@article{bb07bf77649548ab83636d7ac3cde470,
title = "Coping with Loneliness in Southern Myanmar",
abstract = "Little is known about the experience of older adults{\textquoteright} loneliness in Southeast Asia. Situated in southern Myanmar, this study uses ethnographic interviews to shed light on coping strategies that older adults deploy to prevent and reduce loneliness. A resilient mindset was identified as essential to alleviating loneliness in older adults, a strategy described as including acceptance of loneliness and finding strength to fight against loneliness. Acceptance was facilitated by religious practices such as praying and meditating. Efforts to reduce loneliness included leisure activities “just to pass the time” and engagement in care provision. Culturally specific concepts such as prosociality and social harmony, as well as religious ideas such as karma and the desire for a non-lonely afterlife influenced the ways the people we interviewed coped with loneliness and adverse life events.",
author = "Akhter-Khan, {Samia C} and Johanna Drewelies and Wai, {Khin Myo}",
note = "Funding Information: This study was supported, in part, by the Andrea-von-Braun foundation and the DAAD Promos scholarship (recipient: S. C. Akhter-Khan). First, we want to thank all interviewees for their time and openness to talk about their personal lives and experiences of loneliness. We also thank everyone in Myeik and Ye who supported us in the process of recruiting interviewees, conducting, translating, and transcribing the interviews. Finally, we thank Leon Li (Duke University) for advice on the first draft of the manuscript and helpful discussions about the data analysis as well as Iza Kaved{\v z}ija (University of Cambridge), Erica Borgstrom (Open University), and Sohail Jannesari (King{\textquoteright}s College London) for anthropological writing advice. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.",
year = "2022",
month = sep,
day = "30",
doi = "10.1080/1683478X.2022.2115623",
language = "English",
volume = "21",
pages = "245--262",
journal = "Asian Anthropology",
publisher = "Taylor & Francis",
number = "4",
}