Solo living in the neoliberal era: negotiating ambivalence and recuperation

Abstract

Approximately one in four Australian households is currently occupied by someone who lives alone. In the past, the majority of those living alone have been older people, but the current demographic includes increasing numbers of people in their middle years. Despite this demographic shift, solo living remains almost unrepresented in the public realm and very little is known about the experience of living alone. This thesis provides insight into living alone by investigating how people who live alone structure and maintain social connectedness and intimacy. Thematic and discourse analysis of semi-structured interviews with 41 women and men between the ages of thirty and fifty-five, who have lived alone for three years or more, reveals solo living as a site of structural ambivalence. The sociological concept of ambivalence, in which sites of ambivalence are conceptualised as structurally produced contradictions which become manifest in interaction, provides a framework for understanding participant’s experiences. This concept is useful in linking the ambivalence revealed within the narratives to the contradiction between the dominant neoliberal discourse of choice and the implicit obligation that adults in their middle years conform with coupled norms. These two dominant ideas of the neoliberal era, that on the one hand citizens are autonomous individuals who self-actualise through personal choices, and yet these autonomous individuals ought to enter into cohabiting coupled partnerships, entangle respondents within a perpetual process of recuperation. This process of recuperation highlights the contemporary discursive entanglement of ‘coupleness’ and cohabitation. While the ambivalence is an ongoing and essentially irresolvable conflict, the balancing process is shaped by respondents’ capacities to present themselves in socially approved and favourable ways. This thesis provides insight into how neoliberal ideologies combine to restrict solo living individuals’ ability to achieve a sense of unqualified social belonging. In broader terms, the thesis contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the somewhat dichotomised sociological debate about the liberating and stigmatising impacts of neoliberalism.