Sexuality and love in the lives of homeless men in New York City.
Item
-
Title
-
Sexuality and love in the lives of homeless men in New York City.
-
Identifier
-
AAI3144098
-
identifier
-
3144098
-
Creator
-
Gonzalez, M. Alfredo.
-
Contributor
-
Adviser: Ida Susser
-
Date
-
2004
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Anthropology, Cultural | American Studies
-
Abstract
-
After succeeding waves of positive and negative attention, the homeless have become the unavoidable evidence of poverty in New York City. Since scarce low-income housing is adjudicated to families, single adults remain residents in the municipal shelter system where they have found refuge for more than two decades despite advertised official efforts to end homelessness. From these impersonal buildings the poorest of the poor conduct their daily lives and in them, their sorrows and joys find a stage. They not only sleep, eat and keep their meager belongings in them, but they also locate in the shelter the center of their social and emotional worlds.;Poverty imprints its mark on every aspect of the lives of the poor. While health and education are known to suffer from the scarcity of material resources, its effects on the emotional and sexual lives of the underprivileged are less recognized. Furthermore, if we accept on one hand, that social classes possess characteristic cultural formations and on the other, that sexuality and emotion are culturally constructed, it would then follow that the poor experience their emotions and their sexual lives and identities in culturally specific ways.;This work examines the sexual and emotional lives of homeless men who have sex with men, along the lines of gender, sexual identity and their position in the socioeconomic ladder. It highlights these men's social networks, sexual activities, and amorous liaisons within and without shelter buildings. Additionally, this narrative details the intimate lives of a handful of working-class men in the context of economic restructuring and housing shortage in New York City. The contrast of the materials of this ethnography with widely accepted ideas of sexual identity, sexual behavior, and emotional attachment in the United States, seem to indicate the role that social class has in the experience of sexual and emotional intimacy.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
