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OverviewWhy did the rate of homelessness remain at significant levels while the US economy was supposedly booming and hundreds of millions of dollars were spent in the homeless sheltering industry? Drawing upon five years of ethnographic fieldwork in a homeless shelter in Northampton, Massachusetts, Lyon-Callo argues that homelessness must be understood within the context of increasing neoliberal policies, practices, and discourses. As advocates, activists, policy makers, and homeless people focused attention on market-based and individualized practices of reform and governance, collective efforts that challenged an economy dependent on low wage jobs, declining housing affordability, and the dismantling of the social safety net were marginalized and ignored. Homelessness continued, despite, and partly due to, the limitations of the neoliberal approach. Combining the rich detail of an ethnographic study with the systemic examination of political economic studies, this book offers a view of homelessness and inequality that is rarely explored elsewhere. Chapters include discussion of the medicalization of homelessness, the difficulty of finding paid employment given broader political economic conditions, how shelter staff are trained to manage homeless people, how statistics are used to produce ideas of homeless people as deviants, and how funding concerns affect possibilities for resistance. Key to the study is an activist approach that raises the possibilities and problems associated with a publicly engaged anthropology. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Vincent Lyon-CalloPublisher: University of Toronto Press Imprint: University of Toronto Press Edition: 2nd Revised edition Dimensions: Width: 14.90cm , Height: 1.20cm , Length: 22.30cm Weight: 0.280kg ISBN: 9781442600867ISBN 10: 1442600861 Pages: 192 Publication Date: 01 October 2004 Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Tertiary & Higher Education , Professional & Vocational Format: Paperback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: Manufactured on demand We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier. Table of ContentsReviewsThis is a terrific book. Lyon-Callo's descriptions shatter stereotypes about homeless people and focus instead on the dysfunction of the system that allegedly serves them. - Susan Greenbaum, University of South Florida Author InformationVincent Lyon-Callo is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Western Michigan University. He also worked in homeless shelters in Connecticut and Massachusetts throughout most of the 1990s. His work on poverty, neoliberal policies, and the possibilities of an activist ethnography has been published in a wide range of academic journals and volumes. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |