Recently, I have been reading the work of Susan Pinker and reflecting on her clear, humane insistence that the small, face-to-face interactions that make up our daily lives are not trivial niceties but biological necessities. Pinker asks us to notice how conversation, proximity and routine social contact shape cognition, health and resilience; she calls this the “village effect.” Susan Pinker Author
A Man Called Ove
Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove follows Ove, a curmudgeonly, rule-bound 59-year-old bereaved of his wife and dislocated from his place in the world. He sets out, time and again, to end his life, convinced that his usefulness is gone. But a slow, accidental rescue occurs: neighbours and new arrivals — boisterous families, a pregnant immigrant, a stray cat, a patient colleague — intrude into his routines, refuse to leave him alone, and, through tiny acts of insistence and care, gradually re-root him in community life. The novel moves back and forth through Ove’s history, showing how relationships (both the ones he had and the ones he allows) shape his choices.
How the village around Ove saves him
If you read Backman with Pinker’s book beside you, the pattern is striking: Ove is saved not by a grand gesture but by proximity, repeated social friction and the accidental rituals of neighbourliness. Pinker argues that face-to-face contact — the coffee on a doorstep, the small annoyances exchanged over a fence, the repeated obligation of checking in — grounds us physiologically and psychologically in ways that online interaction cannot fully replace. Those small, embodied encounters are the building blocks of informal support networks that become crucial in times of crisis.
This is more than literary intuition. The health and survival benefits of social connection are robustly documented. A major meta-analysis found that people with stronger social ties had about a 50% greater likelihood of survival over time than those with weaker ties — an effect size comparable to quitting smoking or other major health interventions. In plain terms: who we know and how often we see them matters for our longevity. Social Relationships, Lunstad, Smith and Layton
Similarly, later reviews have clarified that both objective social isolation and the subjective feeling of loneliness are independent risk factors for earlier mortality and worse health outcomes. The mechanisms are complex — stress physiology, gene expression, health behaviours and access to help in emergencies — but the practical message resonates with both Pinker and Backman: when we are embedded in everyday networks of proximity and care, we are buffered from the kinds of despair that push someone like Ove to the edge. PubMed
Community, social capital, and the ethics of belonging
Backman’s neighbourhood builds social capital — trust, reciprocity, shared norms — almost by accident. Scholars who study social capital and health have shown similar effects: neighbourhoods and groups with higher social cohesion often report better mental and physical health outcomes, mediated through collective efficacy, mutual aid and informal oversight (people check on each other, share information, help each other access services). But social capital is ambivalent: it can include and protect, or exclude and stigmatise. Backman’s novel is attentive to both sides; the circle that heals Ove does so because it is patient, porous and insistently welcoming rather than judgemental. Social Capital and Heath, Murayama, Fujiwara and Kawachi
What the evidence and the story teach us — some practical takeaways
- Build small rituals of contact. Pinker emphasises habits: regular walks, neighbours’ meetups, shared breakfasts. These rituals create the micro-encounters that accumulate into support.
- Prioritise presence over perfection. Backman’s neighbours don’t fix Ove in one conversation. They persist. The research on social ties shows that frequency and reliability of contact often matter more than the perceived “quality” of any single exchange.
- Design for incidental encounters. Schools, workplaces and neighbourhoods that encourage unstructured, low-stakes contact (corridor conversations, communal tables, shared chores) increase the chance that someone in trouble will be noticed and helped. This aligns with Putnam’s observations about civic life and with contemporary reviews of social capital.
- Watch for loneliness as a public-health issue. Loneliness is not merely a private sorrow; it has measurable physiological impacts. Interventions that reconnect people — knitting groups, buddy systems, mentoring, neighbour rotas — are not just “nice”; they are preventive health measures.
A final reflection
Reading Susan Pinker and then re-entering Ove’s life felt, to me, like watching the same truth in two different languages. Pinker gives the empirical grammar — the how and why of contact — while Backman gives us the human music of it: the grudging tea, the accidental heroism, the cat that refuses to be shy. Together they make a case that should be simple but often gets lost: belonging is not a luxury. It is a form of prevention. It is a medicine made from small, ordinary acts performed again and again.
If you’re leading a school, designing a workplace, or simply thinking about who sits on your street, ask: where could we create one more ritual of presence this week? A shared bench, a rotating kettle, a doorstep hello — the village effect isn’t mythical. It is composed of tiny, repeatable choices that, over time, keep people alive and hold them when they want to fall apart. That feels like a kind of hope worth tending.
The Belonging Collective 