Darrin Hodgetts

A trip to the library: homelessness and social inclusion

This article explores homeless mens visits to a public library. It shows how homeless men identified the library as a space for safety and social participation, at a time when the regional newspaper published an item questioning the appropriateness of their presence in the library. The news report promotes universal narratives that would exclude homeless people, showing the intimate relationship between the symbolic space of news, the material space of the local library, and the lifeworlds of homeless men. We report fieldwork in which we interviewed homeless men, library staff and patrons. In addition, we worked with journalists on follow-up articles foregrounding the positive function of the library in homeless mens lives, and to challenge existing news narratives that advocate the exclusion of ‘the homeless’ from prime public spaces.

‘Near and Far’ Social Distancing in Domiciled Characterisations of Homeless People

For domiciled individuals, homeless people provide a disturbing reminder that all is not right with the world. Reactions to seeing homeless people frequently encompass repulsion, discomfort, sympathy and sometimes futility. This paper considers domiciled constructions of homeless people drawn from interviews with 16 participants recruited in the central business district of a New Zealand city. It documents how, when trying to make sense of this complex social problem, domiciled people draw on shared characterisations of homeless people. The concept of ‘social distance’ is used to interrogate the shifting and sometimes incongruous reactions evident in participant accounts. ‘Social distancing’ is conceptualised as a dynamic communal practice existing in interactions between human beings and reflected in the ways that domiciled people talk about their experiences with homeless individuals.

Health inequalities and homelessness : Considering material, spatial and relational dimensions

Homelessness is a pressing health concern involving material hardship, social marginalization and restrained relationships between homeless and housed people. This article links relational aspects of homelessness, and its health consequences, with material and spatial considerations through the use of photo-elicitation interviews with 12 rough sleepers in London. We highlight the relevance of embodied deprivation for a health psychology that is responsive to the ways in which social inequalities can get under the skin of homeless people and manifest as health disparities.

The mobile hermit and the city: considering links between places, objects, and identities in social psychological research on homelessness.

This article explores aspects of a homeless mans everyday life and his use of material objects to maintain a sense of place in the city. We are interested in the complex functions of walking, listening and reading as social practices central to how this man forges a life as a mobile hermit across physical and imagined locales. This highlights connections between physical place, use of material objects, imagination, and sense of self. Our analysis illustrates the value of paying attention to geographical locations and objects in social psychological research on homelessness.

Gardens, Transitions and Identity Reconstruction among Older Chinese Immigrants to New Zealand

Psychologists have foregrounded the importance of links between places and daily practices in the construction of subjectivities and well-being. This article explores domestic gardening practices among older Chinese immigrants. Initial and follow-up interviews were conducted with 32 Chinese adults ranging in age from 62 to 77 years. Participants recount activities such as gardening as a means of forging a new sense of self and place in their adoptive country. Gardening provides a strategy for self-reconstruction through spatiotemporally establishing biographical continuity between participants’ old lives in China and their new lives in New Zealand.

Developing a Critical Media Research Agenda for Health Psychology

This article outlines reasons why psychologists should concern themselves with media processes, noting how media are central to contemporary life and heavily implicated in the construction of shared understandings of health. We contend that the present research focus is substantially medicalized, privileging the investigation and framing of certain topics, such as the portrayal of health professionals, medical practices, specific diseases and lifestyle-orientated interventions, and restricting attention to social determinants of health as appropriate topics for investigation. We propose an extended agenda for media health research to include structural health concerns, such as crime, poverty, homelessness and housing and social capital.

Mediation and the Construction of Contemporary Understandings of Health and Lifestyle

The practice of using media to promote the benefits of diet and exercise has been associated with the rise in prominence of a sense of personal obligation for one’s own health. This article contributes to recent critiques of the emphasis being placed on individual responsibility for health. We argue that if health psychologists are to develop an adequately social understanding of our role in promoting health, then we must begin to examine the influence of our practices and agendas on public understandings. Extracts from research accounts are used to illustrate the pervasiveness of media health messages in everyday life and the prominence of a sense of individual responsibility.

'The Problem with Men': Working-class Men Making Sense of Men's Health on Television.

Men have higher rates of premature death than women, and may arguably have higher rates of serious illness. One explanation often suggested to account for this is that men are considered to be stoical about illness and reluctant to seek help for it. This article explores the role of media representations in the construction of men’s views about health. We investigate how a small group of lower socio-economic status men make sense of the reluctance to seek help notion through an analysis of texts from three sources: a television health documentary, individual interviews with the men and a focus group discussion in which the men discuss the documentary. The television documentary frames its presentation to promote early detection and help-seeking. We conclude that televised coverage of men’s health is an important site of social discourse through which men’s health is rendered meaningful. However, it is not accepted passively, but negotiated, resisted and interpreted into men’s lives.

'Just do it': An analysis of accounts of control over health amongst lower socioeconomic status groups

Recent interest in health inequalities research has focused upon psychosocial factors such as a sense of control. Previous work has sought to measure or describe personal beliefs about control over health without addressing the contradictory and rhetorical dimensions of such accounts. These issues are explored through an analysis of interviews with 30 lower socioeconomic status (SES) participants drawn from two qualitative studies of health inequalities. Key findings concern the rhetorical construction and interweaving of two contrasting positions regarding control over health: fatalism and positive thought. Fatalistic talk provided a means by which participants acknowledged their limited control over health, although not in an exclusively negative manner. Talk about thinking positively enabled participants to present themselves as having agency in the face of adversity. The creative interweaving of these two positions in accounts of control over health enabled participants to navigate the moral imperative of responsibility for health in the context of adverse and capricious circumstance. By foregrounding the social character of accounts of control the significance of moral and ethical dimensions for health inequalities research and practice are highlighted.

Home as a hybrid centre of medication practice

This article presents research that explores how medications are understood and used by people in everyday life. An intensive process of data collection from 55 households was used in this research, which included photo-elicitation and diary-elicitation interviews. It is argued that households are at the very centre of complex networks of therapeutic advice and practice and can usefully be seen as hybrid centres of medication practice, where a plethora of available medications is assimilated and different forms of knowledge and expertise are made sense of. Dominant therapeutic frameworks are tactically manipulated in households in order for medication practices to align with the understandings, resources and practicalities of households. Understanding the home as a centre of medication practice decentralises the role of health advisors (whether mainstream or alternative) in wellness practices.