Understanding The Nature Of Homlessness

Below is a free term papers summary of the paper "Understanding The Nature Of Homlessness." If you sign up, you can be reading the rest of this term papers in under two minutes. Registered users should login to view this term paper.

Term Paper Title	Understanding The Nature Of Homlessness
# of Words	1898
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	7.59

Understanding The Nature of Homlessness

Understanding The Nature of Homlessness

     I knew that I would encounter homelessness when I came to Berkeley.  I
was expecting it, because just about everybody I knew had something to say about
the rumors they'd heard filter over from the West Coast.  Coming from New York,
however, I figured I'd seen it all, and would be in control over whatever I
would be up against.  Reality quickly hit me, though, as I began to familiarize
myself with Berkeley and its main streets.  I'd never seen anything quite like
Telegraph Avenue and People's Park.  No matter how much poverty one has seen
throughout the course of their lives, it's far more difficult to accept when it
occurs in areas of high concentration.
     Understanding the nature of homeless people asking for money and their
interactions with people walking up and down a main street such as Telegraph
Avenue is a difficult task.  This observation process, which took place on
Telegraph Avenue watching the homeless at "work", was difficult because of the
wealth of information one could find in simply watching as one person asked
another for money.  We looked for a number of signals in the interactions,
considering people's ages, how they reacted physically, whether or not they
communicated verbally, their demeanor throughout the interaction, and the
importance of eye-contact. We must also wrestle with the ambiguity of the power
structure within the situation, because it is not nearly as clear as it seems.
In the end, we will try to decipher the true nature of these confrontations,
concluding by comparing the analysis of these situations to those found in the
works of Erving Goffman and Robin Leidner.

INTERACTIONS

     The difficulty in defining the parameters of dominance within the
interaction comes in understanding the disparity between the social status of
the person being asked for money and the status of the individual begging for
it; the real science lies in determining how little that difference actually
matters.  Socially, the respective status of each individual should be quite
clear.  The person walking down the street is probably either employed or a
student.  The stereotypical homeless person, on the other hand, may have alcohol
or drug problems, may be suffering from schizophrenia, and is clearly not
capable of functioning within the confines of mainstream society.  Clearly,
according to unwritten rules of our community, the employed person has a much
higher social ...

This is not the end of the termpaper! Register below to see the complete version of this term paper.

Membership Plans	Credit Card	Check

1 month membership

3 month membership (You Save 50%)

6 month membership (You Save 67%)

Copyright © 2002-2007 Mid Term Papers. All rights reserved. This term papers website is used for research purposes only.
If you have forgotten your username or password, please click here.
If you like to cancel your account, please click here.

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22