Shiloh Groot

From means to occasion: walking in the life of homeless people

This article discusses walking by homeless people, who were asked to take photographs of their everyday lives. These individuals walked to take their pictures, and they used their photographs to explain the walking that homeless people do. Stories about photographs taken were used to explain the significance of different modes of walking, as means, as condition and as occasion. Rather than see walking as integral with a kind of method – or ready-made technique – the authors argue that whatever walking ‘is’ emerges in the course of producing (not just analysing) that experience. They suggest that walking tears at the fabric of symbols and voiced conventions to produce traces and dissonances that invite repair – repair through ‘storying’ the journeys made.

Urban Poverty, Structural Violence and Welfare Provision for 100 Families in Auckland

Socioeconomic inequalities are increasing in many OECD countries, as are punitive welfare reforms that pathologise ‘the poor’. This article draws on the accounts of 100 families in Auckland to consider the impacts of increased social stratification and structural violence on their interactions with a government welfare agency. Each family was recruited through a food bank and was matched with a social worker who used a range of interview, mapping and drawing exercises to document their experiences of adversity over a one-year period. The analysis sheds new light on how institutionalised and abusive relations with these families manifest in spatially located urban interactions. It is argued that poverty is misrecognised at the institutional level and that this nurtures structural violence in service provision interactions.

Homemaking on the streets and beyond

Homemaking is associated with domiciled family life, community, and secure work. Moving beyond this perspective, we explore the experiences of people dislocated from family, community, and work, and their efforts to make a place for themselves. We consider a homeless mans efforts to make a home on the streets of Auckland in the absence of positive social ties, employment, and a domiciled abode. This case draws upon an auto-biographical interview, three photo-production projects and three photo-elicitation interviews with Daniel. We consider Daniels profound sense of loneliness and efforts at imagining a domiciled home beyond the streets where he can forge meaningful relationships. Daniel is now re-housed, in part, as a result of insights from this research being used in social work practice.

Looking within and beyond the community: Lessons learned by researching, theorising and acting to address urban poverty and health

Urban poverty and health inequalities are inextricably intertwined. By working in partnership with service providers and communities to address urban poverty, we can enhance the wellness of people in need. This article reflects on lessons learned from the Family100 project that explores the everyday lives, frustrations and dilemmas faced by 100 families living in poverty in Auckland. Lessons learned support the need to bring the experiences and lived realities of families to the fore in public deliberations about community and societal responses to urban poverty and health inequality.

The Infamy of Begging: A Case-Based Approach to Street Homelessness and Radical Commerce

First, this article explores begging and window washing as a form of radical commerce engaged in by an infamous homeless man in Auckland. Our approach brings to the fore the everyday spaces, tactics, and relationships that are central to the street life of Joshua. We consider how success as a breadwinner for Joshua’s street family not only engenders self-worth and a sense of belonging but also binds him to a street life that undermines his health. Second, we demonstrate the utility of the case as an essential tool for urban research in psychology. The case of Joshua is constructed from a series of informal, rapport-building conversations, a biographical interview through which Joshua offered an account of his life, and direct observations of Joshua window washing and begging. We also draw on a go-along interview where Joshua took us on a tour of his city, and four sets of photo-elicitation projects and corresponding follow up interviews that document key transitions for him between street and domiciled life.

Homelessness, mimesis, and the flânerie

As an intense repository for human existence, the contemporary city is textured by scenes of homelessness that manifest broader issues of inequality and poverty in society. This article explores material from photo-elicitation projects with 36 street homeless men in Auckland who were asked to go out into the city and picture their everyday lives. In interpreting the results, we draw on theoretical work on mimesis, urban mobilities, and social practice to conceptualize how homeless people attempt to convey aspects of street life. A core proposition is that in adopting the mobile analytic gaze of flânerie, participants produce photographs as memetic objects that enable them to show and articulate traces of the key places, features, rhythms, practices, and relationships of homelessness.

Debt in the Everyday Lives of 100 Families Experiencing Urban Poverty in New Zealand

Debt is at once a personal, relational and structural issue. Debt, as discussed in this chapter, involves debtors (who are stigmatised in society) and entrepreneurial fringe lenders. Concerns regarding debt, inequitable profiteering and associated servitude have taxed the intellectual capacity of societies for millennia. Debt has proved to be a site for struggle between rich and poor grounded in debates regarding interest, the seizure of persons and property, rebellion and amnesty (Graeber, 2011). Societies as far back as 2400 BC have addressed the social instabilities that stem from exploitative lending practices, wealth concentration for some lenders and deteriorations in living conditions and debt slavery for others through the introduction of jubilee or debt forgiveness periods (Hammurabi Code, 1762 BC). Forgiving “the poor” for the parasitic actions of lenders is something that barely registers as a realistic option today. Reluctance to forgive such debt is, in part, the product of a misguided morality, which binds debtors and dictates that they should pay “their” debts despite the predatory actions of lenders. It also reminds us that debt is seen differently by debtors and lenders. For the former it is often about survival and for the latter profit. Yet we almost exclusively hear the lenders’ perspectives. This chapter challenges such symbolic power by engaging the perspective of debtors in New Zealand.