San Antonio College Library

Analyzes the socio-political causes of homelessness and offers remedial policies.

"Anthropologists have a long tradition of working in poverty subcultures and have been able to contribute answers to some of the puzzles of homelessness through their ability to enter the culture of the homeless without some of the preconceptions of other disciplines." "The authors, anthropologists from the USA and Canada, offer us an analysis of homelessness that is grounded in anthropological research in North America and throughout the world. Both...

When homelessness became increasingly visible in the early 1980s, most Americans were reluctant to admit that the homeless people they encountered were chronically disabled by alcoholism, drug addiction, and mental illness. The media, policymakers, and the American public, persuaded by advocates for the homeless, came to believe that the homeless were simply victims of the hardships of poverty and the lack of affordable housing, both of which were...

Rossi (sociology, U. of Massachusetts, Amherst) provides a comprehensive picture of homelessness in the US today, offers an explanation of its causes, and proposes short- and long-term solutions to the problem. He notes that the homeless of the 1950s and 1960s offer a striking contrast to the contemporary population, which is much younger on average, contains more women, children, and blacks, and receives less income.

"It is all too easy to assume that social service programs respond to homelessness, seeking to prevent and understand it. "The Value of Homelessness," however, argues that homelessness today is an effect of social services and sciences, which shape not only what counts as such but what will--or ultimately won't--be done about it. Through a history of U.S. housing insecurity from the 1930s to the present, Craig Willse traces the emergence and consolidation...

In the years following the Civil War, a veritable army of homeless men swept across America's "wageworkers' frontier" and forged a beguiling and bedeviling counterculture known as "hobohemia." Jealously guarding the American road as the preserve of white manhood, hoboes swaggered onto center stage of the new urban culture. DePastino tells the epic story of hobohemia's rise and fall, drawing on sources ranging from diaries, letters, and police reports...

CONTENT: This business of taking stock -- Unearned keep : from almshouse to shelter in New York City -- Streets, shelters, and flops : an ethnographic study of homeless men, 1979-1982 -- The airport as home -- Out for the count : the census bureau's 1990 s-night enumeration -- Homelessness and African American men -- Negotiating settlement : advocacy for the homeless poor in the United States, 1980-1995 -- Limits to witnessing : from ethnography to...