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The Space of Boredom: Homelessness in the Slowing Global Order
Bruce O´neill
€ 187.11
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Description for The Space of Boredom: Homelessness in the Slowing Global Order
Hardback. Bruce O'Neill shows how the Bucharest, Romania's homeless are unable to fully participate in a society that is increasingly organized around practices of consumption, leaving them mired in an unshakeable boredom and the slow deterioration of their lives that are symptomatic of the alienation brought on by globalization. Num Pages: 280 pages, 33 photographs. BIC Classification: 1DVWR; JFFA; JFFB; JHMC. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 5830 x 3895. .
In The Space of Boredom Bruce O'Neill explores how people cast aside by globalism deal with an intractable symptom of downward mobility: an unshakeable and immense boredom. Focusing on Bucharest, Romania, where the 2008 financial crisis compounded the failures of the postsocialist state to deliver on the promises of liberalism, O'Neill shows how the city's homeless are unable to fully participate in a society that is increasingly organized around practices of consumption. Without a job to work, a home to make, or money to spend, the homeless—who include pensioners abandoned by their families and the state—struggle daily with the slow deterioration of their lives. O'Neill moves between homeless shelters and squatter camps, black labor markets and transit stations, detailing the lives of men and women who manage boredom by seeking stimulation, from conversation and coffee to sex in public restrooms or going to the mall or IKEA. Showing how boredom correlates with the downward mobility of Bucharest's homeless, O'Neill theorizes boredom as an enduring affect of globalization in order to provide a foundation from which to rethink the politics of alienation and displacement.
Product Details
Format
Hardback
Publication date
2017
Publisher
Duke University Press United States
Number of pages
280
Condition
New
Number of Pages
280
Place of Publication
North Carolina, United States
ISBN
9780822363149
SKU
V9780822363149
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-50
About Bruce O´neill
Bruce O'Neill is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Saint Louis University.
Reviews for The Space of Boredom: Homelessness in the Slowing Global Order
“An excellent and thorough exploration of the mundane emotion of boredom. This ethnography is certainly necessary reading for anyone working in the area of homelessness, especially, but also those interested in the impacts of global capitalism more broadly.”
Christopher M. Kloth
Anthropology Book Forum
“The Space of Boredom offers a detailed and sensitive cartography . . . both of what the author calls ‘boredom’ and of the particular context he studied. The image he paints of a looming, barren autumn—which the homeless live, but which hangs over all of us—should be of concern everywhere.”
George Tudorie
Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations
"A historically rich and theoretically innovative ethnography of contemporary homelessness and social exclusion in Bucharest."
Peter Soles Muirhead
Allegra Lab
"This book is a brilliant social story."
Jean Martin Caldieron
Journal of International and Global Studies
“An insightful investigation. The Space of Boredom stands as useful tool for policymakers involved in the integrated alleviation of homelessness and the general development process of the city.”
Mirela Paraschiv
Journal of Urban and Regional Analysis
"A significant contribution to the anthropological literature on neoliberalism and structural violence . . . O’Neill is evidently attuned to his informants, and portrays thoughtfulness and reflexivity throughout the ethnography. . . . An important book."
Evy Vourlides
Anthropological Quarterly
"O’Neill’s book serves as excellent doc-umentary evidence on particular cases of homeless people in Bucharest. . . . Chapter by chapter the reader is introduced to the sad but still fascinating realm of people at the margins of a marginal European society."
Bogdan Voicu
Slavic Review
Christopher M. Kloth
Anthropology Book Forum
“The Space of Boredom offers a detailed and sensitive cartography . . . both of what the author calls ‘boredom’ and of the particular context he studied. The image he paints of a looming, barren autumn—which the homeless live, but which hangs over all of us—should be of concern everywhere.”
George Tudorie
Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations
"A historically rich and theoretically innovative ethnography of contemporary homelessness and social exclusion in Bucharest."
Peter Soles Muirhead
Allegra Lab
"This book is a brilliant social story."
Jean Martin Caldieron
Journal of International and Global Studies
“An insightful investigation. The Space of Boredom stands as useful tool for policymakers involved in the integrated alleviation of homelessness and the general development process of the city.”
Mirela Paraschiv
Journal of Urban and Regional Analysis
"A significant contribution to the anthropological literature on neoliberalism and structural violence . . . O’Neill is evidently attuned to his informants, and portrays thoughtfulness and reflexivity throughout the ethnography. . . . An important book."
Evy Vourlides
Anthropological Quarterly
"O’Neill’s book serves as excellent doc-umentary evidence on particular cases of homeless people in Bucharest. . . . Chapter by chapter the reader is introduced to the sad but still fascinating realm of people at the margins of a marginal European society."
Bogdan Voicu
Slavic Review