Modernity presents itself as an age of increasing social disintegration: secularization and rationalization, urbanization and globalization, individualization and digitalization make it difficult for communities today. Modernity comes with desirable promises that make it attractive, but it does not come free: Its price is escalating modern loneliness. Denis Newiak tells a cultural history of modernization that, from industrialization to the late-modern network society, produces ever new and harsher experiences of loneliness.

Innovative view of modern society Causes, Effects and counter-strategies of modern loneliness Interdisciplinary discourse of loneliness research and comprehensive theory

Autorentext

Dr. Denis Newiak is a German media, film and television scholar. He teaches media and communication theory at various universities. His research interests include expressions of loneliness in modern societies, social functions of television series, and future knowledge in science fiction films.

Inhalt

1. On the concept of modernity.- 2. communities of the pre-modern era.- 3. the onset of modernization.- 4. disorientation and abandonment: the lonelinesses of the early modern era.- 5. lonely time diagnoses of the industrial high modern era.- 6. the lonelinesses of the late modern era.- 7. life in the network society and the escalation of the late modern lonelinesses.- 8. has the post-modern era already begun?.