Ritirati ma connessi

Description

Book preview

Ritirati ma connessi
Leggere l’hikikomori come fatto sociale

What does it mean to withdraw today, amidst the intertwining of school, work, family, and digital platforms? This volume offers a sociological reading of hikikomori as a social configuration of withdrawal: a plausible and accessible outcome where performance culture, institutional expectations, and connectivity infrastructures shape pathways, languages, and life possibilities. The objective is twofold: to restore voice and position to those involved and to offer an interpretive framework capable of explaining why and how prolonged isolation takes shape in specific contexts, beyond the sole clinical-diagnostic lens. Aiming to better understand the phenomenon, the volume presents the results of a mixed-methods research project—integrating quantitative surveys, qualitative analyses, and digital observations—rendering profiles, social geographies, daily routines, and turning points of hikikomori individuals and constructing a model of withdrawal as a situated, reflexive, and relational process. A book for those in the social sciences and in the educational and healthcare professions who seek in Hikikomori a sensor of the transformations of the present—and an invitation to look beyond labels, with rigor and moderation.

Author

Vincenzo Esposito is a research fellow at the University of Naples “Federico II” and his research interests focus on youth studies and social research methods and techniques. His most recent publications include: Esposito, V. (2025), A Complex Interplay: An Exploratory Netnographic Analysis of Hikikomori Socialization Strategies, Revista de Cercetare şi Intervenţie Socială, (88), 55-70; and Esposito, V. (2024), The Hikikomori Phenomenon and Its Evolution in Modern Society: A Systematic Literature Review. Italian Sociological Review, 14(3)