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by: Cloke, Paul; May, Jon; Johnsen, Sarah

ISBN: 9781405153874 | 1405153873

Swept Up Lives? challenges conventional accounts of urban homelessness. Moving beyond more familiar narratives concerning the recent 'purification' of public space and attempts to sweep homeless people from the streets, it focuses instead upon the many and complex attempts to care for homeless people in the contemporary city. Drawing upon in-depth ethnographic research with organisations providing homeless night shelters, hostels, day centres, and soup runs - and with the users of these services - the authors emphasize the relationships of care... MORE embodied and performed within homeless service spaces. Positioning these attempts to care for homeless people within a broader rapprochement between secular and faith-based ethical motivations, it draws attention to the emergence of a post-secular ethics that runs counter to, and sometimes actively resists, the vicissitudes of neoliberal welfare restructuring and a 'revanchist' (or vengeful) urban politics. The book thus argues for a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which homelessness is governed, paving the way for a characterisation of homelessness that pays greater attention to the agency of homeless people themselves and the complexity of homeless geographies - geographies within which homeless people experience a range of relationships that include compassion and care as well as regulation, containment and control.Swept Up Lives? Re-envisioning the Homeless City offers innovative research and a visionary new approach to shape our understanding of the complexities of urban homelessness.

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Utilizing innovative ethnographic research, Swept-Up Lives? challenges conventional accounts of urban homelessness to trace the complex and varied attempts to care for homeless people Presents innovative ethnographic research which suggests an important shift in perspective in the analysis and understanding of urban homelessness Emphasizes the ethical and emotional geographies of care embodied and performed within homeless services spaces Suggests that different homelessness 'scenes' develop in different places due to varied historical, political, and cultural responses to the problems faced

Paul Cloke is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Exeter. His research interests are in social and cultural geographies of ethics, rurality and nature, and he has published widely on issues relating to poverty, homelessness and social marginalization.
Jon May is Professor of Geography at Queen Mary University of London. He has published extensively on the geographies of homelessness and is the co-author or co-editor of five books including, most recently, Global Cities at Work: New Migrant Divisions of Labour (2010).
Sarah Johnsen is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Housing Policy, University of York. She has published widely in the field of homelessness and social policy.