Citizens Without Shelter
Subtitle: Homelessness, Democracy, and Political Exclusion
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: June 2004
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 224
ISBN-13: 9780801441240
Subjects: Homelessness; Public Policy - General; Political Ideologies - Democracy; Political Science; Sociology; Holocaust; Poverty; Housing & Urban Development; United States
First sentence: Defenders of punitive policies such as panhandling restrictions, public-sleeping and sidewalk-sitting bans, and police sweeps of homeless encampments tend to justify these policies with reference to a vision of the homeless "profane outlaws," disorderly and unconstrained subjects who require the discipline of the laws.
Description: "One of the most troubling aspects of the politics of homelessness, Leonard C. Feldman contends, is the reduction of the homeless to what Hannah Arendt calls "the abstract nakedness of humanity" and what Giorgio Agamben terms "bare life." Feldman argues that the politics of alleged compassion and the politics of those interested in ridding public spaces of the homeless are linked fundamentally in their assumption that homeless people are less than citizens. Feldman's book brings political theories together (including theories of sovereign power, justice, and pluralism) with discussions of real-world struggles and close analyses of legal cases concerning the rights of the homeless."--BOOK JACKET.