“Helping the Helpless Help Themselves”.
Volunteering and working in a homeless shelter is often seen as a key way in which individuals can ameliorate class differences through intergroup contact and help those being served. However, I argue that these same environments can also serve to reinforce and reproduce class boundaries. Volunteers...
| Published in: | Journal of Contemporary Ethnography Vol. 46; no. 2; pp. 230 - 261 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Sage Publications Inc.
Apr2017
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=121559874&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 121559874 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 08912416 JEY jtl: Journal of Contemporary Ethnography issn: 08912416 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: Apr2017 vid: 46 iid: 2 pid: 344 pub: Sage Publications Inc. artinfo: ui: 121559874 10.1177/0891241615603450 ppf: 230 ppct: 31 formats: tig: atl: “Helping the Helpless Help Themselves”. aug: au: Rogers, Laura E. affil: Department of Sociology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA su: Volunteer service Homeless shelters Employee psychology Identity (Psychology) Stereotypes sug: subj: Volunteer service Homeless shelters Employee psychology Identity (Psychology) Stereotypes Emergency and Other Relief Services Community housing services Temporary Shelters keyword: class homeless shelter inequality moral identity symbolic boundaries class homeless shelter inequality moral identity symbolic boundaries ab: Volunteering and working in a homeless shelter is often seen as a key way in which individuals can ameliorate class differences through intergroup contact and help those being served. However, I argue that these same environments can also serve to reinforce and reproduce class boundaries. Volunteers and employees are provided a unique space in which they can feel generous and virtuous, while also maintaining cultural stereotypes of the homeless as immoral. In this article, I show how the affluent staff at a suburban homeless shelter engage in borderwork and construct moral identities for themselves in opposition to the clients. Based on 125 hours of participant observation and fourteen semistructured interviews with staff, I argue that the identity work of the staff can reinforce the very class boundaries they purport to resist. In their attempts to provide services to the homeless, they use rhetorical and physical strategies to reinforce class boundaries and create an othered status for those they served. The staff then feel good by “helping the homeless help themselves” while maintaining a safe distance from them. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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