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Paper short abstract

This paper explores relationships older people in Japan cultivate with things, plants, and place. While social relationships and loneliness are conventionally understood in terms of bonds among people, this paper suggests that notions of sociality can be expanded to nonhuman entities.

Paper long abstract

Starting with Durkheim and Weber, social relationships have long been understood as bonds between people. Consequently, loneliness is commonly defined as distress in relation to a lack of human bonds. Human sociality is thus exceptional. However, such an approach omits the potential for meaningful social relationships with the other entities, including objects, nonhuman organisms, seasons, and place. In a broad sense, taking human social relationships as categorically different applies a very specific, culturally embedded perspective about what counts as social to cultures across the globe, including Japan. This paper provides a counterpoint. Through an exploration of the ways older people in Japan relate to hydrangea, electronic toys, and an unoccupied house, this paper takes up the question of whether relationships with nonhuman entities can be understood as social. Whereas nonhuman entities may bear symbolic associations to former owners or lubricate social interaction with others, I argue, others may gain meaning despite not serving as a conduit to other people. People can and do form deep, durable social connections with the nonhuman world, finding companionship with a variety of entities that elude conventional human-based definitions of social. Through these cases, I suggest an expansion of the notion of a social relationship to include entities beyond the human, situating sociality in how people understand and relate to their own local social worlds.