Topographical borders are socially accepted aspects of a globalizing world; societies are divided, boundaries are marked, and walls, roads, and checkpoints distinguish countries from one another. With the use of physical borders comes the designation of space, and with the designation of space comes the bounding of individuals to territory. In this way, the lack of residency, or topographical ownership, disables a person’s designation to a space, unmaking their spatial stake in society. Persons become categorized as ‘bounded’ and ‘unbounded’, ‘with home’ or ‘homeless’ and eventually, ‘citizens’ and ‘non-citizens’. This correlation between boundaries and societal categorizations manifests itself prominently in the homeless population of post-Soviet …show more content…
Pierre Bourdieu explains that sub-cultures construct themselves “in terms of their distance from the dominant culture” (Bourdieu, 1979:79). The dominant culture then, becomes legitimate only in its distinction from the sub-culture. Social borders aid in perpetuating this distinction by creating bounded constructs of class and further perpetuating them in society. In this paper I will distinguish between physical borders and social borders, the latter defining the clash of cultures that often happens when a physical border falls, or when cultural opposites come into contact and cannot find a common ground of mutual acceptance. In terms of the homeless population in Russia, we see this ‘social border’ emerge even at the very beginnings of the post-Soviet era, when the physical borders segregating the homeless from the mainstream society fell, allowing homeless sub-cultures and Russian dominant culture to collide.
Policy Changes Regarding Homelessness from Soviet to Post-Soviet
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These were areas of space that people were legally linked to based on their region of registration as stated in their propiska. Persons found without proper documentation where institutionalized, confined to prisons, and sent to detention holding centers (Stephenson, 2006: 159). The propiska “became the precondition for all benefits and civil rights: jobs, housing, medical insurance, public assistance, ration cards, education, the right to vote, even access to public libraries” (Höjdestrand, 2009: 24). For the homeless, this stratification in Moscow meant that they were given a plot of land behind the 101st kilometer, which Stephenson describes as a space where “social waste was removed” (Stephenson, 2006:
Mark Peterson’s 1994 photograph, Image of Homelessness, compares the everyday life of the working class to the forgotten life of the lowest class in society. In the image, the viewer can see a troubled homeless man wrapped in a cocoon of standard manipulated 12in by 12in cardboard boxes and yarn. The yarn is what is keeping the man and box tied to the red bench. This bench has chipped paint and is right in front of a black fence. Underneath the bench is dirt and debris from the dead fall leaves. The center focal point is the homeless man on the bench. He is the focal point because he is the greatest outsider known to man. Behind this man is vibrant life. There is pulsating people crossing the clean street, signs of life from all the advertising on store windows, families walking and blurred cars filled with
Living conditions in eastern Europe during communism wasn't very pleasant. The government had control over apartment, and how they were divided and shared. Under the communist policy free apartment was provided to works. Slavenka Drakulic mention that “the government divided big apartments into rooms, forcing complete strangers to live in a kind of commune.” (87
Even with the daily struggle faced by youth in obtaining shelter and homelessness becoming a reality for a growing number of Canadians, Canada, with its high quality of life is one country that has always had a global long-standing reputation. This paper will be working towards giving the reader a better understanding with regards to homeless youth. It will be focusing on the reasons why they leave home, their lives on the street and steps they are trying to take to be able to leave the streets. An important finding from this research suggests, “the street youth population is diverse, complex, and heterogeneous”. According to Karabanow, made up of a number of subcultures including hardcore street-entrenched young people, squatters, group home kids, child welfare kids, soft-core twinkles, runaways, throwaways, refugees and immigrants is the generic term ‘street youth’.
The idea of homelessness is not an effortlessly characterized term. While the normal individual comprehends the essential thought of vagrancy, analysts in the sociological field have connected conflicting definitions to the idea of homelessness, justifiably so as the thought includes a measurement more exhaustive than a peculiar meaning of a single person without living arrangement. Homelessness embodies a continuum running from the nonappearance of a changeless safe house to poor living courses of action and lodging conditions. As per Wolch et al. (1988), homelessness is not an unexpected experience rather it is the zenith of a long procedure of investment hardship, disconnection, and social disengagement that has influenced a singular or family. Furthermore, states of vagrancy may come in fluctuating structures, for example, road habitation, makeshift home in safe houses, or help from administration associations, for example, soup kitchens and the Salvation Army. Homeless is characterized as those regularly poor and, once in a while, rationally sick individuals who are unable to uphold a spot to live and, subsequently, regularly may rest in boulevards, parks, and so forth (Kenyon 1991).
The Soviet citizens during the 1930s, particularly the younger ones, believed “they were participants in a history process of transformation, their enthusiasm for what was called ‘the building of socialism’” (68). The Soviets built hotels, palaces, and had blueprints displayed all throughout “that was supposed to set a pattern for urban planning throughout the country and provide a model of the socialist capital for foreigners” (69).
Sociology is very complicated, it’s full of terms that can be misinterpreted. For example, social location is interpreted several ways. The most common it the assumption that it’s where you live, in actuality, it’s who you are, your social class, education, gender, race, ethnicity, and the culture. Your social location is affected, by sociological perspective, Henslin (2015) notes, “sociological perspective which stresses the social contexts where people live” (p. 2). As humans, we have to overcome social challenges every day some of us more than other.
The four sociological perspectives provide a brief detailed description of how different types of sociologists would consider what a disturbing and complex social issue this was. However, the above examples of symbolic interactionist, functionalist, conflict and postmodernist theorist responses to homelessness represents how these four perspectives would address a problem that has proved to be a persistent and difficult matter to resolve.
homelessness” (Belcher, J.R., & Deforge, B. R., 2012) . The institutions itself creates an avenue to have people
In the second half of the nineteenth century, after almost 30 years of general calm, the Polish people once again began protesting Russian rule. Meetings were held and discussions raged about reforms and emancipatio...
Franklin, Simon and Emma Widdis, eds. National Identity in Russian Culture: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004.
Rosen, Nick. Off the Grid: Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True
Domosh, Mona, Roderick Neumann, Patricia Price, and Terry Jordan-Bychkov. The Human Mosaic: A Cultural Approach to Human Geography. 11thth ed. New York: W.H. Freeman and Company, 2010. N. pag. Print.
Problems raised surround the border, the border conflicts, bring out the need of a border thinking. Because border has already imbued with oppositions, the interaction happened in the border is also problematic. Conflicts happen not only identity conflict but also classed, racial, language etc. Mignolo and Tlostanova argue that this kind of “thinking or theorizing emerges from and as a response to the violence (frontiers), modernity, and globalization that continues to be implemented on the assumption of the inferiority or devilish intentions of the Other and, therefore continues to justify oppression and exploitation as well as eradication of the difference” (206). Kanellos affirms that people who cross borders either physically or symbolically or even in both ways “construct more than one national identity at a time or deconstruct and reject them all” (34). In the process of constructing the identity,
Urban dwellers should use value space as the main consideration while creating urban space. In this text, the right to appropriation dismisses the idea of private ownership of urban space. It is against private ownership of urban space for capitalist production (Lefebvre, 1996). Therefore, Lefebvre’s vision about the right to the city is a radical renovation of urban social and spatial relations. In this way, it would be able to transform present liberal-democratic citizenship relations and the capitalist social relations. The right to appropriation would transform these relations as explained by Lefebvre. The central model of citizenship is completely upended by Lefebvre’s idea of the right to participation. Lefebvre’s notion involves much more than the simple enlargement of the already existing liberal-democratic citizenship because of governance change. It the change of citizenship that matters other factors may also change in case there is change in urban governance. This means that urban inhabitance can directly confront the national citizenship as the central basis for political connection. Urban inhabitance has direct influence on political membership (Lefebvre, 1996). For example, citizens of Vietnam, U.S, and Mexico can equally become members of a particular city. They have the right to be inhabitants despite being immigrants. If they are in certain city
According to Repko, integration literally means, “to make whole”. Repko further defines integration as the process by which ideas; information and theories from two or more disciplines are used to solve a complex issue. The demonization of Arabs and Muslims in the Western media is an ongoing issue that has created many racial and ethnic stereotypes over the years. Interdisciplinary brings together two important parts. Inter means two or more and disciplinary refers to a specialization in a particular field of study (Repko). With the rise of Islamophobia over the years and the recent hate crimes committed in Dearborn, North Carolina and Texas, an integrative approach to end the negative portraits of Arabs and Muslims in the media is needed more