Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

The Uncanniness of Late Modernity

By Kathleen R. Arnold

Subjects: Urban Sociology, Political Philosophy, Identity
Series: SUNY series in National Identities
Hardcover : 9780791461112, 222 pages, July 2004

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Table of contents

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction

2. Citizenship and Political Identity

 

Introduction
Citizenship and Property in the Liberal Tradition: Political Power and Economic Independence versus Dependence
Juridical Conceptions of Citizenship
Social Dimensions of Citizenship
Conclusion

 

3. Das Unheimliche

 

Introduction
Home/Homeless
Power Dynamics of Home/Homeless: The Uncanny
Political Manifestations of the Uncanny

 

4. Homelessness and Panopticism

 

Introduction
History and Background
Homelessness and Panopticism
Conclusion

 

5. Homeland, Homelessness, and Cosmopolitanism

 

Introduction
Self/Other
State Power, Identity, and the Nation-State
Capitalism and Globalization
Identity and Cosmopolitanism: A Politics of Homelessness
Cosmopolitan Citizenship

 

6. Debt, Guilt, and Responsibility: Schuld

Notes

Index

Explores the political and economic causes and consequences of homelessness.

Description

In the aftermath of September 11, donations to the poor and homeless have declined while ordinances against begging and sleeping in public have increased. The increased security of public spaces has been matched by a quest for increased security and surveillance of immigrants. In this groundbreaking study, Kathleen R. Arnold explores homelessness in terms of the globalization of the economy, national identity, and citizenship. She argues that domestic homelessness and conditions of statelessness, such as refugees, exiles, and poor immigrants, are defined and addressed in similar ways by the political sphere, in such a manner that each of these groups are subjected to policies that perpetuate their exclusion. Drawing on such authors as Freud, Marx, Foucault, Derrida, LĂ©vinas, and Agamben, Arnold argues for a radical politics of homelessness based on extending hospitality and the toleration of difference.

Kathleen R. Arnold is Assistant Professor of Political Science at The University of Texas at San Antonio.