Empowerment and the Transition to Housing for Homeless Mentally Ill People: An Anthropological Perspective

Often lacking in scholarly and policy-oriented discussions of homelessness are contextualized understandings of the problems faced, and the values held, by homeless mentally ill people. This article, using an anthropological perspective, examines issues that arise for homeless mentally ill individuals in making the transition from shelter living to permanent residences. The transition occurs as part of a housing initiative driven by the philosophy of consumer empowerment. Project participants are placed in independent apartments or evolving consumer households (ECH) — shared, staffed residences designed to transform themselves into consumer-directed living situations over time. The effects of an empowerment paradigm on the organization of space, the nature of social relations, and the management of economic resources in the ECHs are discussed to show that consumers and staff sometimes have contrasting views of what empowerment entails. It is suggested that anthropological research can help to illuminate the issues at stake in determining policy for homeless people with major mental illness

Electrical conductivity in oxygen-deficient phases of transition metal oxides from first-principles calculations.

Density-functional theory calculations, ab-initio molecular dynamics, and the Kubo-Greenwood formula are applied to predict electrical conductivity in Ta2Ox (0x5) as a function of composition, phase, and temperature, where additional focus is given to various oxidation states of the O monovacancy (VOn; n=0,1+,2+). Our calculations of DC conductivity at 300K agree well with experimental measurements taken on Ta2Ox thin films and bulk Ta2O5 powder-sintered pellets, although simulation accuracy can be improved for the most insulating, stoichiometric compositions. Our conductivity calculations and further interrogation of the O-deficient Ta2O5 electronic structure provide further theoretical basis to substantiate VO0 as a donor dopant in Ta2O5 and other metal oxides. Furthermore, this dopant-like behavior appears specific to neutral VO cases in both Ta2O5 and TiO2 and was not observed in other oxidation states. This suggests that reduction and oxidation reactions may effectively act as donor activation and deactivation mechanisms, respectively, for VO0 in transition metal oxides

Sensate Image: Fieldwork in Photography, in Nepal

This paper attends to the significance of sensory perception and experience in South Asia by considering the many, sometimes vexed ways that photography can serve as a means of anthropological and phenomenological inquiry into the matters of the world. It consists primarily of a set of narrative and analytic reflections on the author’s ethnographic fieldwork in the summer of 2011, in which I traveled to the Yolmo region in northcentral Nepal to construct a photo-ethnographic portrait of the peoples who live in that region. In returning to villages where I had once lived, and motivated by James Agee’s plea “to perceive simply the cruel radiance of what is,” I sought to capture in photographic imagery the sensate methods and phenomenal knack of life in the villages. Through these engagements I came to reflect on the complicated ethics and politics of photoethnographic work; the sense of differing cultural aesthetics informing the creation and evaluation of photographs; the aura of care often imbued in photographic imagery; pacings of time and memory; and the intricate play between sensory perception and invocation, and text and image

Sur les traces de la violence

Que se passe-t-il lorsque la violence sème le chaos ? Dans la nuit du 13 novembre 2015, la ville de Paris est ainsi dévastée par une série d’attentats, les attentats-suicides au Stade de France, l’attaque du Bataclan, et les fusillades dans plusieurs bars et restaurants. À l’été 2016, l’anthropologue Robert Desjarlais se rend à Paris. Il commence à réfléchir sur l’intensité des attentats et les effets de la violence sur la vie et l’histoire de la ville. En visitant les lieux des attentats, il rencontre les traces de la violence et il étudie les mémoriaux collectifs avec les mots et les images sur les murs des bâtiments. Il propose ce livre qui est une réflexion originale sur la violence dans le monde contemporain, ainsi que sur la politique de la mémoire et de l’oubli

The Blind Man: A Phantasmography [TABLE OF CONTENTS]

“Emerging from an unknown body, enthralling images, and lacerating silences, The Blind Man is written with the force of literature. Desjarlais’s fierce masterpiece reawakens anthropology’s sense of wonder with the affective, spectral nature of worldly encounters. A transformational book.”—João Biehl, Princeton University The Blind Man: A Phantasmography examines the complicated forces of perception, imagination, and phantasms of encounter in the contemporary world. In considering photographs he took while he was traveling in France, anthropologist and writer Robert Desjarlais reflects on a few pictures that show the features of a man, apparently blind, who begs for money at a religious site in Paris. He begins to imagine what this man’s life is like and how he perceives the world around him. Written in journal form, the book narrates Desjarlais’s pursuit of the man portrayed in the photographs. He travels to Paris and tries to meet with him. Eventually, Desjarlais becomes unsure as to what he sees, hears, or remembers. Through these interpretive dilemmas he senses the complexities of perception, where all is multiple, shifting, spectral, a surge of phantasms in which the actual and the imagined are endlessly blurred and intertwined. His own vision is affected in a troubling way. Robert Desjarlais is an award-winning anthropologist and writer teaching at Sarah Lawrence College

Picturing homelessness

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Ni patients ni victimes

Weder Patient, noch Opfer Zur Ethnographie politischer Gewalttätigkeit Die amerikanische Vereinigung fur Psychiatrie fasst die Einzelnen zugefügte Gewalttätigkeit politischen Charakters ausschliesslich mittels der Kategorie des post-traumatischen Syndroms. Ohne die Nützlichkeit der ärztlichen Betreuung leugnen zu wollen, ist festzuhalten, dass diese Medikalisierung des Leidens die Betroffenen zu blossen Kranken werden lässt, und die soziale Seite des Traumatismus beiseite schiebt. Demgegenüber interessiert sich die Ethnographie politischer Gewalttätigkeit fur den besonderen Kontext eines jeden Falls von Gewalttätigkeit und bemüht sich um die Untersuchung der Verflechtung des Sozialen mit dem Individuellen. Der Ansatz behandelt Gewalttätigkeit als ein kulturelles Problem, an dem nicht nur diejenigen beteiligt sind, die zufugen bzw, leiden, sondern auch all die anderen sozialen Akteure, die die-selbe aufzeigen, behandeln, beobachten und analysieren.Neither Patients nor Victims Towards and Ethnography of Political Violence The American Association of Psychiatry interprets the political violence done to persons in terms of post-traumatic syndrome. Without denying the usefulness of the care that medicine dispenses, it has to be observed that this medicalization of suffering transforms people into invalids and leaves aside the social dimension of the trauma. By contrast, the ethnography of political violence is concerned with the particular context of each history of violence and strives to study the imbrication of the social and the individual. This approach treats violence as a cultural problem participated in not only those who inflict it and those who suffer it, but also all the other social actors, who point it out, treat it, observe it or analyse it.Pour une ethnographie de la violence politique L'association américaine de psychiatrie appréhende la violence politique faite aux personnes à travers la catégorie de syndrome post-traumatique. Sans nier l'utilité des soins que le médecin dispense, on notera que cette médicalisation de la souffrance transforme les personnes en malades et laisse de côté la dimension sociale du traumatisme. À l'inverse, l'ethnographie de la violence politique s'intéresse au contexte singulier de chaque histoire de violence et s'efforce d'étudier l'intrication du social et de l'individuel. Cette approche traite la violence comme un problème culturel auquel participent non seulement ceux qui l'infligent et ceux qui en souffrent mais encore tous les autres acteurs sociaux, qui la montrent, la soignent, l'observent ou l'analysent.Kleinman Arthur, Desjarlais Robert. Ni patients ni victimes . In: Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales. Vol. 104, septembre 1994. Le commerce des corps. pp. 56-63