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Can You See Me? Ethnography of Women's Experiences with Homelessness in Denver, Colorado

by Taylor L Morrison

Institution:	U of Denver
Year:	2017
Keywords:	Denver; Homelessness; Identity; Internalization; Resistance; Women; Anthropology; Social and Cultural Anthropology
Posted:	02/01/2018
Record ID:	2166285
Full text PDF:	https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/1334

Abstract

Following the economic crisis in 2008, the United States, and Denver in particular, saw a considerable rise in the number of people considered homeless. Despite an increase in the population, little anthropological research has been done to understand the experiences of street-embodied individuals and the services available to them. Through participant-observation, life-history interviews, and photovoice, I closely studied the lives of two women experiencing homelessness and used interpretive phenomenological analysis to analyze the data. Analyzed through Foucault's biopolitics, technologies of the self, and panopticism, as well as Goffman's presentation of the self, I make the case that the homeless experience is marked by social exclusion, which I found to be internalized and resisted in the lives of two women in a variety of ways. These findings are relevant to service providers in the homeless industry, in the way they approach their interactions with people experiencing homelessness. Advisors/Committee Members: Alejandro Cern, Ph.D..