ABSTRACT
Thomas Dumm suggests that the modern world is suffused with loneliness: it is a powerful and political emotion which pervades the most important aspects of our lives (Dumm, 2008). In outlining this loneliness Dumm notes that in modern relationships people are estranged from one another and their attachments are weak – our ‘lives in common’ are far less significant to us now (2008: ix); hence feeling lonely is the most common state for modern people. Dumm’s thesis on loneliness is part of a wider-ranging discussion on the state of the modern world in which theorists of individualisation have come to the fore. The names of Giddens, Beck, BeckGernsheim, and Bauman are significant within these debates for their ideas on the individualising modern world moving away from, and in some theories escaping, the bonds of the past. The separation from others and the loss of a ‘life in common’ in late modernity are important to all of these theorists, to differing degrees.
