Andrea Lopez

Publication Date

Spring 12-1-2014

Abstract

This dissertation examines a subset of urban poor women who live at the nexus of poverty and housing instability and who are exposed to multiple forms of violence and intense bodily suffering. I conducted two years of ethnographic research with a cohort of unstably housed women who have long histories of illicit drug use and who cycle between multiple single room occupancy hotels in two San Francisco neighborhoods. In this dissertation, I take as my analytic object the examination of the key institutional sites (what I call the local geography of hypermarginality) and the strategies for intervention deployed by the state in an attempt to ameliorate the conditions of extreme poverty. This dissertation has three central findings. First, even in a relatively rich resource context such as San Francisco, significant structural deficiencies and grave fragmentation of services limit the effectiveness of well-intentioned interventions. Second, institutional interventions administered by the left hand of the state,' even as they draw on compassionate principles, are contradictory in nature and simultaneously deploy compassion and care with punitive and moralistic logics. Finally, this configuration results in a situation where women's hypermarginality is reinforced by the institutions tasked with helping them.'

Keywords

poverty, drug use, hypermarginality, the state

Document Type

Dissertation

Language

English

Degree Name

Anthropology

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

Anthropology

First Committee Member (Chair)

Les W. Field

Second Committee Member

Louise Lamphere

Third Committee Member

Cathleen Willging

Fourth Committee Member

Philippe Bourgois

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