Sociological analysis of loneliness in everyday life

Loneliness is an emotion and a physical situation experienced by almost every person, it can gain different meanings by being influenced by the social structure and culture. Loneliness is one of the neglected subjects in the discipline of sociology. It is aimed to make a sociological analysis of the loneliness in everyday life with this study. 28 people participated in this study. Study is based on qualitative research with the usage of simple random sampling method. In depth face-to-face interviews were conducted with the participants. The research findings were interpreted with the descriptive analysis technique under the themes of making sense of loneliness and everyday life experiences. As a result of the analysis of the findings; it has been observed that the perceptions of loneliness differ both in terms of being male-female, old-young and also depending on the economic situation. It has been detected that participants refer to binary clusters such as voluntary-compulsory, physically-emotionally, positive-negative in relation to modernization at the point of making sense of loneliness. In line with the positive and negative meanings attributed to loneliness in everyday life, the tactics of 'being alone' and 'not being alone' have come out. It has been determined that loneliness has aspects that develop and liberate people in modern social life; accordingly, it has been determined that the tactics of being alone as voluntary choice are to live alone and to participate in everyday life activities alone. The tactics of the participants to not to be lonely were based on family and close emotional relations such as establishing emotional relationships, getting married and having children. Similarly, while looking at definitions of 'lonely person', it was seen that participants put forward the singles, the childless person, the people living alone and those under institutional care through a family oriented discourse. Besides, it was concluded in the research that individuals' performing everyday activities alone is perceived as an unhealthy, stigmatizing action due to the strong collectivism in social life.