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Homeless assistance has frequently adhered to the “three hots and a cot” model, which prioritizes immediate material needs but may fail to address the political and social exclusion of people experiencing homelessness. In this study, Loehwing reconsiders typical characterizations of homelessness, citizenship, and democratic community through unconventional approaches to homeless advocacy and assistance. While conventional homeless advocacy rhetoric establishes the urgency of homeless suffering, it also implicitly invites housed publics to understand homelessness as a state of abnormality that destines the individuals suffering it to life outside the civic body. In contrast, Loehwing focuses on atypical models of homeless advocacy: the meal-sharing initiatives of Food Not Bombs, the international competition of the Homeless World Cup, and the annual Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day campaign. She argues that these modes of unconventional homeless advocacy provide rhetorical exemplars of a type of inclusive and empowering civic discourse that is missing from conventional homeless advocacy and may be indispensable for overcoming homeless marginalization and exclusion in contemporary democratic culture. Loehwing’s interrogation of homeless advocacy rhetorics demonstrates how discursive practices shape democratic culture and how they may provide a potential civic remedy to the harms of disenfranchisement, discrimination, and displacement. This book will be welcomed by scholars whose work focuses on the intersections of democratic theory and rhetorical and civic studies, as well as by homelessness advocacy groups.
This project employs three different disciplinary approaches--social constructionism, policy analysis, and rhetorical analysis--as a first step toward a critical theory of homelessness.
Disrupting Homelessness unmasks the futile assumptions of our present approaches to homelessness and suggests ways in which Christians and Christian communities can create a prophetic social movement to end poverty and homelessness. Some Christian organizations focus on fixing the person and the behaviors that contribute toward homelessness. Others promote home ownership for low-income households. Stivers criticizes both approaches and assesses to what extent these approaches buy into our culture's dominant ideologies on housing and homelessness, and whether they promote justice and liberation for the least well off. She then outlines an advocacy approach for churches to address the multiple causes of homelessness and prophetically to aim to make a home for all in God's just and compassionate community.
This book explores the economic coping practices of rural widows in the aftermath of the Cambodian civil war. War produces a preponderance of widows, often young widows with small children in their care. Rural widows must feed their families and educate their children despite rural poverty and the lack of opportunities for women. The economics of widowhood is therefore a significant social problem in less developed countries. The widows' predominant economic plan was to combine rice cultivation with an assortment of microenterprises, a "rice plus" strategy. Many widows were unable to grow enough rice on their land to feed their families. They filled the hunger gap by raising cash through microenterprises to purchase additional rice. Gender work roles were both permeable and persistent, allowing a flexible sexual division of labor in the short run but maintaining traditional roles in the long run. Most widows called on relatives or exchanged transplanting labor for male plowing services, although a few women took up the plow themselves. The study also explores widows' access to key economic resources such as land, credit, and education. War decimated widows' family support networks, including the loss of children, their social security. The study concludes that Cambodia's gender arrangement offered many economic options to widows but also devalued their labor in a cultural structure of inequality. Gender, poverty, and war interacted to reduce widows' financial resources, accounting for their economic vulnerability.
This book, a unique examination of the activist striving to work for more holistic social change, creates a conceptual framework to give visibility to the complexity of activist practice that spans environmental and social justice concerns.
Biblical scholars often read the Bible with their own interpretive interests in mind, without associating the Bible with the concerns of laypeople. This largely undermines the contributions laypeople can offer from reading the Bible in their own contexts and from their own life experiences. Moreover, such exclusively scholarly reading conceals the role of biblical texts in dealing with current social problems, such as HIV/AIDS-related stigmatization. Hence, the lack of lay participation in the process of Bible reading makes the Bible less visible in various common life situations. In this volume Elia Shabani Mligo draws on his fieldwork among people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) in Tanzania, selects stigmatization as his perspective, and chooses participant-centered contextual Bible study as his method to argue that the reading of texts from the Gospel of John by PLWHA (given their lived experiences of stigmatization) empowers them to reject stigmatization as unjust. Mligo's study shows that Christian PLWHA reject stigmatization because it does not comply with the attitude of Jesus toward stigmatized groups in his own time. The theology emerging from the readings by stigmatized PLWHA, through their evaluation of Jesus' attitudes and acts toward stigmatized people in the texts, challenges churches in their obligatory mission as disciples of Jesus. Churches are challenged to reconsider healing, hospitality and caring, prophetic voices against stigmatization, and the way they teach about HIV and AIDS in relation to sexuality. Churches must revisit their practices toward stigmatized groups and listen to their voices. Mligo argues that participant-centered Bible-study methods similar to the one used in this book (whereby stigmatized people are the primary interlocutors in the process) can be useful tools in listening to the voices of stigmatized groups.
Learn how to better address the needs of the homeless The causes of homelessness are complex and varied. Homelessness in America provides an overview of the state of research on the homeless population from an occupation and societal participation perspective. This important resource explores the systems of care in which homeless services are organized, the tailoring of services to meet the needs of diverse types of homeless, the newest trends in services, and crucial funding sources. Research is comprehensively examined from an occupation-based perspective, including studies on specific issues pertaining to various homeless populations. This in-depth discussion provides a vital understanding of homelessness using a client-centered and strengths-based approach in occupational therapy. Much of the research and writings of occupational therapists who work with homeless populations has been scattered throughout various diverse publications. Homelessness in America: Perspectives, Characterizations, and Considerations for Occupational Therapy gathers into one useful volume important insights, practical strategies, and valuable research into the many challenges concerning homelessness. Various effective interventions are discussed in depth. Several leading authorities explore current issues and offer illuminating case studies, extensive reference lists, and helpful tables of funding sources. Topics in Homelessness in America include: results of an Internet-based survey of assessment tools used with the homeless a critical examination of the assumptions of who becomes homeless—and why typologies of homelessness current trends in service delivery federal organization and sources of funding for services exploratory study of occupational concerns and goals of homeless women with children study illustrating the value of the theory of Occupational Adaptation mother-toddler interactions in transitional housing the role of occupational therapy in the youth homelessness problem homeless youths’ after-school and weekend time use guiding intervention by using the Model of Human Occupation (MOHO) productive role involvement at Project Employ study on life skills interventions with effective recommendations much more Homelessness in America is insightful, important reading for occupational therapy educators, students, practicing occupational therapists, program directors of services to the homeless, and policymakers.
A half-century after the "War on Poverty" of Lyndon Johnson, poverty rates remain unchanged. Scholars have advanced polarized theories about the causes of poverty, as politicians have debated how (or if) to fund welfare programs. Yet little research has been conducted where the poor are provided a platform to speak on their own behalf. While it is important to understand how economic systems affect the homeless, it is equally important to learn about the day-to-day realities faced by those who rely on public policies for survival. Drawing on the author's experience working in the homeless community, this book presents some of their stories of loss, abuse, addiction, and marginalization through interviews, observations, and ethnographic research.
This book highlights the strategic deployment of a straight identity by an LGBT organization. Cortese explores the ways in which activists strategically use a "straight" identity as a social movement tool in order to successfully achieve the movement objectives.
Housing, Homelessness, and Social Policy in the Urban North brings together leading scholars on northern urban housing across the Canadian North, Alaska, and Greenland. Through various case studies, the contributors examine the ways in which housing insecurity and homelessness provide a critical lens on the social dimensions of northern urbanization. They also present key considerations in the development of effective and sustainable social policy for these areas. The book kickstarts a conversation between multiple stakeholders from different cultural and national regions across the North American north. It asks key questions including these: What are the common problems of, and responses to, housing insecurity and homelessness across these northern regions? Is a single definition of “homelessness” even possible, or desirable? And if not, can a shared language around how to end the housing crisis and homelessness in our northern regions still occur? The contributors explore how experiences of northern towns and cities inform an overall understanding of urban forms and processes in the contemporary world, and speak directly to the emerging body of literature on cities. Highlighting key limitations to federal, state, and provincial policy, Housing, Homelessness, and Social Policy in the Urban North raises important implications for developing policy that is responsive to northern realities.