Surplus life: The neoliberal making and managing of housing insecurity
Item
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Title
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Surplus life: The neoliberal making and managing of housing insecurity
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:459e6328ad0e:10699
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identifier
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10825
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Creator
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Willse, Craig,
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Contributor
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Patricia T. Clough
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Date
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2010
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Social structure | American studies | Ethnic studies | biopolitics | housing | neoliberalism | racism
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Abstract
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This dissertation investigates the techno-conceptual organization of homelessness, or the ways in which housing insecurity and deprivation become organized as objects of scientific knowledge and governmental intervention. As outlined in the Introduction, drawing from science studies, the dissertation uses both historical and textual interpretation and open-ended interviews to form an archive of the contemporary homeless services industry. Chapter 1 argues that housing insecurity and deprivation must be understood in terms of the co-constitution of race and property. From this view, populations living without shelter should be understood as "surplus life"---a kind of social and political abandonment that is made economically productive under neoliberalism. Chapter 2 provides an historical overview of the role of the federal government in managing unsheltered populations, and argues that the return of federal involvement in the mid-1980s effects a biopoliticization of homelessness, or a reconceptualization of homelessness as a problem of population management and costs. Chapter 3 offers the first of two case studies of federal programs, the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Homeless Management Information System, or HMIS. The chapter argues that HMIS does not so much spy upon individual clients of social service agencies, but rather produces a population as a mechanism to regulate the activities of agencies, primarily by standardizing services in economic terms. The second case, Chapter 4, looks at the rise of chronic homelessness as an academic, popular, and governmental concern, and the ways this concern has challenged long-standing practices and discourses of case management. The chapter argues that chronic homelessness initiatives evidence the ways in which social programs are transformed through neoliberalism into economic enterprises. Chapter 5 considers the historical and contemporary role of sociology in governing surplus populations, and argues that the study of homelessness has served a discipline-building function for sociology. Sociology has not only made "the homeless" available for governmental intervention, but the study of homelessness has provided sociology an opportunity to produce its own role in governance as necessary and ethical. Finally, the Conclusion offers a summary of the major arguments.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Sociology
