Down on Their Luck: A Study of Homeless Street People / Edition 1

by David A. Snow, Leon Anderson

Overview

David Snow and Leon Anderson show us the wretched face of homelessness in late twentieth-century America in countless cities across the nation. Through hundreds of hours of interviews, participant observation, and random tracking of homeless people through social service agencies in Austin, Texas. Snow and Anderson reveal who the homeless are, how they live, and why they have ended up on the streets. Debunking current stereotypes of the homeless. Down on Their Luck sketches a portrait of men and women who are highly adaptive, resourceful, and pragmatic. Their survival is a tale of human resilience and determination, not one of frailty and disability.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520079892
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	02/12/1993
Series:	Poetics; 24
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	405
Product dimensions:	(w) x (h) x 1.00(d)

Table of Contents

Preface 
PART ONE INTRODUCTION
1. Studying the Homeless 
2. A Grounded Typology of Homeless Street
People 
PART TWO LIFE ON THE STREETS: DAILY
ROUTINES AND SURVIVAL STRATEGIES
3. The Subculture of Street Life 
4. Wage Labor and Institutionalized Assistance 
5. Shadow Work 
6. Tenuous Ties 
7. Salvaging the Self 
PART THREE DYNAMICS OF HOMELESSNESS
8. Pathways to the Street 
9. Homeless Careers 
Epilogue 
Notes 
References 
Index