Vol. 30 No. 2 (2015) Articles
By Daniel Miller
Social science contains a grand narrative about our fall from intense sociality to fragmented individualism. The present essay contests this narrative with respect to the sociality of the English. It starts with a study of hospice patients with terminal cancer who live in villages and yet become isolated and lonely. To explain this phenomenon, it uses a larger ethnography of village life, finding that villagers are highly sociable and philanthropic in the public domain, but circumspect and reticent with regard to the private domain. So once patients are restricted to their homes, isolation follows. The article further examines the comparative anthropology of Britain and historical studies of neighbors and family relations to suggest that this pattern of sociality has held true for centuries and represents nothing new. Finally, I consider these insights in the context of a wider study of social media, and its consequences for the work of the hospice.
sociality; English; hospice; social media; dying
