Cast aside : boredom and homelessness in post-communist Bucharest, Romania
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Based on 30 months of ethnographic fieldwork with Romania's new homeless population, this dissertation details the experience of being cast aside in an era of radical economic reform by foregrounding the felt reality of boredom. Central to this dissertation is the historical novelty of homelessness in Romania. Prior to 1989, Communist-era employment and housing guarantees ensured most every Romanian's material subsistence. It was only after the fall of Communism, and in the wake of liberalization, that Romanians started living on the streets. Labeled "homeless" by western aid workers, a new shelter system quickly codified their status. This dissertation traces how the newly minted homeless experience and manage life on the streets through boredom. While boredom is typically thought of as a temporal phenomenon associated with privilege, this study draws upon ethnographic research that moves between homeless shelters, squatter camps, public parks and black labor markets to highlight boredom's spatial dimensions. Boredom, the homeless insist, is a marginal space lacking purposeful things to do. In this sense, the language of boredom captures homeless people's alienation from work and family but also from the pleasures of consumption. Once stuck in a space of boredom, homeless persons struggle to find relief by moving towards certain places and away from others in search of opportunity and excitement. This ethnography of boredom, in the end, provides empirical depth and analytical insight into how people make sense of contracting economic possibilities -- a reality for many in Bucharest, but also the world over following the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2013 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | O'Neill, Bruce Terence II |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Anthropology. |
| Primary advisor | Ferguson, James, 1959- |
| Thesis advisor | Ferguson, James, 1959- |
| Thesis advisor | Caldwell, Melissa L, 1969- |
| Thesis advisor | Malkki, Liisa H. (Liisa Helena) |
| Advisor | Caldwell, Melissa L, 1969- |
| Advisor | Malkki, Liisa H. (Liisa Helena) |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Bruce Terence O'Neill, II. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Anthropology. |
| Thesis | Ph.D. Stanford University 2013 |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2013 by Bruce T. O'Neill
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC-ND).
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