The value of homelessness Managing surplus life in the United States

Craig Willse, 1975-

Book - 2015

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Subjects
Published
Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press [2015]
Language
English
Main Author
Craig Willse, 1975- (-)
Physical Description
ix, 213 pages ; 22 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9780816693481
9780816693474
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction: Housing and Other Monsters
  • 1. Surplus Life, or Race and Death in Neoliberal Times
  • 2. Homelessness as Method Social Science and the Racial Order
  • 3. From Pathology to Population Managing Homelessness in the United States
  • 4. Governing through Numbers HUD and the Databasing of Homelessness
  • 5. The Invention of Chronic Homelessness
  • Conclusion: Surplus Life at the Limits of the Good
  • Notes
  • Index
Review by Choice Review

Framed within the historical context of housing insecurity in the US throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, this book asks and then critically answers the question of what it means to be homeless. The author argues that the changing geographies of homelessness as well as the way in which governments and social services have addressed this population have led to what is now termed "chronic homelessness," and that to understand this condition, scholars must look to the social service system itself. Willse (cultural studies, George Mason Univ.) makes a strong case that it is this very system that not only defines and redefines what homelessness is and which services to help homeless individuals get funded, but also, with its highly bureaucratic structure, that it has become an apparatus to manage "surplus life" rather than eradicate homelessness. In this sense, homelessness has emerged in the late 20th and early 21st centuries as a central role of government bureaucracies. A must read for anyone interested in this issue. Summing Up: Essential. All public and academic levels and libraries. --Deirdre A. Oakley, Georgia State University

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.