Wasserman
and Clair are sociologists who spent four years meeting with, and
sometimes living with, the homeless of Birmingham, Alabama. Their
specific focus was on the "street homeless", those who mostly live in
the open, as opposed to the "shelter homeless". Concentrating on those
who congregated on one specific block, called "Catchout Corner", they
deliver an analysis of the struggles of a group of homeless men who have
managed to create a precarious space for themselves in the cracks of
society.
The authors make many valid points, particularly
concerning the professionalization of "homeless-service provision".
This leads, they demonstrate, to a statistical approach to homelessness
overly concerned with numbers, programs, and efficiency, which seeks to
treat categories rather than help people. Their book, too, is at its
best when it deals with the concrete circumstances of the individuals
involved. Unfortunately, the authors abstract from this experience and
then confront their abstracted homeless with an equally abstract care
model, and discover that this does not align with their analysis of an
abstracted society's ills. The problems of actual people helping actual
people on a sustained basis too often seem like an afterthought.
Unfortunately, the authors' commitment to a relativistic
approach muddles their thinking. Although the authors consistently
ascribe homelessness to the structural injustices of American society,
they seem to be uncertain, in the end, whether homelessness is anything
other than a lifestyle choice. This reduces attempts to "help" the
homeless to oppressive acts designed to enforce conformity. Those who
seek to ameliorate the problems of the homeless are
accused of "making the oppressed comfortable", producing a "false
consciousness" which prevents the homeless from embracing radical
politics. The authors insist on the importance of friendship with the
homeless, as opposed to a detached professionalism, but their ignorance
of the spiritual dimension denies the
possibility of solidarity and thus reduces every interaction between the
homeless and caregivers into a power struggle between oppressor and
oppressed. With their concentration on the perspective of the "street
homeless",
they seem to regard the "shelter homeless" as institutionalized and
broken by the system, transferring some of the same stereotypes of
volatility and criminality to this "other" that they debunk with
relation to the "street homeless".
I'm glad I read this book, but I wish the authors had reexamined more of their own philosophical premises before writing it.
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