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Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders: Homeless in San Francisco
Teresa Gowan
€ 82.16
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Description for Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders: Homeless in San Francisco
Hardback. Num Pages: 368 pages, 36 b&w illustrations, 2 maps. BIC Classification: JFFB; JFSL. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 216 x 140 x 28. Weight in Grams: 544.
Winner of the 2011 Robert Park Award for the Best Book in Community and Urban Sociology, American Sociological Association, 2011
Co-winner of the 2011 Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book in the Sociology of Culture, American Sociological Association, 2011
When homelessness reemerged in American cities during the 1980s at levels not seen since the Great Depression, it initially provoked shock and outrage. Within a few years, however, what had been perceived as a national crisis came to be seen as a nuisance, with early sympathies for the plight of the homeless giving way to compassion fatigue and then condemnation. Debates around the ... Read more Gowan shows some of the diverse ways that men on the street in San Francisco struggle for survival, autonomy, and self-respect. Living for weeks at a time among homeless men—working side-by-side with them as they collected cans, bottles, and scrap metal; helping them set up camp; watching and listening as they panhandled and hawked newspapers; and accompanying them into soup kitchens, jails, welfare offices, and shelters—Gowan immersed herself in their routines, their personal stories, and their perspectives on life on the streets. She observes a wide range of survival techniques, from the illicit to the industrious, from drug dealing to dumpster diving. She also discovered that prevailing discussions about homelessness and its causes—homelessness as pathology, homelessness as moral failure, and homelessness as systemic failure—powerfully affect how homeless people see themselves and their ability to change their situation. Drawing on five years of fieldwork, this powerful ethnography of men living on the streets of the most liberal city in America, Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders, makes clear that the way we talk about issues of extreme poverty has real consequences for how we address this problem—and for the homeless themselves. Show LessProduct Details
Format
Hardback
Publication date
2010
Publisher
University of Minnesota Press United States
Number of pages
368
Condition
New
Number of Pages
368
Place of Publication
Minnesota, United States
ISBN
9780816648696
SKU
V9780816648696
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-1
About Teresa Gowan
Teresa Gowan is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota.
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