[WestMALocals] Fw: [rsumass] Homelessness, Poverty & Inequality: A Local Study - 5/11 at Food for Thought

[Owen Broadhurst]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Erika Arthur" <earthsister45 at yahoo.com>
To: rsumass at yahoogroups.com, critic-l at sbs.umass.edu, programs at populareconomics.org, jonz at anthro.umass.edu
Subject: [rsumass] Homelessness, Poverty & Inequality: A Local Study -  5/11 at Food for Thought
Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 11:18:57 -0700 (PDT)

> 
> Please forward widely.
> 
> A look at homelessness in Northampton, at Food for
> Thought Books --
> 
> Inequality, Poverty, and Neoliberal Governance:
> Activist Ethnography in the Homeless Sheltering
> Industry
> 
> Join us for a talk with author Vin Lyon-Callo:
> 
> Wednesday, May 11, 6PM
> 
> The degree of economic inequality and the number of
> people living in poverty in the U.S. have steadily
> increased over the last thirty years. During the same
> period, government and private-sector funding for
> affordable housing has declined. It seems
> uncomplicated to suggest a correlation between this
> rise in inequality, lack of available housing, and
> homelessness. However, according to Vincent
> Lyon-Callo, Professor of Anthropology at Western
> Michigan University and UMass Amherst alum, this
> correlation is not often addressed in efforts to
> respond to homelessness. Therefore, despite the good
> intentions of service providers and the embracing of
> neoliberal “helping” efforts, homelessness continues
> to be on the rise in the United States.
> 
> Drawing on five years of ethnographic fieldwork in a
> Northampton homeless shelter, Lyon-Callo argues that
> homelessness must be understood within the context of
> the increasing neoliberal policies, practices, and
> discourses that produce and perpetuate poverty and
> marginalization. Relating conversations with shelter
> staff, homeless people, shelter administrators, and
> local advocates, Lyon-Callo exposes the way that
> homelessness is “normalized,” both in social policy
> and within the sheltering industry. The author sheds
> light on the ways that prototypical images of
> homelessness and individual-based understandings of
> its causes are reproduced through the language and
> practices of those working in shelters and by homeless
> people themselves. Ultimately, Lyon-Callo claims, as
> long as homelessness is portrayed as the result of
> personal deviance or shortcomings and structural
> inequality goes unchallenged, there will be no end to
> homelessness in sight. In this way the author contends
> that, in fact, neoliberalism works. It works to
> produce the conditions that lead to homelessness.
> 
> This event is free and open to all. Food for Thought
> is a wheelchair accessible space located at 106 N.
> Pleasant Street in downtown Amherst.
> For more information:
> (413) 253-5432
> www.foodforthoughtbooks.com
> 
> 
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> Radical Student Union
> 413A Student Union Building
> Box 99, UMass Amherst
> (413)545-0677
> rsu at stuaf.umass.edu
> http://www.umass.edu/rso/rsu/
-- 
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