Amidst the changing social and economic landscape of the city due to the Covid-19 global pandemic, Hamilton has seen a spike in the visible homeless population and the increasing presence of tent cities occupying public space, sparking controversy within the local community. Media portrayals of the tent occupancies have focused on homelessness through the use of deviance frames, focusing on crime, violence and danger, as well as negative personality traits that include weak moral laxity, overall laziness, and willful dependence on the state. This is to delegitimize the plight of this group, in favour of the City’s approach to criminalize, displace, disband and exclude. The media discourse negates the growing body of evidence that homelessness is a by-product of economic, political and global shifts towards neo-liberal restructuring. The study seeks to understand how and why the individual-blaming narrative maintains its dominance, to become accepted as truth and reproduced by the general public in the public sphere; particularly as it relates to public understandings of the causes of homelessness and who is responsible. This study finds that the dominant discourse is led by neoliberal ideology which underpins and permeates all facets of society. The study’s findings are threefold. 1. The elites who support a neo-liberal agenda have been effective in managing the opinions of the general public to accept their framing of the problem and also the solutions. This means that the general public continues to uphold a neo-liberal agenda even when it is against their best interests. 2. The discourse is maintained through deliberate and strategic positioning of one group against another. 3. Given continued public support neoliberalism will continue to dominate the future of economic, political and social policy, that impacts the welfare of the members of this community including the community’s most vulnerable homeless population. With that in mind, social work must navigate these tensions and conflicts within the oppressive systems, to both maintain them and work against them insofar as they are meeting the needs of the community. Social workers must manage dual tasks/roles of maintaining jobs, funding and supports, while finding ways to critique and resist these systems that maintain unequal power relations. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)

Among the negative societal consequences of homelessness, its potential environmental impacts are largely unconsidered. This study examines the impacts of trash and riparian zone alterations associated with a homeless population inhabiting the area surrounding the Guadalupe River in San Jose, California. Literature was reviewed to determine the environmental effects of elevated trash and sediment loads in rivers, estuaries, and the marine environment. Building upon existing trash assessment protocols, a methodology was developed to increase the accuracy of source identification. Sampling of four predetermined areas took place between November 2012 and May 2013. Results showed elevated volumes of trash and occurrences of anthropogenic alteration in the areas of the riparian zone most heavily used by the homeless population. Using existing research, inferences were made regarding the environmental effects of these disturbances. It is subsequently recommended that new mitigation measures be empirically evaluated, including long-term benefit-cost analyses regarding permanent housing of homeless populations.

Every year hundreds of people migrate from the highlands of Peru to the coastal capital of Lima searching for economic and social stability. These groups of people have similar characteristics that keep them together they come from the same city, are members of the same family, have the same religion, have similar goals, and so on. Once in Lima they take possession of the only free areas left in the city: the mountains. Due to a lack of economic resources, poor urban planning and unsuitable site conditions the settlements grow for years in a disorderly, unsafe and unsanitary way, creating dangerous conditions for themselves and for the neighboring communities. The Private Bank of Materials and the government's overdue efforts to fix these neighborhoods by reinforcing the retaining walls, building roads, planting trees, or connecting utility services do not address at a neighborhood reorganization strategy but rather a "face lift" of the existing housing units. This thesis aims to come up with an early response to the housing problem focusing on the design of a self-sustaining neighborhood organization where the housing structure complements the social public spaces. By organizing the urban fabric in a way that the neighborhood accommodates the density needed to keep the cost low, as well as provide the necessary gathering spaces, a richer social environment can be developed. This reorganization considers the residents' socio-cultural characteristics, public spaces, dwelling, flexible program, urban integration, and the site's topography. During the research, I lived with the community for two weeks, analyzing the existing public realm and its surrounding neighborhoods focusing on their gathering spaces. These studies included visual information and interviews documented through a journal, photographs, and videos all focused on residents' social behavior. I visited and analyzed similar housing projects emphasizing the flexibility of their programs. I also looked at affordable construction methods in order to select the most appropriate to implement on site. The engineer Jose Pelaez (Florida department of Transportation) guided my project in its geographical aspect so that it became feasible. These studies lead to the development of an organizational system that creates a community focused on social interaction.

This project utilized an interdisciplinary approach to explore what harm and harm reduction meant during intersecting public health emergencies, the opioid crisis and the coronavirus pandemic. Using thematic and historical analysis, I analyzed interviews with frontline workers, news coverage, and municipal government documents to understand how people conceptualized the opioid crisis during coronavirus (and vice versa). On the whole, I found that harm reduction was a central aspect of the efforts against the opioid crisis in Hamilton. However, there were discrepancies in how it was practiced and understood. Generally, harm reduction was presented in municipal government documents as a medical intervention that involved, for example, the provision of new needles and naloxone kits to prevent disease and death. Such a practice was indeed important to address the unique harms at the intersection of COVID and the opioid crisis. However, to frontline workers and activists, harm reduction was a much broader term: it included services that were crucial to daily life, such as food and washrooms; the right to safe housing; and broader social and structural interventions, such as the decriminalization of opioid use. The context of the coronavirus pandemic, which exposed people who use opioids to unique harms, exacerbated the disparity between these definitions: harm reduction was simultaneously presented as a narrow, medical practice and a broad, political intervention. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T20:13:02Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Thiago Lopes Ferreira-1.pdf: 471348 bytes, checksum: 97360c72a7c59ed479421f83be694a37 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-09-05 / Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior / This dissertation has as central subject and analysis object the relations of the Landless Workers' Movement with the place which they live and construct part of theirs social relations: the house, the lot and the rural settlement. Such relations are, with different intensities and various formats, constructed and consisting even from the material production and from the symbolic production of the involved social agents, determining how the space configurations of the dwellings and the rural settlement are given as a whole. The work has some objectives, as well as: verify, portray and analyze the conditions of the dwelling and the existed infrastructure, examining the used construction`s techniques, materials, the internal distribution of the constructions, the conditions of habitability and basic sanitation utilities (sanitary sewer), the quality of the constructed environment, the access to the electric energy and water for human consumption, among others things. It is also intended to understand the social and symbolic relations existing in the space, with its representations constructed from the perceptions and feelings that the rural worker and his family have about the place where they live and, through it, they reveal theirs identities and strategies of familiar organization. For such approach was chosen the camp site Terra Livre in the city of Resende, in the State of Rio de Janeiro, related to the Landless Workers' Movement - MST. An encampment was elected, since the work also has as a proposal the elaboration of the new dwelling plants for all the resident families, which will be delivered and will serve as orientation in the construction, reformation or extension of the houses, at the moment where their become an rural settlement and grant access to the habitational credit for Acquisition of Construction s Materials, conceived by the National Institute of Colonization and the Agrarian Reformation - Incra, through the public politics of land dispossession targeting the agrarian reform and the concession of credits for the initial installation of the families. The objective of the methodology proposal was to structuralize an investigation method that allows to diagnosis the whole picture of the existing realities concerning the conditions of the houses of the camped families, and to stimulate the participation of the rural workers in the conception of the proper dwelling projects. We choose to applicate the methodology to the familiar level, visiting each house and analyzing the existing possibilities inside of the expectations and expressed wills, searching to adjust them to the financial realities of each family and mixing them to a technique assistance of project orientation, in order to propitiate a final result of collective satisfaction by means of a participative process of elaboration. / Esta disserta??o tem como tema central e objeto de an?lise as rela??es dos trabalhadores rurais sem-terra com o espa?o no qual vivem e constroem parte de suas rela??es sociais: a casa, o lote, o assentamento rural. Tais rela??es s?o com diferentes intensidades e variados formatos, constru?das e constitu?das, tanto de produ??o material quanto de produ??o simb?lica dos agentes sociais envolvidos, determinando desta forma, como se d?o as configura??es espaciais das habita??es e dos assentamentos rurais como um todo. O trabalho possui alguns objetivos, entre eles: verificar, retratar e analisar as condi??es habitacionais e de infraestrutura existentes, examinando as t?cnicas construtivas, os materiais empregados, a distribui??o interna das moradias, as condi??es de habitabilidade, salubridade e saneamento b?sico, a qualidade do ambiente constru?do, o acesso ? energia el?trica e ?gua para consumo humano, entre outras coisas. Pretende-se perceber as rela??es sociais e simb?licas existentes neste espa?o, atrav?s das representa??es dos sentidos e percep??es que o trabalhador rural e sua fam?lia possuem do lugar em que vivem e, nele retratam suas identidades e constroem as estrat?gias de organiza??o familiar. Para tal enfoque foi escolhido o acampamento rural Terra Livre, situado no munic?pio de Resende, no Estado do Rio de Janeiro, ligado ao Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem-Terra MST. Foi eleito um acampamento, pois o trabalho prop?e a elabora??o das novas plantas habitacionais, das fam?lias residentes, as quais ser?o entregues e servir?o como orienta??o na constru??o, reforma ou amplia??o das casas, no momento em que tornarem assentamento rural e acessarem o cr?dito para Aquisi??o de Materiais de Constru??o, concedido pelo Instituto Nacional de Coloniza??o e Reforma Agr?ria, atrav?s das pol?ticas p?blicas de concess?o de cr?ditos para a instala??o inicial de fam?lias assentadas. O desafio da metodologia proposta consiste na realiza??o de um m?todo de investiga??o e diagn?stico do quadro das realidades existentes acerca das condi??es habitacionais das fam?lias acampadas, estimulando a participa??o dos trabalhadores e trabalhadoras rurais na concep??o dos pr?prios projetos habitacionais. Optamos pela aplica??o da metodologia a n?vel familiar, visitando cada casa e analisando as possibilidades existentes, dentro das expectativas e vontades expressas, buscando adequ?-las ?s realidades financeiras e, mesclando-as a uma assist?ncia t?cnica de orienta??o no projeto, de modo a propiciar um resultado final de satisfa??o coletiva mediante um processo participativo de elabora??o.

Orientador: Maria Lygia Quartim de Moraes / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciencias Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-05T01:59:00Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Goncalves_RenataCristina_D.pdf: 25407113 bytes, checksum: c34bc741f451fa7e0bb4f84d174c0a80 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005 / Resumo: Neste trabalho procura-se examinar as formas de participação das mulheres no Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) na região do Pontal do Paranapanema. Recorre-se a entrevistas realizadas com acampados/as, assentados/as, militantes homens e mulheres inserido(a)s na luta pela terra naquela região; à sistemática ín loco como principal meio de burlar as dificuldades que muito(a)s têm com o gravador; e à vasta bibliografia crítica sobre o assunto. Ao longo da pesquisa, foram identificados dois momentos e espaços diferentes de participação feminina na luta pela terra. O primeiro corresponde à fase do acampamento, em que se começa a viver coletivamente sob as regras materializadas no chamado "regimento interno", que estabelecem os "códigos" de conduta de cada membro do acampamento, com novas aprendizagens podendo levar à ruptura das cercas de gênero. O segundo é o do assentamento. Este representa um desfecho positivo para os sem terra contra o monopólio do latifúndio. É o momento de um novo processo que implica criar condições para a permanência na terra conquistada. No entanto, o que se verifica são condições precárias de assentamentos revelando que estes se tomaram uma estratégia para amenizar conflitos sociais. Uma vez no assentamento, aspectos econômicos e tecnológicos adquirem formas em que o tempo e o espaço são regidos pelo modo de produção dominante. Para além da sobrevivência, é necessário produzir para pagar os empréstimos feitos junto ao Estado, ao banco, etc. A luta para permanecer na terra se toma imediatista e o aspecto econômico se impõe e acentua retomo da velha divisão sexual do trabalho, colocando em xeque as aprendizagens de gênero durante os anos de luta nos acampamentos. Frente a estas dificuldades, o MST propõe novos modelos de assentamento que permitam combinar independência, com relação do modo de produção dominante, e novas relações que permitam eliminar as trincheiras machistas do movimento / Abstract: This study examines the forms of women's participation in the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) in the Pontal do Paranapanema region. It employs interviews with squatters, settlers, and male and female militants involved in the struggle for land in that region; the in loco system as the principal means for overcoming the difficulties that many have with tape recording; and the vast critical literature on the subject. During the course of the research two different spaces and moments of feminine participation in the struggle for land were identified. The first corresponds to the encampment phase, during which participants being to live collectively under the rules of the so-called "internal regimen," which establish the "codes" of conduct for each member of the encampment. New lessons learned during this phase can lead to the breaking down of gender barriers. The second phase is the settlement. This represents a positive outcome for the landless against the monopoly of the large landholding. It is the beginning of a new process that implies creating conditions for staying on the land that has been conquered. Nonetheless, what we observe are precarious conditions that reveal that the settlements have become a strategy to quel! social conflicts. In the settlement economic and technological conditions take on forms in which time and space are shaped by the dominant mode of production. Beyond surviving it is necessary to produce in order to pay the loans received from the state, the bank, etc. The struggle to stay on the land becomes the immediate :priority and the economic aspect imposes itself and brings back the old sexual division of labor, putting in check the gender leaming experiences of the years of struggle in the encampments. In the face of these difficulties, the MST proposes new models of settlement which allow independence in relation to the dominant mode of production to be combined with new relations that make it possible to eliminate the barriers of male chauvinism within the movement / Doutorado / Doutor em Ciências Sociais

This research examines a sample of North Carolina Confederates as they transitioned from citizen to soldier between 1861 and 1863 during the American Civil War, and it questions how levels of commitment and devotion emerged during this transformation. North Carolina Confederates not only faced physical and emotional challenges as they transitioned from citizen to soldier, but also encountered social obstacles due to the strict social order of the Old South. Orthodoxy maintains this social dissent hindered any form of solidarity among North Carolina Confederates. The question remains, though, why did so many North Carolinians remain committed to the Confederacy until death or surrender? This thesis addresses that question. It acknowledges traditional works on North Carolina’s Civil War experience, however it focuses on the war front more closely. By examining soldiers’ personal reflections to experiences encountered during their transition more understanding concerning soldiers’ shifting perceptions emerge. This thesis encapsulates a soldier’s transition through three stages: camp, combat, and campaign. Each stage offers insight into how perceptions toward fellow men, the home front, combat, and camp-life changed over time. Soldiers were exposed to unprecedented levels of fear, sickness, death, and nostalgia that shook their foundations. Levels of commitment were questioned as men encountered each obstacle. The reflections herein indicate men’s devotion actually increased by 1863 by engaging the basic duties of soldiering and learning to function together in the midst of combat. Self-awareness for health and survival, hard work, and camp life activities took on new meanings by 1863. Furthermore, this sample offers an example of how the constant interactions of men whether in camp or on the battlefield ultimately strengthened solidarity among troops. This thesis pays particular attention to soldiers’ attachments to natural landscapes, and their abilities to materially alter landscapes for the purposes of survival and respite. These North Carolinians reveal how experiences during their transition from citizen to soldier ultimately laid a foundation to remain committed to the war.