A trip to the library: homelessness and social inclusion

Abstract

This article explores homeless men's visits to a public library. It shows how homeless men identified the library as a space for safety and social participation, at a time when the regional newspaper published an item questioning the appropriateness of their presence in the library. The news report promotes universal narratives that would exclude homeless people, showing the intimate relationship between the symbolic space of news, the material space of the local library, and the lifeworlds of homeless men. We report fieldwork in which we interviewed homeless men, library staff and patrons. In addition, we worked with journalists on follow-up articles foregrounding the positive function of the library in homeless men's lives, and to challenge existing news narratives that advocate the exclusion of 'the homeless' from prime public spaces.

Civic journalism meets civic social science: foregrounding social determinants in health coverage

“…This paper contributes to attempts to explore the ways in which media frame issues and regularly reproduce stigmatizations, and examines how alternative stories can be prompted that draw out the lived realities of marginalized groups. The ultimate goal is to foster a civic-orientated journalism that can help the public come to better understand the impact of social determinants of health, structural constraints on people's lives, and the importance for health of promoting policy responses to poverty that do not rely on punitive strategies (cf., Buila, 2009;Hodgetts et al, , 2008b. This article supports the need to shift the focus of media production research on health from investigations of medical journalism that is scientifically deficient (Pettersen, 2005;Larsson et al, 2003) to considerations of health journalism that is 'civically deficient' (Hodgetts et al, 2004(Hodgetts et al, , 2008aWallack, 2003).…”

“…This is because representational spaces constructed by journalists overlap with the physical spaces occupied by marginalized groups such as homeless people, and impact on the availability of the resources to sup-port wellness (Hodgetts et al, 2008b. Previous research provides valuable insights into the processes by which news media often stigmatise marginalized groups who are affected by social determinants of health, presenting them as the sources of their own problems ( Hodgetts et al, , 2008b. This paper contributes to attempts to explore the ways in which media frame issues and regularly reproduce stigmatizations, and examines how alternative stories can be prompted that draw out the lived realities of marginalized groups.…”

“…This is a symbolic space that overlaps and contributes to the texturing of the urban environment in which homeless people dwell (Hodgetts et al, 2008b). The combined use of sympathetic and punitive frames in news coverage reflects wider tensions in social policy and public consciousness between notions of the 'undeserving' and 'deserving' poor (Laurenson & Collins, 2007).…”

“…In order to address the health needs of marginalized groups, mainstream groups must become more engaged and experience a greater sense of communal responsibility (Silverstone, 2007). This is because processes of governance and the allocation of resources which affect marginalized groups are often conducted with limited input from the groups themselves (Hodgetts et al, 2004(Hodgetts et al, , 2008a(Hodgetts et al, , 2008b.…”

“…Being deemed unclean and out of place is associated with social embarrassment and sanctions including ostracism, contempt, fumigating, displacing, erasing and the re-imposition of the social order (ibid). Homeless bodies are often depicted as being dirty and requiring regulation and removal because, as polluters, they have come to be seen as defective and to signify a lack of compliance with social norms and regulations of decency (Hodgetts et al, 2008b(Hodgetts et al, , 2011. To understand the broader processes at play in this estrangement of homeless people in news coverage, public discourse and policy, we must be "…prepared to see in the body a symbol of society, and to see the powers and dangers credited to social structure reproduced in small on the human body" (Douglas, 1966:115).…”