Reckoning with Homelessness / / Kim Hopper.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Complete eBook-Package 2014-2015
• VerfasserIn: Hopper, Kim,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2015]; ©2015
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Language: English
• Series: The Anthropology of Contemporary Issues
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (288 p.) :; 18 halftones

"It must be some kind of experiment or something, to see how long people can live without food, without shelter, without security."-Homeless woman in Grand Central StationKim Hopper has dedicated his career to trying to address the problem of homelessness in the United States. In this powerful book, he draws upon his dual strengths as anthropologist and advocate to provide a deeper understanding of the roots of homelessness. He also investigates the complex attitudes brought to bear on the issue since his pioneering fieldwork with Ellen Baxter twenty years ago helped put homelessness on the public agenda.Beginning with his own introduction to the problem in New York, Hopper uses ethnography, literature, history, and activism to place homelessness into historical context and to trace the process by which homelessness came to be recognized as an issue. He tells the largely neglected story of homelessness among African Americans and vividly portrays various sites of public homelessness, such as airports. His accounts of life on the streets make for powerful reading.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- PART I: CLASSIFICATION AND HIS TORY -- 1. This Business of Taking Stock -- 2. Unearned Keep: From Almshouse to Shelter in New York City -- PART II: FIELDWORK AND FRAMEWORK -- Introduction: Ethnography in the Annals of Homelessness -- 3. Streets, Shelters, and Flops: An Ethnographic Study of Homeless Men, 1979-1982 -- 4. The Airport as Home -- 5. Out for the Count: The Census Bureau's 1990 S-Night Enumeration -- 6. Homelessness and African American Men -- PART III: ADVOCACY AND ENGAGEMENT -- 7. Negotiating Settlement: Advocacy for the Homeless Poor in the United States, 1980-1995 -- 8. Limits to Witnessing: From Ethnography to Engagement -- Notes -- References -- Index