Being Alone Together: From Solidarity to Solitude in Urban Anthropology

Abstract

The characteristic urban experience of solitude challenges traditional anthropological theories of urban life. This article surveys urban theories that treat solitude primarily as loneliness, anomie, and social disorder. It then challenges these theoretical perspectives with ethnographic cases of gay identities and "being alone together," drawn from fieldwork in New Delhi, India. I develop a heuristic concept of "social solitude" in contrast to "solidarity," and examine the political and philosophical consequences of focusing on solitude as an urban way of life and an expression of sexuality. I discuss representations of solitude in modernist literature and conclude with a reading of Deleuze.

Media-based Social Solitude: An Exploratory Study of Students in a Coffeehouse

“…Further, based on the two themes that emerged about how college students engage in media-based social solitude in a coffeehouse, the definition of social solitude (Coleman, 2009) can be analyzed in greater detail. The creation of privatized space by selecting the perimeter tables first before filling the center of the room supports a portion of the definition of the "socially-shaped, structurally-given kind of solitude in company" (Coleman, 2009, p. 765).…”

“…Social solitude, coined by Leo Coleman (2009), is a concept used to describe the behavior of individuals who seek sociality and solitude simultaneously. As an ethnographic researcher, Coleman spent time in New Delhi at the Volga, a restaurant frequented by homosexual men that "was always populated, but was only occasionally -never for me -a place for encounters that turned into connections" (p. 765).…”

“…As an ethnographic researcher, Coleman spent time in New Delhi at the Volga, a restaurant frequented by homosexual men that "was always populated, but was only occasionally -never for me -a place for encounters that turned into connections" (p. 765). For Coleman (2009), the "dominant way of being in that space was being alone together -a pact of mutual privacy only slightly tinctured by mutual surveillance and individual speculation" (p. 765). Coleman defined social solitude as "a socially-shaped, structurally-given kind of solitude in company" (p. 765).…”

Becoming invisible: The ethics and politics of imperceptibility

“…Seemingly there is an aversion to accept solitude and concomitant social invisibility except to signal dysfunction or neglect, an image of Eleanor Rigby's funeral 4 , attended by no-one. Coleman (2009) proposes that loneliness has always been viewed with suspicion by sociologists. This, he suggests, follows from the emphasis within the discipline on solidarity, community and collectivity and in which solitude is equated with Durkheimian anomie, even within the city's 'lonely crowd' (Riesman 1950).…”

Urban Anthropology

“…Migration has been transformed into international mobility by a network approach and takes place in transnational spaces (Smart, 1999), urban ethnicity as a further phase beyond multiculturalism (Prato, 2009), and the urban way of life with solitude alongside solidarity and loneliness (Coleman, 2009). Migration has been transformed into international mobility by a network approach and takes place in transnational spaces (Smart, 1999), urban ethnicity as a further phase beyond multiculturalism (Prato, 2009), and the urban way of life with solitude alongside solidarity and loneliness (Coleman, 2009).…”