Reckoning with Homelessness - (Anthropology of Contemporary Issues) by Kim Hopper (Paperback)
About this item
Highlights
- "It must be some kind of experiment or something, to see how long people can live without food, without shelter, without security.
- About the Author: Kim Hopper is Research Scientist at the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research and Lecturer at the Columbia University Schools of Public Health and Law.
- 288 Pages
- Social Science, Poverty & Homelessness
- Series Name: Anthropology of Contemporary Issues
Description
About the Book
Kim 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.
Book Synopsis
"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.
Review Quotes
Reckoning with Homelessness... has to be among the best-written, most elegantly expressed works of urban anthropology ever.... Hopper's ethnographic ramble through the makeshift haunts of the world's richest city is inevitably ironic, bitterly painful, unfailingly informative.
-- "Social Service Review"A frequently cited authority on the subject... Hopper is well versed in public policy efforts and has distinctive views about their efficacy--or lack thereof. His impassioned arguments for reimagined efforts to address the plight of the homeless cannot be ignored.
-- "Library Journal"For more than twenty years, Kim Hopper has probed the scope and causes of homelessness. He possesses the fine touch of an ethnographer.... He has a novelist's knack of evoking lives of gritty substance. But he also has a scientist's desire to know... and provides us an unusually rich thick description of the phenomenon.
-- "America"Hopper continues to push the envelope in the study of homelessness and, by extension, in the field of anthropology and on all fronts of the endeavor: theory, method, and politics. His work contains instances of brilliance as he offers his rich insight on the whole enterprise of poverty, homelessness, and contemporary citizenship.... Hopper challenges himself, his discipline, our collective social world, and each one of us to go beyond our moral witnessing to engaged advocacy and political action. Summing Up: Highly Recommended.
-- "Choice"About the Author
Kim Hopper is Research Scientist at the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research and Lecturer at the Columbia University Schools of Public Health and Law. He is a cofounder of both the New York and the National Coalitions for the Homeless. He is the coauthor of Sociology In Medicine, Third Edition, and coeditor of the upcoming Recovery from Schizophrenia: An International Perspective.
