Somerville, Peter (2013) Understanding homelessness. Housing, Theory and Society . ISSN 1403-6096 (In Press)

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Abstract

This paper reviews the literature on understanding homelessness. It criticizes approaches that ignore, distort or diminish the humanity of homeless people, or else, add little to our understanding of that humanity. In particular, it rejects what it calls “epidemiological” approaches, which deny the possibility of agency for homeless people, insofar as those approaches view the situation of those people largely as a “social fact”, to be explained in terms of causal variables or “risk factors” of different kinds. It evaluates the concept of homelessness pathways as a way of making sense of research findings on homelessness. It takes issue with realist approaches, insofar as these approaches purport to identify “underlying” mechanisms that “cause” homelessness, and discusses ethnographic approaches focused on “homeless culture”. Throughout, the paper emphasizes the need to understand homelessness as multidimensional and storied, and concludes with a plea for more research that looks at the whole life of a homeless person, rather than just at selected episodes of rooflessness.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Complexity, Scale, realism, Somerville 693, bmjolf, ref22, refdoi, refolf
Subjects:	L Social studies > L370 Social Theory
Divisions:	College of Social Sciences > Faculty of Health & Social Sciences > School of Social & Political Sciences
Depositing User:	Peter Somerville
Date Deposited:	16 Apr 2010 12:53
Last Modified:	09 Jun 2013 19:51
URI:	http://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/id/eprint/2303

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