1st Edition

The Unequal Homeless Men on the Streets, Women in their Place

By Joanne Passaro Copyright 1996

    The Unequal Homeless explores the persistence, as opposed to the occurrence, of homelessness. With this focus, which is absent in most of the contemporary homelessness literature, the author shows how cultural expressions of beliefs about gender difference help to perpetuate the homelessness of particular groups of people in New York City. The people who are persistently homeless in New York are, overwhelmingly, black men. The reason, Passaro contends, is that homelessness is not simply an economic predicament, but a cultural and moral location as well.

    Chapter 1 Introduction; Chapter 2 House and Home; Chapter 3 Beyond the Panopticon; Chapter 4 “Sex or Survival”; Chapter 5 Imagined Immunities; Chapter 6 Conclusion;

    Biography

    Joanne Passaro is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Center for Liberal Studies at Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY.

    ". . . a short, highly readable study of how ideology works to reproduce social inequality . . . powerful social critique not likely to get a hearing in official policy circles." -- American Anthropologist
    "Joanne Passaro contributes to a more complex portrait of homelessness by laying out an impressive set of topics for consideration... Passaro has laid some important and useful foundations for a more theoretical approach to the analysis of homelessness." -- Contemporary Sociology