Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies current issue

Crank is Simply Another Name for Horse and Joe Means Coffee

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:01:16 PST

Critical Homelessness: Expanding Narratives of Inclusive Democracy

Finley, S., Diversi, M. — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:01:16 PST

The experience (as opposed to the concept) of homelessness is hardly part of the academic discourse in education, cultural studies, or human development. One of the central goals of our special issue is to create a bridge between homelessness as a personal experience and homelessness as a public issue. Along with the personal experience that breaks free from the deficit-model informing dominant notions of homelessness, we also want to bring attention to the politics in the construction of knowledge about homelessness. Starting from street folk’s textual representations of their visceral knowledge of homelessness, we offer a reading of current dominant narratives of homelessness: narratives of poverty as individual trouble (as opposed to systemic expression of ideologies of domination), narratives of personal choice (as in "choose the right" movements), and narratives of charity (as in "feel good about yourself for spending a week of your spring break vacation helping clean and build around Katrina").

Poverty Pimps in the Academy: A Dialogue About Subjectivity, Reflexivity, and Power in Decolonizing Production of Knowledge

Diversi, M., Finley, S. — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:01:16 PST

The authors often talk about the moral and ethical predicaments they experience working with marginalized populations. But such conversations, confessions, and verbalized doubts happened in intimate settings, often with out office doors closed or when the hallways are quiet and empty. This is not a whisper of secrecy or conspiracy but one of self-reflexive contemplation about the privilege differential between the authors and the humans they encounter in the streets as they conduct action research or simple walk around as citizen observers. Through this dialogue, the authors attempt to capture some of the conversations they have had about the unspoken internal conflict faced by the scholars, including the authors, doing forms of action research with fellow humans who continue to suffer under the self-righteous ideologies of justified domination. The central force behind this dialogical article is not to offer solutions but to problematize the lack of narrative space and language for the colonialist reenactments every poverty scholar have to live with, even as they aim at decolonizing and empowering scholarship. The authors hope this dialogue is evocative enough to invite others to further explore similar dilemmas of decolonizing scholarship.

Creature Comforts: Anaise

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:01:16 PST

Writing on the Margins from the Center: Homeless Youth + Politics at the Borders

Tierney, W. G., Hallett, R. E. — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:01:16 PST

Research with homeless youth requires negotiating with Institutional Review Boards (IRB), school districts, and social service agencies. Youth that are homeless live a life different from the researcher, thus issues of trust and caring need to be considered before asking a vulnerable young person to share his or her story. The authors share insight learned from a qualitative study of the educational barriers of homeless youth that highlight these issues. The overarching finding is that homeless youth are invisible and silenced in a social service system overwhelmed with red tape and bureaucratic procedures. The authors suggest that program developers, researchers, and policymakers give voice to homeless youth by listening to the stories they tell and then enacting policies that build on their recommendations.

December 2000, Street Roots

Tafari, J. — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:01:16 PST

Making a Living: The Gringo Ethnographer as Pimp of the Suffering in the Late Capitalist Night

Veissiere, S. P. L. — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:01:16 PST

Set in the criminalized, racialized, and sexualized streets of Salvador da Bahia, this article presents experimental ethnographic glimpses of the deeply transnational aspects of desire, suffering, and violence in the disintegrating public spaces of a Northeastern Brazilian city famous for its global tourism fuelled by transnational desire for and consumption of Afro-Brazilian culture and bodies. The author reflects on the possibility of critical engagement between academic ethnographers from the North and the sex workers, street kids, crack users, and other marginalized social actors who make a living in the street. Refraining from facile, depoliticized celebrations of grassroots "critical" anthropology and other fantasies about empowering the subaltern, the author depicts the terror-as-usual at Bahian-street livelihoods from the necessarily exploitative position of a gringo ethnographer who is also making a living and a career from writing about the suffering of others. While this article, like all of Veissière’s work, is ultimately committed to a search for postcolonial social justice and critical dialogues between intellectuals and the subaltern, it also contemplates the horror of being an academic pimp who sustains a livelihood from exploiting human suffering and violence.

Florida Afternoon

Kia, — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:01:16 PST

Lost in Translation

Hecht, T. — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:01:16 PST

Abused: Crank

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:01:16 PST

Issues of Power in Collaborative Research With Dignity Village

Mosher, H. I. — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:01:16 PST

In this article, the author will utilize her fieldnotes and videotaped interviews to reconstruct and reflect on her experiences and some of the ethical dilemmas she faced as a community partner in participatory action research with a self-governed homeless encampment called Dignity Village. The author’s yearlong facilitation utilized a democratic, collaborative, and inclusive process. Following the final stages of the research, an abrupt shift of power occurred in the community. She explores questions about her involvement in this power shift and whether the change was problematic or healthy for the community.

On Dignity Village

Samson, D. — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:01:16 PST

"Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothin' Left to Lose": The Power of Poetry for Young, Nomadic Women of the Streets

Finley, S. — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:01:16 PST

This article presents a street educator's experience of a poetry cooperative with female street youths as an example of performance pedagogy. Poetic voices of members of the cooperative are used to illustrate the pages of this special issue of CSCM in the text of this article and as they are scattered through the pagesof this special issue like graffiti on tunnel walls. In a coda to the article, the poetry collaborative is shown to be the catalyst for At Home At School (AHAS), a larger, ongoing performance pedagogy curriculum in use with homeless children and youths.

Searching for the Pink Fortress: Correspondence About Street Life

Talia, — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:01:16 PST

Kia's Song

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:01:16 PST

Between the Wizard and the Deep Blue Sea: Notes on Homeless Youth Advocacy and Community Coalition Building

Woolworth, S. — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:01:16 PST

This article features a series of short self-reflective narrative vignettes about the experiences that led me to build and ultimately lead a coalition of homeless youth advocates who began the challenging work of calling attention to the plight of homeless teenagers in a mid-size industrial Pacific Northwest city concerned primarily with providing for and controlling its chronic adult homeless population. In the essay I draw from personal memory, social policy history and data from a participatory action research project to shed light on both the institutional politics of homeless youth policy and the varied possibilities of sustained grassroots community advocacy.

Hurting Lovers: Crank

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:01:16 PST

This Is home, or Is It?: Disrupting Grand Narratives of Home as Physical or Institutional Space

Moreira, C. — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:01:16 PST

In this article, as suggest by the subtitle, I try to expose a kind of hidden homelessness. One that is not worse than others but important to bring to light. One where narratives are missing. One that goes against the essentializing of home as a middle-class heterosexual construction while not negating the desire for a home by the ones that have none.This is a textual performance about the idea of linking traditional notions of home with how academic knowledge is constructed about the homeless—by disrupting grand narratives of home as physical or institutional space. It is a decolonizing performance autoethnography exposing homelessness that returns its gaze into the process of knowledge production in the hope that by reflecting on how knowledge is produced, troubling the Western concept of home, we academics may create narratives that help more people feel housed.

Poison Pen Letters to My Sisters

Finley, M. — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:01:16 PST

Erratum

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:01:16 PST

In the article "Rehearsing Disaster’s Rehearsal: The Election and Its Aftermath in Obamerica" (DOI: 10.1177/1532708609348586), by Peter McLaren, published in December 2009 issue (Volume 9, Number 6) of Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, there were five corrections which were not incorporated correctly. The description is as follows: