After going over the readings in Vincent Lyon-Callos: Inequality, Poverty, And Neoliberal Governance: Activist Ethnography in the Homeless Sheltering Industry, we get an outline of the larger problem (hunger and homelessness) by attacking the micro incidents as mentioned in class. All the sub categories make up what we may think are the reasons why hunger and homelessness is not decreasing and instead increasing. One of the main points my group focused on was medicalizing homelessness. It is the theory or the usage of diagnosing, detecting and treating disorders. Most of the common disorders found for those who have become homeless in depression, sexual assault, loss of family member(s), and many others. It is the idea that there is something wrong with the individual not the society as a whole. It is the production of self-blame and self-governing that will allow one to get self-help treatments. For example if a homeless individual has a drug problem they can choose to go through a 12 step program, if another individual was sexually assaulted they go to counseling, things of this sort. By allowing volunteers and staff members of shelters to continue this belief and practice it promotes the repetition and assumptions that homeless people have something wrong with them, the notion that they have become homeless for one of those main reasons that are typically related or assumed of homeless in general.

The material and the first few chapters of the book are truly intriguing. The question that was asked by the professor startled me. Is this what is really occurring or does the author just want us to believe this. I think many of the stuff mentioned is true, at least from my personal experiences helping out in the shelters but I don’t think it is always the case.