This study aims to explore the lives and narrative counts of five homeless people in contemporary South Africa: a post-apartheid context characterized by a rapidly emerging globalized consumer culture and an internal tension in the government commitment to social welfare and while simultaneously following less benevolent neoliberal economic models. The primary concern of the study is the ways in which these marginalized individuals talk about themselves, the stories of their lives and represent themselves through narratives. Their lives, identities and stories are constructed from marginal and socially neglected spaces. The study grapples with what makes us human and the human consequences of global capitalism and consumerism. The study explores the connections homelessness and 'home'; and between homelessness and economic agency. Here homeless identities are constructed outside of the socially valued place of the home and defined by their jobless status and by their lack of economic agency. This means that homeless people have to constantly negotiate their socially 'threatened' and 'threatening' identities from the margins of society. The narratives of the participants reveal gendered and economic factors that precipitate the choice of a street existence as well as structural factors that keep homeless people 'the other'. The narratives further reveal contested meanings of home as connoting security and as a space for identity construction but also as the site for risk, exploitation, violence, and abuse, especially against women. The study suggests that homeless people can be thought of as displaced people in search for 'home' and for positive social identities. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2005.

This article explores homeless individuals' experiences of satisfaction with health care, and explores the interrelationship among experiences of being homeless, health perceptions of participants, and experiences of satisfaction with health care. It presents the findings of a phenomenological study that was conducted using participants selected from five sites in one southeastern state. Participant interviews were conducted at a nurse-managed primary health care clinic for homeless, at a night time soup-kitchen, and at three private, not-for-profit, homeless shelters in two different towns. The study was part of a larger study designed to develop and validate a reliable measure of client satisfaction with primary health care among homeless individuals. Face-to-face in-depth interviews with 17 homeless individuals were conducted, with the semistructured interview constituting the primary data source. Common themes were identified and the interrelationship of theme clusters was explored. Analysis of the data yielded five distinct themes that represent the lived experiences of satisfaction with health care. These themes were mediated and directly informed by five themes of homelessness and three themes of health identified in the shared experiences of the participants. The themes identified suggest that satisfaction with health care for homeless persons differs from currently identified dimensions of satisfaction with care, and that some aspects of homelessness are seen by participants as positive and health promoting.