Homeless Placemaking: Spatial Resistance and the Demand for Social Visibility

• Main Author: Hudson, Jennifer
• Other Authors: Reynolds, Jennifer
• Language: en_US
• Published: University of Oregon 2016
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1794/19690

The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate the agency of the homeless, despite the general conception of the idle homeless body. In the first section I examine the discursive claims within the literature, along with the processes of social stigmatization that have contributed to the social invisibility of the homeless body. In the next part, I delve into the state-sanctioned, spatialized violence of stigma and value, which label the homeless body undeserving of space and social visibility. I conclude by highlighting the politics of homeless placemaking and how sites and spaces of normalcy and deviance are constructed and produced in the social imagination, examining the strategies the homeless often use to proclaim and reclaim their social visibility through placemaking politics. Ultimately, the intention is to reveal the logic that perpetuates a deep-rooted conflict over the nature of the public and between the (ill)legitimate users of public place. === 10000-01-01