New Hobos or Neo-Romantic Fantasy? Urban Ethnography beyond the Neoliberal Disconnect

Abstract

This article describes an anomalous social space within the field of homelessness in San Francisco, that of "pro" recyclers, homeless men who spend much of their time collecting recyclables for redemption. Unlike the panhandlers, broken shelter-dwellers and small-time hustlers of San Francisco's Tenderloin and other skid row zones, the recyclers orient much of their existence around work. By working within a unique economic niche provided by the state-supported recycling industry, and by drawing on support from sympathetic residents and advocates, the recyclers create an unusual homeless subculture which, as they themselves argue, has more than a little in common with the hobo jungles of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. To interrogate the sociological (and political) implications of this case study I use Loïc Wacquant's eloquent manifesto against sociological "neo-romanticism." While agreeing with some of Wacquant's analysis, I argue that his emphasis on the moralism of contemporary urban ethnographers blinds him to the very real concerns with morality and ethics among poor people themselves. The recyclers' concerns with mutual respect and the pleasures of labor represent, I believe, not post hoc justifications of desperate survival strategies, but a dogged, often passionate collective effort to create a truly different experience and understanding of homelessness itself.In what must surely be one of the most widely-discussed book reviews in the history of American sociology, Loïc Wacquant has made the case that increasing attention to work and "mainstream" cultural orientation in US ethnographies of poverty represents a new "neo-romantic" sociology (Wacquant 2002). Where the ("romantic") ethnographers of the sixties and seventies enjoyed deviance, he argues, those of today inflate and romanticize those aspects of the poor-their mainstream aspirations, their law-abiding behavior, and their conventional morality-which illustrate how similar they are to the putatively less-

Experiencing Homelessness: A Review of Recent Literature

“…These studies, and others, shed light on the day‐to‐day activities that are part of life on the streets, including leisure activities (Borchard 2010) and participation in “shadow work” (Snow and Anderson 1993) such as the collection of recyclables for redemption (Gowan 2009), panhandling (Lankenau 1999a,b; Lee and Farrell 2003), and criminal activities such as selling drugs, theft, and involvement with prostitution (see McCarthy and Hagan 2005 6 ). Other work has noted that survival strategies and activities on the streets must be adapted around constraints on the homeless’ use of different kinds of urban space (Snow and Mulcahy 2001).…”

“…A large body of sociological research explores social worlds on the streets, where many of the homeless spend a great deal of time and interact with both one another and the housed. Drawing primarily on qualitative methods, sociologists have studied the daily lives and subcultures of those living on (or spending a good deal of time on) the streets, such as Snow and Anderson's (1993) ethnography of life on the streets in Austin, TX; Gowan (2010) on homelessness in San Francisco, and on the subculture of homeless ''pro'' recyclers (Gowan 2009); Rosenthal (1994) on daily life and subcultures within the homeless population of Santa Barbara, CA; Wagner's (1993) study of the community, cultural resistance, and subcultures of the homeless in Checkerboard Square; Borchard (2005Borchard ( , 2010 on homeless men in Las Vegas, NV; Clair (2010, 2011) on street life in Birmingham, AL; Stablein (2011) on street life in Harvard Square, and Duneier (1999) on the sidewalks of New York City. Research on homeless youth highlights their social networks and formation of street ''families,'' which are found to recreate common gender roles (Smith 2008) and come with both benefits and risks (Ennett et al 1999;Fast et al 2009;Johnson et al 2005;Rice et al 2008;Smith 2008;Stablein 2011).…”

Invisibilised dirty work: The multiple realities of US airline pilots’ work

“…Höpfl (2012), among others, investigates how the boundaries between clean and dirtyand therefore good and bad-work and workers are demarcated, enforced and resisted. Studies have examined nurses (Bolton 2005), accountants (Morales and Lambert 2013), police officers (Dick 2005), firefighters and correctional officers (Tracy and Scott 2006), veterinary technicians (Sanders 2010), exotic dancers (Mavin and Grandy 2013), recyclers (Gowan 2009), and sex shop workers (Tyler 2011). Most scholars seem to adopt the dirty work concept as a sense-making heuristic, employing it as a means to examine the ways workers deal with their stigma in three overlapping research areas: This third less explored research area utilizes a social constructionist perspective, similar to the approach adopted in this airline pilot study, analysing why some jobs and tasks are considered dirty, and others are not, by examining the context in which employees perform them.…”

“…Tyler (2011) reports that employees in London's retail sex shops saw their job and their clients' predilections as perfectly ordinary, not strange or perverse. And Gowan (2009) notes ways that homeless 'canners' in San Francisco who scavenged recycling by 'dumpster diving' in trash bins proudly consider themselves blue-collar workers who help keep the city clean. As a result, dirty work research reveals that the meanings attached to certain tasks and roles within a given profession are neither universal nor monolithic but rather continuously evolving within a social, political, and ideological context.…”

“…Deflecting or counterbalancing the negative effects of occupational taint (Tracy and Scott 2006; Sanders 2010; Stanley and Mackenzie-Davey 2012; Morales and Lambert 2013);2) Normalizing occupational taint and reconstructing workers' identities to become more honourable, clean and good(Ashforth and Kreiner 1999;Ashforth et al 2007;Gowan 2009; Sanders 2010; Mavin and Grandy 2013); or 3) Embracing or celebrating occupational taint(Dick 2005;Gowan 2009;Tyler 2011; Morales and Lambert 2013).…”