Loneliness: notion and intervention. A critical reflection from the analysis of Madrid Vecina

Abstract

Loneliness is understood as one of the major social problems of our time. This is why new initiatives are emerging trying to address it both from public institutions and from the third sector. This article analyzes one of these initiatives, Madrid Vecina, carried out by the Fundación Grandes Amigos and financed by the Madrid City Council, in the interaction of its symbolic, substantive and operational dimensions. This is done in order to clarify the notion of loneliness that is constructed and set in motion as well as how influences the practice of intervention. In this context, loneliness emerges understood essentially as a negative problem, pathologized in many senses, individualized and disconnected from its structural roots, limiting a radical intervention. All this is supported by an ethnographic work sustained for more than a year in the daily life of the initiative.