Constructing the 'Male Loneliness Epidemic': Gender, Medicalisation and Problem Representation

Sammanfattning

In recent years, discourse surrounding loneliness in general and the “male loneliness epidemic” specifically has gained prominence in public discourse, policy discussions, and media commentary. Despite its growing visibility, the concept remains largely absent from academic research. This thesis examines how loneliness is discursively constructed as a specifically male “epidemic” and explores the assumptions, silences, and political effects produced by this representation. Drawing on Carol Bacchi’s What’s the Problem Represented to Be? (WPR) approach, the study analyses how the “male loneliness epidemic” is problematised rather than treating loneliness as a self-evident social fact. The thesis situates the analysis within existing research on loneliness, medicalisation, and political alienation. Previous scholarship demonstrates correlations between loneliness and health outcomes, as well as between loneliness and support for populist and authoritarian movements, while also showing that gender differences in loneliness are comparatively small and that class and structural vulnerability are more significant determinants. Building on this literature, the analysis focuses on the use of biomedical terminology – specifically the framing of loneliness as an “epidemic” – and its implications for responsibility, governance, and subject formation. The findings suggest that representing loneliness as a male epidemic individualises responsibility, obscures structural causes such as neoliberal labour conditions and social fragmentation, and produces a subject position of the “lonely man” as simultaneously vulnerable and politically volatile. This framing legitimises individualised and therapeutic interventions while marginalising sociological and political-economic explanations. By focusing on problematisation rather than prevalence, the thesis contributes to sociological debates on loneliness, gender, and governance, and highlights the political consequences of medicalised and gendered representations of social problems.