Overview
- Provides a significant contribution to our understanding of homelessness by focusing on the service providers rather than on the alleged pathologies of the homeless
- Offers valuable insights for scholars and activists working in the areas of homelessness and the management of urban poverty
- Includes an empirically rich and theoretically nuanced account of the emerging geographies and spaces of urban poverty and homelessness, as well as urban anti-poverty policies
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
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Table of contents (9 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
The book uses Athens as a case study to identify the key features of urban anti-poverty policies in Greece and to discuss them in relation to policy developments in the crisis-ridden countries of Southern Europe. The idea of contested landscapes shapes the focus of the book on urban poverty and homelessness. Contested landscapes refer to the complex dynamics between visible and invisible poverty and to competing strategies on how to address them. The book takes a path-dependent view on the development of post-welfare arrangements, devolution, and pluralism that are being shaped by both neoliberal mentality, solidarity and communitarian practices. The authors draw on their own research and advocacy background in New York and Athens to shape their conceptual and methodological tools; however, rather than uncritically ‘importing’ North American and North European concepts to Greece, the book highlights the significance of distinctive Mediterranean features for analysing homelessness and anti-poverty policies. This will be a useful read for academics policy makers in areas of urban studies, sociology, social policy, human geography and anthropology.
Reviews
“This book is about homelessness and poverty and the ways their relation is addressed under conditions of severe recession and neoliberal hegemony. Southern European cities are showcases not only of extreme recession conditions, lack of welfare policies know-how, imposed –or self-imposed– austerity regimes, but also of community-based alternatives to address social problems. A must-read towards understanding the barriers that obstruct the advancement of sustainable alternatives to poverty management.” (Thomas Maloutas, Harokopio University, Athens)
“This is the first book length analysis of homelessness in Southern Europe and represents a high quality, original contribution to the field. The case study of Athens is an illuminating account of the struggles, tensions and contradictions in responding tocontemporary homelessness, where differing actors and ideologies clash over what they believe to be the cause of homelessness and in turn most appropriate response to homelessness.” (Eoin O’Sullivan, Trinity College, Dublin)
“Contested Landscapes is a superb analysis of new geographies of poverty and homelessness in Southern European cities, where IMF/EU policies of austerity have created vast populations of invisible and visible poor people. Combining history, geography, and ethnography, the authors paint landscapes of welfare state devolution, institutional responses to destitution, and communitarian efforts to alleviate exclusion, and homelessness. The refugee crisis throws the book’s already powerful conclusions into high relief.” (Jennifer Wolch, University of California, Berkeley)
Authors and Affiliations
About the authors
Vassilis P. Arapoglou is Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Crete, Greece. His research concentrates on poverty, residential segregation, the integration of migrants in cities, and urban social policies from a comparative perspective.
Kostas Gounis is Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Crete, Greece. His research, initially undertaken in New York City, has dealt with homelessness, the survival strategies of the new urban poor and the role of psychiatry and mental health policy in addressing urban social problems.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Contested Landscapes of Poverty and Homelessness In Southern Europe
Book Subtitle: Reflections from Athens
Authors: Vassilis P. Arapoglou, Kostas Gounis
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62452-5
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-62451-8Published: 02 October 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-87315-2Published: 18 August 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-62452-5Published: 15 September 2017
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XV, 149
Number of Illustrations: 12 b/w illustrations
Topics: Urban Studies/Sociology, Urban Geography / Urbanism (inc. megacities, cities, towns), Social Structure, Social Inequality, Social Justice, Equality and Human Rights, Development Aid