Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders: Homeless in San Francisco

(Paperback)

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Winner of the 2011 Robert Park Award for the Best Book in Community and Urban Sociology, American Sociological Association, 2011

Co-winner of the 2011 Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book in the Sociology of Culture, American Sociological Association, 2011

When homelessness reemerged in American cities during the 1980s at levels not seen since the Great Depression, it initially provoked shock and outrage. Within a few years, however, what had been perceived as a national crisis came to be seen as a nuisance, with early sympathies for the plight of the homeless giving way to compassion fatigue and then condemnation. Debates around the problem of homelessnessoften set in terms of sin, sickness, and the failure of the social systemhave come to profoundly shape how homeless people survive and make sense of their plights. In Hobos, Hustlers, and BackslidersDrawing on five years of fieldwork, this powerful ethnography of men living on the streets of the most liberal city in America, Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders, makes clear that the way we talk about issues of extreme poverty has real consequences for how we address this problemand for the homeless themselves.

Author Bio

Teresa Gowan is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota.