Loneliness and belonging in narrative environment
This week, I read this article which is related to the topic of what emotions and the sense of belonging with the perspective of narrative environment. This article demonstrate the relationship of social well-being/ belonging with the environment, which is helping me for ideas to define the ‘environment’ can make impact or help international students for social-belonging. Below are some of the review for some parts of the reading.
Within the field of student geographies, scholars have commented on the impact of campus environments on student wellbeing, including everyday ‘lifeworlds’, focusing on leisure and living spaces off campus and on campus (Riley, 2010; Holton and Riley, 2013). Some of this research has also focused on the ‘housing biographies’ of students and ‘student identities and homemaking’ (Reynolds, 2020: 7; Holton, 2016; Chow and Healey, 2008; Fincher and Shaw, 2009). Others have focused more specifically on the emotional geographies of students, and the university (especially student accommodation) and students’ experiences of home as ‘transitory, multi-sited and open-ended’ (Holton and Riley, 2016: 640; Worsley et al., 2021; Holton, 2017).
Loneliness and belonging in narrative environments,2023
Factors of belonging for university student: built environment, university infrastructure, and the university’s relationship with its locality.
It is possible to experience loneliness or lack of belonging independently of the other – i.e. feeling lonely without feeling a need to belong as well, and there are instances when loneliness may be desirable and occasionally vital, in supporting opportunities to instigate new forms of belonging, or repairing broken connections (Qualter et al., 2015).
Loneliness and belonging in narrative environments,2023
Emotional experiences of loneliness and belonging are not simply caused by the physical or architectural shape of an environment, but through the way an environment constructs and circulates narratives that offer or inhibit qualitative affordances for experiences such as belonging. The narrative aspect of narrative environment means that it ‘emerge[s] from feelings, and represent personal experiences that are socially constructed through language and other representational practices’ (Fenton et al., 2012).
Loneliness and belonging in narrative environments,2023
For a further research of how student sense of belonging and emotions being influent by environment, I have read this article Loneliness and belonging in narrative environment. The author talk about that this article argues for the importance of narrative environment as a theoretical approach for evaluating the significance of environmental factors influencing the emotional experiences of loneliness and belonging. Emotions and belonging not only show and depend on the built environment but also through the personal feeling, communication, language, power, culture etc. in the narrative environment.
Positive influence-natural environment
We not only feel more connected to the natural world, we also feel more kinship with our human community. Exposure to nature increases social cohesion which consists of shared norms, positive relationships with others and feelings of belonging. Studies on populations, such as public housing residents, show that those who have access to green space and green views have more social ties with their neighbours and a stronger sense of community. We know that attachment to a place or a group is highly protective for positive mental health, especially for youth and older adults.
Reports by respected organizations including the World Health Organization, the American Public Health Association, Canadian Parks Council, and Toronto Public Health, have all documented the positive impact nature has on our personal sense of belonging and wellbeing.
Sherry N, How Nature Supports a Sense of Belonging and Well-being, available at:
Loneliness
Loneliness corresponds to a discrepancy between an individual’s preferred and actual social relation. The definition underscores the fact that feeling alone or lonely does not necessarily mean feeling alone (see J.T Cacioppo et al., this issue). One can feel lonely in the crowd or in a marriage. Reciprocally, one may enjoy being alone (a pleasant state defined as soliude; Tillich, 1959).
Although this crucial component of loneliness helps better differentiate subjective social isolation (loneliness) from objective social isolation, it has led occasionally to a conflation of loneliness and other dysphoric states (e.g., social anxiety, depression) in which a person’s subjective experiencing of their social environment plays also a crucial role.
Collective loneliness refers to a person’s valued social identities or “active network” (eg., group, school,team, or national identity) wherein an individual can connect to similar others at a distance in the collective space.