I’ve been thinking a lot about privilege in this course recently, specifically, the privilege of academia. I wonder if it’s okay for a cadre of college students to volunteer their time at homeless shelters, groups homes, and the like. What ethical concerns should we have when thinking about ourselves in these contexts? Is it cool to just fill your 20 hours and bounce? Do you need to pass a certain bar to be justified in volunteering? I find it difficult to find distinction between ethical work and the pitfalls of “voluntarism” and voyeurism. Upon completion, have you done any good or contributed anything significant? Perhaps just the power of contextualization is important in it of itself – both in academic and personal senses. As we know, theory is useless without application and tangible review, but to what extent are we reinforcing armchair academia, and how can we mitigate the dissonance of what we learn in class, what we read for class, and the reality we find ourselves in.
Lyon-Callo’s book, “Inequality, Poverty, and Neoliberal Governance,” makes what I find to be an adequate structural analysis of the conditions – material and discursive – that produce, maintain, and perpetuate the features of homelessness and poverty. Lyon-Callo exposes the depth and various roots inherent in neoliberal hegemony – that neoliberalism frames homelessness in terms of individual production rather than a structural feature. I appreciate his analysis, and the use of Foucault’s insight on apparatuses of power, acknowledging the ways in which neoliberal hegemon is self-enforced. Macro analysis is crucial, and invaluable in intellectual discourse about policy direction. But just how useful is Lyon-Callo’s point in real life? I can’t reconcile the imperative to advocate implicit in his writing and just how out of touch it seems.