied. In Weiss' (1973) book, loneliness was presented as focussed around the loss of an intimate person or loss of social network. Since so few attributed their loneliness to the death of a loved one or relationship breakdown in Franklin and Tranter's 2007 survey, we might suspect that it is mostly due to declining social networks but that does not appear to be the case. Regression analysis showed that frequency and severity of loneliness could not be predicted by the sociability (a measureable level of social engagement) of respondents. 'Those who see themselves as sociable are no less prone to experiencing serious and prolonged forms of loneliness than those who are loners by choice' (Franklin & Tranter 2008: 16). Further, when respondents were asked how loneliness made them feel, only 18 per cent reported feeling 'isolated' (Franklin & Tranter 2008: 13). These findings resonate with other studies that found loneliness is frequently associated with people who are in social situations such as day rooms in old people's homes (Jaworski & Moyle 2008), in lively social networks (Mellor et al. 2008) or partnered within marriages (Kiley 1989).

The conclusion drawn by Franklin and Tranter (2008, 2011) and Mellor (2008) is that loneliness in Australia may be less about the quantum of social relationship per se than the quality of these relationships. While this is clearly evident from Mellor and colleagues' analysis and will be critical for the clinical treatment of loneliness, their conclusion that such discrepancies are determined by social and psychological variations risks placing undue emphasis on the origins of belongingness needs, and too little on the present social factors affecting the way social relations meet them or not. Using Bauman's analysis, it is possible to imagine that there is a lag between the normative psychosocial dependence on strong, enduring social bonds and the development of a widespread unwillingness to enact them. Hence, Franklin and Tranter's (2008: 6) paradox of 'freedom loneliness': 'it has become more difficult to commit ourselves to precisely the sort of relationships we still crave'.

Some light can be thrown on this issue by comparing loneliness among married and de facto relationships. Although widely regarded as equivalent and perhaps more egalitarian, do de facto relationships offer the same protection against loneliness? On the face of it, marriage would seem to indicate at least an intention or hope that both spouses want to create and commit to an enduring, life-long bond. This is less apparent in de facto partnerships, although they may vary enormously in the terms that partners make explicit or implicit. Using multivariate analysis, Franklin and Tranter (2008: 16-17) found that marriage does insulate people from loneliness, and that people in de facto relationships were twice as likely to suffer loneliness as a serious problem than a married person, 2.2 times more likely to suffer loneliness more than once a week, and 1.7 times more likely to endure feeling lonely for longer periods. Staying single carries an even greater 'risk' of loneliness: respondents were almost four times more likely than married people to report loneliness as a serious problem, 4.5 times more likely to suffer loneliness very frequently and twice as likely to endure it for long periods.

Loneliness and gender

Flood's study highlighted what might be an unusual feature of loneliness among 25 to 44 year olds in Australia, namely that 'there is a gender gap in loneliness, evident among adult men and women of all ages' and that 'men tend to be lonelier than women from early adulthood right through to their seventies' (Flood 2005: 10). This is an unusual finding compared to most international studies (Andersson 1998; de Jong-Gierveld & Havens 2004). The study also shows gender disparities in social support both for men who live with others, but spectacularly for men who live alone. Women living alone scored an average of 14.8 on the Index of Social Support compared with men who averaged 9. Similarly, while 33 per cent of men in general reported often feeling lonely, only 23 per cent of women in general reported the same.

Franklin and Tranter (2008, 2011) showed that on average Australian men and women across all age groups are less differentiated, with women being marginally more likely to report loneliness as a serious problem and men marginally more likely to report higher frequencies. However, regression analyses showed that gender impacts vary significantly on the experience of loneliness in relation to marriage, separation, divorce and widowhood. They showed how the impact of not being married on loneliness is stronger for men than it is for women. Separated men were shown to be 13 times more likely than married men to experience loneliness as a serious problem, whereas separated women are less than twice as likely to suffer serious loneliness as married women. Similarly, separated men are 18 times more likely to suffer loneliness more often than once a week than married men, whereas separated women are only 3.3 times more likely than married women.

Quite why men and women are so different in their emotional experience of loneliness clearly requires more focused, qualitative research. Flood (2005: 18) noted that international research (in United Kingdom) has established that men 'have a narrower range of sources of primary emotional support than women; they have fewer close persons in their primary social networks and are more likely to nominate their spouse or partner as the person to whom they feel closest'. Bott's (1971) view that women were the 'kin keepers' of Western society is still widely reported in contemporary times (Rossi & Rossi 1990; Charles et al. 2008) and, as Wellman and Wellman (1992: 390) report, 'where men once gathered separately from their wives in clubs and cafes, friendship is now often an extension of marital relations'. Since women have become the main organisers of men's kinship as well as community social networks, and mediate the relationships men have with their mutual friends, when spouses separate it is not surprising that women are better supported by them than men. Nor is it surprising that Australian women (as 'kin-keepers') have better skills in creating and maintaining important and enduring ties and deploying them in the management of their emotional affairs (de Vaus 2004: 75).

This was evident when Franklin and Tranter (2008) asked about whom people turned to for help when they became lonely. It is telling that 35 per cent of men said 'nobody' compared with only 16 per cent of women. Thirty-six per cent of women turned to friends compared with 25 per cent of men. Twice as many women as men turned to their GPs for help and 44 per cent of women looked to their family for help as compared with only 33 per cent of men.

Such a disparity in sources of help and initiative in dealing with emotional problems in combination with less experience in creating and maintaining close social ties may explain why so many men seem to report loneliness as an enduring and serious problem for them. However, this requires further qualitative research to explore loneliness in greater biographical detail. Ethnographic and biographical studies of loneliness as pathways and experience in Australia are practically non-existent and yet the emotional suffering of men is beginning to emerge in these studies.

Conclusion

This paper has sought to emphasise and synthesise the empirical evidence of change in the social distribution and significance of loneliness. It cannot be viewed as a relatively unusual experience, an abnormal condition, arising from the malfunctioning of society at the margins any more than it is a universal part of the human condition. Loneliness is not a psychosocial pathology, even if it remains true that many people need help to cope with its psychological consequences. It no longer impacts on a relatively few individuals who fall through the gaps in an otherwise tightly woven social fabric. It is easy to miss because the infrastructure, institutions and nomenclatures of an older social order (family, marriage, kinship ties, membership of cultural, local and ethnic groups) are still there and still cleaved to by most people, whether in practice or as ideals. No matter how alluring they are and no matter how beneficial they are perceived to be, values of collective belonging have come to be seen as an encumbrance and an obstacle to the exercise of freedom and choice. We might speculate that people embrace them with less conviction and stamina now, and the combined effect of this withdrawal on the one hand, and the building of highly individualised journeys through life on the other, leaves many people feeling fragile, unsupported or at least only held up as a result of their own efforts, their own choices. This speculation provides a potentially fruitful line of enquiry for future research.

Bauman (2005: 30) likened contemporary life in liquid modernity to a running battle between 'the desire for freedom and the need for security, haunted by fear of loneliness and a dread of incapacitation'. This paper shows how Bauman's analysis of liquid modernity assists in making sense of the emerging data on loneliness, which is becoming a serious social issue for Australia. While Bauman's theories are useful and account well for patterns of loneliness found in Australia, the paper also argues that his description of social processes in liquid modernity cannot account for every facet of its manifestation. This paper has shown how, in relation to other international studies (Andersson 1998; de Jong-Gierveld & Havens 2004), the Australian case is distinctive, pointing the way to future studies that might explore its character in more detail. Future studies may need to probe the impact of urban form, our migrant population, our rural-urban distribution and the aspirations of our young adult population. It has also shown how gender is an important intervening variable in the experience and distribution of loneliness in Australia, and how policy makers must be cognisant of the gender dimensions of loneliness when seeking solutions to it as a social problem.

It is most likely that more targeted policy developments will emerge in response to the social structural causes and biography of loneliness, and the cost it brings in terms of reduced human well being and poor medical health. Caciappo and colleagues (2009: 978) cite scientific investigations demonstrating that loneliness is directly associated with a host of issues: Alzheimer's disease, obesity, increased vascular resistance, elevated blood pressure, increased hypothalamic pituitary adrenocortical activity, sleep disorders, diminished immunity, reduction in independent living, alcoholism, depression, suicidal ideation and behaviour, mortality in older adults, and elevated cholesterol and blood pressure in later life and among adolescents. Lonely people use emergency services 60 per cent more often than the non-lonely and as elderly people are twice as likely to be admitted into nursing homes (Stack 2000: 2).

Better information, policies to de-stigmatise loneliness, interventions such as Men's Sheds (which build social relationships that matter and address men's social isolation), loneliness-aware architectural design for single person dwellings, the encouragement of practices that reduce the pain of loneliness (such as easier access to companion animal keeping) and an integrated practitioner approach across policy fields point the way towards a future where loneliness may be less of a burden and cost (Newby 1996; Golding et al. 2007; Franklin & Tranter 2011; Sable 2012).

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