Being healthy in unhealthy places: health tactics in a homeless lifeworld.
Street life can compromise a person's health. In response, homeless people exert considerable agency in attempts to preserve their health. Drawing on ethnographic research in central Auckland, this article explores the ways in which a homeless man maintains his health. We consider the tactics Clinton develops to maintain his health and to gain respite while living on the streets, an unhealthy place. Of particular note are the ways in which he works to transform a 'landscape of despair' into a 'landscape of care'. The case of Clinton foregrounds the fundamentally emplaced and relational nature of homeless peoples' health.
University of Waikato, New Zealand ottilie@waikato.ac.nz.
Ottilie
O
Stolte
University of Waikato, New Zealand.
Darrin
D
Hodgetts
D001294:Attitude to Health; D005523:Food Supply; D015438:Health Behavior; D006304:Health Status; D006703:Ill-Housed Persons / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D006920:Hygiene; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000150:complications; D008875:Middle Aged; D009520:New Zealand
care; health; homelessness; inequalities; place