Young and Homeless In Hollywood

The relational geographies of the voluntary sector: Disentangling the ballast of strangers

“…Over time, these patterns can become resilient, with a stubborn tendency towards highly-centralized and highly-accessible inner-city locations. Varied mappings of voluntary-sector geographies across metropolitan areas ranging from Glasgow and Manchester to Los Angeles (Wolch and Dear, 1993; Ruddick, 1996; Fyfe and Milligan, 2003b; Marr et al, 2009; Clifford et al, 2013) reveal that service hubs remain steadfastly inner city and positively correlated with areas of high deprivation. This co-location of need and supply has interested geographers since Wolch (1980) and Wolch and Geiger (1983) mapped the non-working, service-dependent poor in cities.…”

Accomplishing Place in Public Space: Autoethnographic Accounts of Homelessness

“…In addition to providing a “home,” re-appropriation makes visible the common desire for home and can also be used to expose the normalcy, as opposed to presumed deviance, of homeless individuals. For example, Ruddick’s (1996) work describes how people experiencing homelessness have often strategically occupied political spaces (e.g., state land across from city halls) and engaged in nonviolent protests to illuminate their common identification with the public as U.S. citizens who (ideally) possess the same rights, protections, and duties. Though the full impact of this political action is hard to assess, one thing is clear: re-appropriation is beneficial, particularly its ability to make place out of space—a transformation that one of us has experienced.…”

“…According to Phelan et al (1997), the homeless are among the most stigmatized groups in the United States and, as such, encounter a multitude of challenges. With the exception of a few notable studies (see Dordick 1998; Duneier 1999; Liebow 1993; Ruddick 1996; Snow and Anderson 1993; Wagner 1993), however, little ethnographic research has documented the daily struggles this population encounters (Roschelle and Kaufman 2004).…”

“…Our research adds to the canon of scholarship about lived experiences of homelessness, which tends to focus on either survival strategies (e.g., Borchard 2005; Dordick 1998; Rosenthal 1994; Snow and Anderson 1993; Snow and Mulcahy 2001; Wasserman and Clair 2010) or acts of cultural resistance (e.g., Casey, Goudie, and Reeve 2008; DeVerteuil, Marr, and Snow 2009; Ruddick 1996; Wagner 1993; Wright 1997). The latter focus, exemplified by Wagner (1993, 18) in the following statement, inspires our approach:I support the perspective that poor people are not just acted upon or just passive victims of society, and I show how street people develop their own self-consciousness, culture, and alternative community.…”

Performing “East Van”

“…How they come to attribute particular meanings to particular social spaces is determined, in part, by a social imaginary or collective mythology (Lefebvre 1991; Barthes 1975)—social space is not only a signifier of meaning but is also constitutive. As Ruddick (1996, 12), drawing from Lefebvre and Barthes, explains, a social imaginary, produced by the discourse that surrounds it, does not simply reflect the object to which it refers but becomes something else. This social imaginary is socially constructed and imagined, as well as partial, fragmented, continually (re)negotiated, and also constituted.…”