Compassionate revanchism: The blurry geography of homelessness in the USA

Brian Hennigan and Jessie Speer
Additional contact information
Brian Hennigan: Maxwell School of Syracuse University, USA
Jessie Speer: Syracuse University, USA

Urban Studies, 2019, vol. 56, issue 5, 906-921

Abstract: In this article we move beyond the binary division between care and punishment in urban studies of homelessness to examine how caring institutions are themselves crucial to the punitive and exclusionary project of capitalist urbanisation. Based on ethnographic and archival analysis of homelessness management in Fresno, California, and Phoenix, Arizona, we show how punitive measures and institutions of care often emerge simultaneously and operate in tandem as part of a broader scheme for urban revitalisation. Further, we show how caring institutions themselves often perform the function of controlling homeless people’s movements in the city, while punitive institutions adopt more caring tactics. Thus, we argue for a focus on how compassion and criminalisation are regularly blurred.

Keywords: criminalisation; homelessness; public space; spaces of care; urban revitalisation; 刑罚; æ— å®¶å ¯å½’; 公共空间; 关怀空间; åŸŽå¸‚å¤ å…´ (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098018762012 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:56:y:2019:i:5:p:906-921

DOI: 10.1177/0042098018762012

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Urban Studies from Urban Studies Journal Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().