The Dharma of Bums: Identity, Neoliberalism, and Biomedicine in the Practice of Treating Homelessness in Honolulu

Abstract

Focusing on Honolulu, the city with the highest rate of homelessness in the United States, this thesis demonstrates that the existence of a visibly immiserated population functions materially to create the need for an industry of care and ideologically to serve as an embodied site of difference. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork at a transitional shelter and with a student-run free clinic, I examine the process of identity production as it occurs between homeless people and service providers. The public visibility of homelessness leads to the denigration of this population, resulting in a lack of personhood. The process of entering a shelter is viewed as a neoliberal ritual of social reintegration. A free clinic for the homeless demonstrates the on-the-ground process of developing co-relational identities. Finally, a Halloween carnival allows actors to perform the identities and meanings constructed around homelessness in a way that incorporates elements of costume and fantasy.