“This Is Where You Are Supposed to Be”: How Homeless Individuals Cope with Stigma

Rayburn, Rachel L; Guittar, Nicholas A.

doi:10.1080/02732173.2013.732876

Cited by 44 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…My results also indicate that the prideful discussions and embellishments of the past described in previous research (Boydell, Goering, and Morrell‐Bellai ; Rayburn and Guittar ) are not used by all shelter residents. These differences may be related to different institutional contexts.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 68%

“…Other specific strategies of salvaging the self also contain temporal components, such as ''fictive storytelling,'' which ranges from embellishment of and fantasizing about the past, present, or future, to, in extreme cases, a retreat into alternative realities (Snow and Anderson 1993). Rayburn and Guittar (2013) find similar strategies among shelter residents. While Snow and Anderson define such stories as fundamentally inconsistent with reality, Mead would view all respondents' narratives of the past as symbolically reconstructed, not just those seen as patently fictive.…”

Section: Homelessness Shelters and The Moral Careermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The homeless are among the most stigmatized groups in the United States (Phelan et al ), and individuals contend with this label by engaging in identity work and strategies of stigma management to “salvage the self” (Rayburn and Guittar ; Snow and Anderson , ; Roschelle and Kaufman ; see also Cohen ). While not explicitly engaging Mead or Goffman, there are hints of temporality in this work.…”

Section: Homelessness Shelters and The Moral Careermentioning

confidence: 99%

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Profaning the Past to Salvage the Present: The Symbolically Reconstructed Pasts of Homeless Shelter Residents

Meanwell

2013

Symbolic Interaction

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Homelessness presents challenges for maintaining a positive self-concept, and those seeking help from homeless shelters face a particular irony: establishing service-worthiness requires them to present themselves as homeless, not self-sufficient, and genuinely in need of help, yet also morally worthy of that help. How do shelter residents manage this tension and salvage the self within the institutional context of the shelter? A theoretical framework linking Mead, Goffman, and narrative helps clarify strategies of self-presentation and salvaging the self within the homeless shelter context. Drawing on interviews with 44 shelter residents, this paper demonstrates that residents construct narratives that symbolically reconstruct the past from the standpoint of the present, and draw on the stages of the shelter's moral career to present a temporally-divided self, allowing residents to strategically profane the past self while keeping the present self separate and sacred. Implications for research on other institutional selves are also discussed.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 68%

Section: Homelessness Shelters and The Moral Careermentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Homelessness Shelters and The Moral Careermentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Profaning the Past to Salvage the Present: The Symbolically Reconstructed Pasts of Homeless Shelter Residents

Meanwell

2013

Symbolic Interaction

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“…In terms of understanding the process of identity work, one founding and influential study is Snow and Anderson's (1987) study of the identity work of homeless people (Fletcher, 2010;Irvine, Kahl and Smith, 2012;Rayburn and Guittar, 2013). This identified three forms of discursive framings that have been explored and developed in more recent work.…”

Section: Identity Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bricolage and Identity Work

Visscher

Heusinkveld

O’Mahoney

2017

British J of Management

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Lévi‐Strauss’ concept of bricolage has been used widely in a variety of management and organizational studies to highlight creative ‘situational tinkering’. Yet, we know little about ‘the bricoleur’ beyond the assumption of a functional agent responding to conditions of resource scarcity or environmental complexity. As such, studies offer limited possibilities in explaining the occurrence of bricolage in the absence of external demands, or much about who the bricoleur is. Drawing on 136 in‐depth interviews with management consultants, this study argues for a richer understanding of bricolage by exploring the identity of the bricoleur. In doing so, the paper achieves three outcomes. First, it uses the original symbolic and cultural insights of bricolage made by Lévi‐Strauss to detail how bricoleur identities are constructed; Second, it highlights how different organizational strategies enable and constrain the pursuit of bricoleur identities; Finally, it emphasizes the bricoleur's status as primarily an aspirational elite identity in the context of consultancy work, in contrast to its usual treatment as a ‘low status’ activity.

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“…Research demonstrates that homeless individuals also use various strategies to create an identity that helps establish and maintain a personal sense of dignity and selfworth (Rayburn & Guittar, 2013;Snow & Anderson, 1987;Stodulka, 2009). For instance, Snow and Anderson (1987) found that homeless individuals used three strategies to create an identity that fosters a sense of self-worth.…”

Section: Identity Creationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Homeless men

Fall¹

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Research literature on homelessness makes frequent reference to shame, but with little inquiry into the role shame may play in the lives of homeless men. This study used Consensual Qualitative Research methodology (Hill, Thompson, & Williams, 1997) to interview 24 men in a small Midwestern city to explore how homeless men experience shame. The results from this study indicate that shame is experienced as a "painful sense of worthlessness and failure" whereby men attribute their homelessness to their own perceived characterological flaws. To avoid the painful experience of shame and stigma, homeless men appear to develop and use defense strategies. While the defense strategies may help alleviate the effects of shame and stigma in the immediate, the strategies appear to negatively affect opportunities that facilitate an exodus from homelessness. This study also found that despite living in a transitional shelter, rare mention was made of plans to exit homelessness. Presented too are the limitations and implications of this research.

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“This Is Where You Are Supposed to Be”: How Homeless Individuals Cope with Stigma

Cited by 44 publications

References 26 publications

Profaning the Past to Salvage the Present: The Symbolically Reconstructed Pasts of Homeless Shelter Residents

Profaning the Past to Salvage the Present: The Symbolically Reconstructed Pasts of Homeless Shelter Residents

Bricolage and Identity Work

Homeless men

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